Help with my ProFire Lightbirdge !!

marshallplexi · 16th July 2007, 11:20 AM

This is driving me nuts... I have a bunch of clicks and pops in PT M Powered 7.3

And When it's not that, i get error 9128 saying i have too many plugins ( and i don't have too many).

I have a Quadzilla (4x 2.4GHz + Tyan Tiger + 4GB of RAM).

Linked to the Lightbridge are Apogees AD16X and DA16X.

In the MAUDIO control panel, the sync is set to ADAT1.

Should i slave the MAUDIO via BNC from the Apogee ?

Both Apogee are already linked via BNC (AD16X > INT and DA16X > WC)

Sessions are in 96K.

Do you reckon it's because of the clocking i have the 9128 error aswell ?

gurubuzz · 16th July 2007, 01:12 PM

Has it worked before?

or has it always done this???

marshallplexi · 16th July 2007, 02:01 PM

always... I've had that set up for about 2 weeks

gurubuzz · 16th July 2007, 02:22 PM

If you've got word clock you might as well use it and I would make the Apogee the master.

Don't know if this will help...

Is it recording Audio with no clicks or pops??

espasonico · 17th July 2007, 02:28 AM

I have also problems with mine when trying to work at 88.2 at home for editing. I have triend WC and ADAT and didn´t solve the problem. I can´t also change the buffer size in PT but I can with Nuendo..

naethoven · 4th August 2007, 08:35 PM

Hey,
On another thread some one was having the same type of issue and they set their Lightbridge as the master clock (they also had the Apogees) and it worked that way. It sucks not to be able to use the Apogee clock, but maybe you should try the lightbridge as master. You may want to do a search for "lightbridge" on the forums and see if you can find the guy that wrote that, maybe he could help you more. I actually just ordered the lightbridge and 7.3.....

Nathan

Ken K · 5th August 2007, 12:59 AM

I have a Lightbridge and it an be "Fussy". It doesn't seem to like word clock from my Big Ben but seems to run pretty well when I clock it from Big ben's SPDIF. Try clocking it from the ADAT in your AD16. Hope it helps!

espasonico · 14th August 2007, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by naethoven

Hey,
On another thread some one was having the same type of issue and they set their Lightbridge as the master clock (they also had the Apogees) and it worked that way. It sucks not to be able to use the Apogee clock, but maybe you should try the lightbridge as master. You may want to do a search for "lightbridge" on the forums and see if you can find the guy that wrote that, maybe he could help you more. I actually just ordered the lightbridge and 7.3.....

Nathan

Thanks for the tip but If I remember well, I can´t make the Lightbridge master if clock is set at 88.2.

StudioRhythm · 14th August 2007, 03:12 AM

I had a lightbridge for about a month and had these same problems. Actually, I had three lightbridges, as I got two replacements, one from the dealer and then one from M-Audio, neither of which worked any better. After spending several weeks of hours-per-day troubleshooting and long conversations with tech support, I sent it back as it would not work reliably under any circumstances and I had tested it exhaustively under all possible scenarios. After talking with an M-Audio rep, I found out that something was being investigated about these issues -- I suspect the design just doesn't quite work somehow.

In my case, I got the same digital clocking errors in any setup -- clocked from ADAT, SPDIF, or W/C. I'd advise you to call M-Audio and return it as I don't think you can get it working. I'm pretty sure I tried the lightbridge as master and slaved my Mytek to it with no difference -- I would get digital clicks and pops fairly often playing back at 88.2/96kHz, and during ProTools bounce to disk at all sample rates. If I were you, I'd return it and get something that works....

marshallplexi · 15th August 2007, 09:33 AM

sad but true...

It's OK in 48K.

I managed to make it work for a little while in 96K but now it's worse than ever...

Probably will get HD.

Apparently, this is the M-AUDIO driver which causes the error.

Rappy · 15th August 2007, 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by naethoven

Hey,
On another thread some one was having the same type of issue and they set their Lightbridge as the master clock (they also had the Apogees) and it worked that way. It sucks not to be able to use the Apogee clock, but maybe you should try the lightbridge as master. You may want to do a search for "lightbridge" on the forums and see if you can find the guy that wrote that, maybe he could help you more. I actually just ordered the lightbridge and 7.3.....

