Please help me re design my studio setup so it actually works!!

[StudioKing]

My studio setup is proving very problematic and any help to steer me in the right direction would be greatly appriciated.

I am really not a technical guy (in the digital world) and all I want to do is make music which I am currently unable to do because I am always bogged down with technical issues.

My setup revolves around 2 RADAR 2 machines linked together as a 48 track system. On it's own it is a faultless system in my opinion, easy to use, really stable, sounds great.

The thing is I wanted to be able to take projects that have been tracked on the RADAR and put them into my PC Nuendo system for more in depth editing etc.

I purchased 2 motu 2408mk2 interfaces and a PCI324 card for the pc. I choose these because they each have 24 i/o TDIF which is the digital output format I have on the RADAR.

I am having trouble getting audio to seemlessly transfer between the RADAR and the Motu. I have spoken to IZ about the RADAR, their help has been really great and I am fairly sure that there is no issue with the RADAR and that the problem lies somewhere with the MOTU or the PC

It seems that the MOTU is unable to be the wordclock slave, this in itself is a shame because the system sounds much better with the RADAR as the master clock but I would have been willing to live with this if there werent so many pops and clicks aperaing in the audio when transfering to or from the PC.

At first I though that maybe my PC just wasn't up to the task and considered buying a Mac but now I am starting to think that the problem is more likely with the TDIF.

Has anyone had any success doing this? I think that most likely it is a clocking issue but have no real way of testing that theory, I was thinking that maybe a master clock like the Apogee big ben would solve my problem but would hate to spend a grand or so on that and find that I am no better off.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks, and sorry for the long and not very interesting post.

[RyanC]

When you have pops and clicks in a digital transfer it's pretty safe to say that it is a clocking issue. Either that or your TDIF cables aren't up to spec.

Frankly I'd ditch the motu all together, I've owed their stuff and IMHO there is something seriously wrong with their ASIO drivers- even when you do get the clock going, they never sound right even on a digital transfer.

If the radar is set to slave, make sure that it is slaving to the right source, I would use a wordclock cable not just re-generate the clock off of the TDIF signal.

But

You should be able to take BWF files of the radar and import them with the time stamp no? Or Easier still can the radar just print bar one beat one audio? If so then re- print all audio starting at the same time, and import the .wav's

Good luck

[StudioKing]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, I dont think that the RADAR 2 uses .WAV files, as far as I know it uses it's own file format that is unique and therefore is not compatible with other systems. Therefore I think the only way to transfer RADAR projects is with a digital audio transfer.

It seems that TDIF is very fussy! I wish I had one of the newer RADARS with ADAT becuase I think that would work really easily.

Has anyone had any luck gettiing a 2408MK2 to slave to any other devices? If so was it done via word clock, adat, or tdif?

I would also like to try using better TDIF cables, does anyone know where to get good quality ones in the UK?

[529 Pro Audio]

I'm guessing this is a buffer issue within your DAW, especially if you are recording large track counts from the RADAR. Set your buffer as high as it will go and if you are still getting clicks or pops in the audio, you might want to beef up your RAM or get a better computer if your is somewhat outdated.

All of the previous comments regarding clocking are, of course, still worth checking out, but generally you get more than just clicks and pops if the clocking is out of sync...

Best,
Chris

[StudioKing]

Once again thanks for the advice, I am really appriciating all the help i am getting here.

The thing is that the audio pops and clicks happen even if i am just working with 2 tracks of audio. This makes me think that even though my PC is admitidly rather low spec it cant be unable to cope with such a low track count.

[jeffsochor]

I have never used the 2408, but you may need to terminate the BNC if you are running a separate word clock cable. 99% of clicks and pops are clock mismatch, is the RADAR clocked externally? Remember, TDIF carries it's own embedded clock, the MOTU might be getting discrepancies between the BNC and TDIF clocks.

[N.J.]

Just my experience.
Any time i've talked to someone doing a TDIF xfer from RADAR to MOTU, the MOTU has demanded to be master. Other TDIF devices aren't as picky.
If you do find a solution, please let me know, so I can pass it on to other users.

If you are concerned about sound quality;
-Track to the RADAR clocked internally.
-Then do a TDIF xfer with the RADAR set to slave from the MOTU (Ie MOTU master)

That way the A-D's of RADAR will be running on it's internal clock, but for the second step of digital to digital transfer, the clock won't matter as much (unless it's horribly jittery)

Best of luck.