VF-16 to EWS 88D sound card problem

J

Jake Johnson

New member
Can't get this to work, although I've checked all the drivers and and cables and software and VF-16 setup several times.

I've seen several references to synching the VF-16 and the software so the VF-16 is master and the software is slave. Does this mean that I have to have the VF-16 and the computer connected with midi cables just to transfer tracks to my pc? (Or does the optical cable transmit the timing information?)

Is anyone else using the Terractec EWS 88D card? I'm not getting much help from Terratec, and the sheer number of settings (drivers in windows, with several places to set them, the VF-16 settings, the software settings in Samplitude, which has a very bad Help system and itself has several places to set the drivers) are wearinig me down. I've spent almost all this weekend trying to set up this card.

Does anyone know a place where I could get step by step instructions on setting this all up? I've gotten scraps of information here and there, but I'm newer at this than I thought, apparently, and I really want to get back to playing and recording music.
 
I have a Fostex FD-8, Terratec EWS 88D sound card, and Cakewalk Home Studio, I just got to work. The problem I had was a conflict between the sound card (ESS) that came with my PC and the Terratec sound card. Basically I disabled the ESS sound card , via Control Panel->Multimedia (Win98) and I was able to backup data via my TOS-Link to my PC. I have not tried to go the other way.

Like you mention, this was a trying experence with no direct support from Terratec. It appears all support for Terratec in the US comes from Fostex seeing they are the distributors. The contacts I had with Fostex did the best they could to support me... but not a lot of detailed technical support.
 
I'd recommend setting up the Terratec card as the clock source & setting the clock source for the VF-16 as external. Make sure you have the sample rates matched or Samplitude won't start to play or record. If you have another card in your system, you may just want to trash it and use the Terratec system playback.

I'm hooked up to a Fostex VM-88 mixer & these are my settings for the card:

Go into the Terratec control panel.
Under the settings tab, check these:
Master Clock: internal
Digital Out: ADAT (make sure the ADAT Through is not lit)
Digital In: ADAT on S/PDIF coaxial; Clock Source: ADAT

For the VF-16
Set the clock for external (or ADAT); digital I/O for ADAT - make sure the sample rates match for the card and the VF-16 ie: 44.1 or 48. or whatever.

As for slaving Samplitude, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to control everything via MIDI, You can do that. Once you open or start a new project, the sync menu is enabled. I've never slaved samp, but enable the chase lock button, and you should be ready to go.
Otherwise, I guess you can just record your project into samp as you're playing it back through the VF-16. If you want to do a straight data dump - I'm not sure how that works in samp, if at all.

Hope I've helped some.
 
Things are getting better, but it mixes to one track

I've now managed to get the VF-16 to send tracks to my computer, just by getting the latest EWS-88D drivers (posted last week on the Terratec site) and telling Samplitude to record after I press Play on the VF-16. The trouble is, everything comes into Samplitude on one stereo track.

In other words, instead of each VF-16 track transerring to a Samplitude track, all are mixed down into one track on the computer. I've checked all the cables, drivers, etc, and set Samplitude to record to multiple tracks, but it doesn't happen. So close, but so far to go.

Suggestions, please? (If I get this to work, I want to post a step by step procedure for setting up the EWS 88D to work with the VF-16.)
 
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