Nathan

I'm the guy that wrote about this issue on the other thread. See the last paragraph in this link:

M-Powered PT functionality vs that of LE

I agree that the Lightbridge is fussy. I can get it to work, but it is not as stable as HD. I am hoping that a new M-Audio driver, whenever it comes out, will help solve the issues. I downloaded the Beta driver for the Lightbridge off the M-Audio website and that helped a bit.

One work around I have is when I am getting clock errors, clicks and pops, etc, I open the M-Audio interface settings and select a different clock source. For example, if I know I am using "Internal" as my clock soure for the Lighbridge, I will select "ADAT" or "S/PDIF" and wait a few seconds and then switch back to my actual source. This seems to help the Lighbridge reset itself and detect the proper source. Shutting down and restartings seems to help as well. I can always tell when I am about to get clicks and pops because the word clock "Lock" display on my Apogee starts to flicker on and off. This happens about once a week or so. When it is stable, then everything sounds fine.

I am still using the internal clock on the Lightbridge as my master clock. I have purchased new BNC cables and a PCI firewire port expansion card for my G5 to plug the Lightbridge into. I will try using the Apogee AD-16x as the master word clock again and see if these changes make a difference, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. I will let you know how it goes.

Cheers,

Rappy

marshallplexi · 15th August 2007, 10:26 PM

Rappy,

i just talked to DIGIDESIGN tech support and they told me PT doesnt support the S/MUX protocol. They suggested trying to clock via SPIDF or BNC...

However some people in this thread tried that with no success...

Don't know what to do...

chrisrulesmore · 16th August 2007, 02:05 AM

I never had issues with pops, but my 1814 setup was a nightmare when I switched to an intel mac. I would get the 'too many plug ins' error constantly regardless of track count or actual plug in use.

I finally said f*ck it and switched to the Logic/Apogee Symphony setup which has worked flawlessly.

Sorry to hear the lightbridge still isn't working...this looked like a very cool product when it came out.

-Chris

bashville · 16th August 2007, 02:21 AM

To add to the chorus, I also bought a lightbridge very soon after they came out. I returned it after wasting a weekend wrestling with it. Spotty manual, awkward installation, iffy software, snap, crackle, pop.

marshallplexi · 16th August 2007, 04:57 AM

It's actually working right now...

It's just completely unstable...

Has anyone else tried clocking using WC or SPIDF ? (Lightbridge being the slave)

marshallplexi · 20th August 2007, 10:14 PM

So, i found a way to make it 'work'.

When clicks appears in a High Res session, close PT. Open a new session in 48K then close it. Open a new session in High Res and close it. Open your session and it should work...

Thanks M-Audio and Digidesign for always releasing reliable and easy to use products (especially for the price) !!!

gurubuzz · 22nd August 2007, 01:30 PM

On PC using Cubase ...works great....24 channels recording all day...

I have not used Smux yet...

Rappy · 22nd August 2007, 03:41 PM

Update: My Lghtbride is working fine right now (keeping my fingers crossed). Adding to my previous post in this thread and in another thread, I can now sucessfully use my Apogee AD-16x as the master word clock. When I installed a new firewire expansion PCI card and plugged the Lightbridge into that, and then tried using the Apogee as the master word clock instead of the Lightbridge, it helped a lot. I am using BNC word clock cable to sync the devices, not S/PDIF or SMUX. Also, I found the the Lightbridge doesn't like to be the last device in the word clock chain, if that makes any sense. Right now I am going Apogee-->Lightbridge--->Behringer ADA8000 all via BNC cable. I am only using the Behringer for D/A conversion for headphone mixes. However, I found that when I plugged in the Behringer, it actually helped stabilize the Lightbridge. I had done some overdubs in the control room previously without using headphone mixes, so I didn't have the Behringer hooked up, and the Lightbridge was acting pretty unstable. Now it is much better.

Cheers,
Rappy

Rappy · 7th September 2007, 06:54 PM

Hello everyone. I am making a plea to other Profire Lightbridge users to send an email to M-Audio requesting that they continue writing driver updates for the unit. This is a great unit full of enormous potential, but (as many of you know) it can be unstable. Personally, my unit is working okay, but I still get occaisional messages that I have run out of processing power in Pro Tools M-Powered, when I am nowhere near the limit. This is an obvious bug. I also still get occaisional word clock errors, but I found a work around which I described in an earlier post. I would love for these annoying problems to go away in a future driver update. However, if we merely complain about it here on Gearslutz, M-Audio might not get the message and won't do anything about it (unless they are reading out posts). Kind of like writing your congressman...enough of us need to complain in order to get results.

I sent an email to info@m-audio.com. I suggest that some of you do the same if you are experiencing problems.

Thanks,

Rappy

naethoven · 13th September 2007, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rappy

Hello everyone. I am making a plea to other Profire Lightbridge users to send an email to M-Audio requesting that they continue writing driver updates for the unit. This is a great unit full of enormous potential, but (as many of you know) it can be unstable. Personally, my unit is working okay, but I still get occaisional messages that I have run out of processing power in Pro Tools M-Powered, when I am nowhere near the limit. This is an obvious bug. I also still get occaisional word clock errors, but I found a work around which I described in an earlier post. I would love for these annoying problems to go away in a future driver update. However, if we merely complain about it here on Gearslutz, M-Audio might not get the message and won't do anything about it (unless they are reading out posts). Kind of like writing your congressman...enough of us need to complain in order to get results.

I sent an email to info@m-audio.com. I suggest that some of you do the same if you are experiencing problems.

Thanks,

Rappy

Just bumping in agreement, I am writing M-Audio right now:
info@m-audio.com

travisbrown · 13th September 2007, 07:07 PM

I've taken two Lightbridges back and about to return a third. The thirs one works most of the time, but I can't rely on it.

Then I'm going to give the Presonus FireStudio Lightpipe a try. When it comes out, which was supposed to be in May.

All three LightBridges had clock issues and produced clicks and pops, no matter what the master slave setup is.

dlmorley · 13th September 2007, 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by travisbrown

I've taken two Lightbridges back and about to return a third. The thirs one works most of the time, but I can't rely on it.

Then I'm going to give the Presonus FireStudio Lightpipe a try. When it comes out, which was supposed to be in May.

All three LightBridges had clock issues and produced clicks and pops, no matter what the master slave setup is.

Mine did when I first installed, but then when I updated the driver it was fine and has been since then. I run mine with firewire power, not the supplied PS which is recommended on 6 pin firewire for some reason. On a intel iMac btw

TechKnowledgy · 13th September 2007, 10:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlmorley

Mine did when I first installed, but then when I updated the driver it was fine and has been since then. I run mine with firewire power, not the supplied PS which is recommended on 6 pin firewire for some reason. On a intel iMac btw

Using the AC power adapter on a Mac (or a PC that has 6pin bus powered FW) can damage the device. Did you guys ever connect the power supply to the Lightbridge? I've seen lots of strange problems occur when the FW interfaces are doubled powered like that.

For you guys getting pops, clicks, and dropouts, do you have other FireWire devices connected (FW HD's including FW800)?

The built in FireWire ports are usually useless on PC's, for audio interfaces at least. FW expansion cards can definitely clear up a lot of problems.

TechKnowledgy · 13th September 2007, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marshallplexi

Rappy,

i just talked to DIGIDESIGN tech support and they told me PT doesnt support the S/MUX protocol. They suggested trying to clock via SPIDF or BNC...

However some people in this thread tried that with no success...

Don't know what to do...

That doesn't make sense, S/MUX is for recording at higher samples rates over ADAT, even if you clock w/ S/PDIF or BNC, you still have to be in S/MUX mode to get 88.2 or 96K. S/MUX doesn't have anything to do with Pro Tools either. It's the audio interface (Lightbridge) that needs to support it, and it does. I think the problem is that a lot of devices don't send the S/MUX bit, so if set to auto-detect, it may not lock properly, so just set it to override.

naethoven · 14th September 2007, 07:56 AM

Hey,
Everybody check out the thread on the "So much gear..." forum titled "EVERYONE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH A PROFIRE LIGHTBRIDGE, READ THIS!"

Check it out, it may help us all a lot!

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16th July 2007, 11:20 AM	#1
marshallplexi Gear maniac Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 175	Help with my ProFire Lightbirdge !! This is driving me nuts... I have a bunch of clicks and pops in PT M Powered 7.3 And When it's not that, i get error 9128 saying i have too many plugins ( and i don't have too many). I have a Quadzilla (4x 2.4GHz + Tyan Tiger + 4GB of RAM). Linked to the Lightbridge are Apogees AD16X and DA16X. In the MAUDIO control panel, the sync is set to ADAT1. Should i slave the MAUDIO via BNC from the Apogee ? Both Apogee are already linked via BNC (AD16X > INT and DA16X > WC) Sessions are in 96K. Do you reckon it's because of the clocking i have the 9128 error aswell ?

5th August 2007, 12:59 AM	#7
Ken K Gear Head Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 58	Help with my ProFire Lightbirdge !! I have a Lightbridge and it an be "Fussy". It doesn't seem to like word clock from my Big Ben but seems to run pretty well when I clock it from Big ben's SPDIF. Try clocking it from the ADAT in your AD16. Hope it helps!

14th August 2007, 03:12 AM	#9
StudioRhythm Gear nut Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 93	I had a lightbridge for about a month and had these same problems. Actually, I had three lightbridges, as I got two replacements, one from the dealer and then one from M-Audio, neither of which worked any better. After spending several weeks of hours-per-day troubleshooting and long conversations with tech support, I sent it back as it would not work reliably under any circumstances and I had tested it exhaustively under all possible scenarios. After talking with an M-Audio rep, I found out that something was being investigated about these issues -- I suspect the design just doesn't quite work somehow. In my case, I got the same digital clocking errors in any setup -- clocked from ADAT, SPDIF, or W/C. I'd advise you to call M-Audio and return it as I don't think you can get it working. I'm pretty sure I tried the lightbridge as master and slaved my Mytek to it with no difference -- I would get digital clicks and pops fairly often playing back at 88.2/96kHz, and during ProTools bounce to disk at all sample rates. If I were you, I'd return it and get something that works.... __________________ www.studiorhythm.com

7th September 2007, 06:54 PM	#19
Rappy Gear nut Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 85	Email M-Audio Request for New Drivers Hello everyone. I am making a plea to other Profire Lightbridge users to send an email to M-Audio requesting that they continue writing driver updates for the unit. This is a great unit full of enormous potential, but (as many of you know) it can be unstable. Personally, my unit is working okay, but I still get occaisional messages that I have run out of processing power in Pro Tools M-Powered, when I am nowhere near the limit. This is an obvious bug. I also still get occaisional word clock errors, but I found a work around which I described in an earlier post. I would love for these annoying problems to go away in a future driver update. However, if we merely complain about it here on Gearslutz, M-Audio might not get the message and won't do anything about it (unless they are reading out posts). Kind of like writing your congressman...enough of us need to complain in order to get results. I sent an email to info@m-audio.com. I suggest that some of you do the same if you are experiencing problems. Thanks, Rappy

16th July 2007, 01:12 PM	#2
gurubuzz Lives for gear Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 558	Has it worked before? or has it always done this???

16th July 2007, 02:01 PM	#3
marshallplexi Gear maniac Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 175	always... I've had that set up for about 2 weeks

16th July 2007, 02:22 PM	#4
gurubuzz Lives for gear Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 558	If you've got word clock you might as well use it and I would make the Apogee the master. Don't know if this will help... Is it recording Audio with no clicks or pops??

17th July 2007, 02:28 AM	#5
espasonico Lives for gear Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 508	I have also problems with mine when trying to work at 88.2 at home for editing. I have triend WC and ADAT and didn´t solve the problem. I can´t also change the buffer size in PT but I can with Nuendo..

4th August 2007, 08:35 PM	#6
naethoven Gear nut Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 125	Hey, On another thread some one was having the same type of issue and they set their Lightbridge as the master clock (they also had the Apogees) and it worked that way. It sucks not to be able to use the Apogee clock, but maybe you should try the lightbridge as master. You may want to do a search for "lightbridge" on the forums and see if you can find the guy that wrote that, maybe he could help you more. I actually just ordered the lightbridge and 7.3..... Nathan

15th August 2007, 09:33 AM	#10
marshallplexi Gear maniac Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 175	sad but true... It's OK in 48K. I managed to make it work for a little while in 96K but now it's worse than ever... Probably will get HD. Apparently, this is the M-AUDIO driver which causes the error.

15th August 2007, 10:26 PM	#12
marshallplexi Gear maniac Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 175	Rappy, i just talked to DIGIDESIGN tech support and they told me PT doesnt support the S/MUX protocol. They suggested trying to clock via SPIDF or BNC... However some people in this thread tried that with no success... Don't know what to do...

16th August 2007, 02:05 AM	#13
chrisrulesmore Gear addict Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 426	I never had issues with pops, but my 1814 setup was a nightmare when I switched to an intel mac. I would get the 'too many plug ins' error constantly regardless of track count or actual plug in use. I finally said f*ck it and switched to the Logic/Apogee Symphony setup which has worked flawlessly. Sorry to hear the lightbridge still isn't working...this looked like a very cool product when it came out. -Chris

16th August 2007, 02:21 AM	#14
bashville Gear Head Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 73	To add to the chorus, I also bought a lightbridge very soon after they came out. I returned it after wasting a weekend wrestling with it. Spotty manual, awkward installation, iffy software, snap, crackle, pop.

16th August 2007, 04:57 AM	#15
marshallplexi Gear maniac Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 175	It's actually working right now... It's just completely unstable... Has anyone else tried clocking using WC or SPIDF ? (Lightbridge being the slave)

20th August 2007, 10:14 PM	#16
marshallplexi Gear maniac Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 175	So, i found a way to make it 'work'. When clicks appears in a High Res session, close PT. Open a new session in 48K then close it. Open a new session in High Res and close it. Open your session and it should work... Thanks M-Audio and Digidesign for always releasing reliable and easy to use products (especially for the price) !!!

22nd August 2007, 01:30 PM	#17
gurubuzz Lives for gear Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 558	On PC using Cubase ...works great....24 channels recording all day... I have not used Smux yet...

22nd August 2007, 03:41 PM	#18
Rappy Gear nut Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 85	Update: My Lghtbride is working fine right now (keeping my fingers crossed). Adding to my previous post in this thread and in another thread, I can now sucessfully use my Apogee AD-16x as the master word clock. When I installed a new firewire expansion PCI card and plugged the Lightbridge into that, and then tried using the Apogee as the master word clock instead of the Lightbridge, it helped a lot. I am using BNC word clock cable to sync the devices, not S/PDIF or SMUX. Also, I found the the Lightbridge doesn't like to be the last device in the word clock chain, if that makes any sense. Right now I am going Apogee-->Lightbridge--->Behringer ADA8000 all via BNC cable. I am only using the Behringer for D/A conversion for headphone mixes. However, I found that when I plugged in the Behringer, it actually helped stabilize the Lightbridge. I had done some overdubs in the control room previously without using headphone mixes, so I didn't have the Behringer hooked up, and the Lightbridge was acting pretty unstable. Now it is much better. Cheers, Rappy

13th September 2007, 07:07 PM	#21
travisbrown Lives for gear Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 1,486	I've taken two Lightbridges back and about to return a third. The thirs one works most of the time, but I can't rely on it. Then I'm going to give the Presonus FireStudio Lightpipe a try. When it comes out, which was supposed to be in May. All three LightBridges had clock issues and produced clicks and pops, no matter what the master slave setup is. __________________ I'm not a producer, but I play one on Gearslutz.com

14th September 2007, 07:56 AM	#25
naethoven Gear nut Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 125	Hey, Everybody check out the thread on the "So much gear..." forum titled "EVERYONE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH A PROFIRE LIGHTBRIDGE, READ THIS!" Check it out, it may help us all a lot!

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