running multiple 1010's on M-powered system...

[thajeremy]

I have ran my 2 1010's for several years with Adobe Audition. I made the move to M-powered several months ago and while trying to learn the software, I have just connected 1 of the 1010's. Yesterday, I decided to try to fire up the second 1010 and was unsuccessful. Later, on a different forum, someone told me that only 1 interface at a time could be ran with m-powered.....is this accurate????

[Cameron]

Yes that is accurate. Only one 1010 will show up in ProTools.

[wildomac]

We've been running 2 1010's on M powered for a while now and it works a treat!! A colleague also had 2 running at his home studio with great success.

[HNU]

We've been running 2 1010's on M powered for a while now and it works a treat!! A colleague also had 2 running at his home studio with great success.

Would you be willing to share with us other users how you achieved that?

From a M-Audio FAQ:

While many M-Audio Delta cards feature the ability to link & synchronize with other Delta cards for increased I/O, the use of this feature requires that your chosen software application also allow the simultaneous use of multiple audio cards. Pro Tools M-Powered is designed to work with only one audio interface at a time, so it is not possible to use multiple linked audio cards with Pro Tools M-Powered.

[rosaf]

Hi, I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to use 2 Delta 1010LTs with PT M-Powered 7.4 and the latest driver. In the Delta Series Multi-Card setup document, it says this applies for drivers up to version 5.10.00.5057v3. So should I try to downgrade the driver to this version? Will this be compatible with version 7.4?

[yeahforbes]

I too have had great (and unexpected!) success running Pro Tools M-Powered with two Delta 1010LT cards. Wildomac, perhaps you could let me know of any experience trying out more than two. I have 3 of the cards myself, synchronized with BNC wordclock, and the I/O Setup in Pro Tools indeed shows all 24 inputs with proper paths set up. When I open a session and set various tracks to record from some of the inputs (yes, all 24 are available to choose from), I only get audio on inputs 1-16 and their respective stereo pairs. 17-24 record digital silence. Other DAW software can record perfectly, so I know my cards are working and synchronized. Obviously M-Audio and Digidesign say multiple cards are "not supported," and won't help us out! Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[rosaf]

yeahforbes, could you please inform the exact version of the Driver you are using, and which version of Pro Tools? Thanks!

[yeahforbes]

I've tried this with a few versions of Pro Tools M-Powered 7.3.1 (cs3, cs6, cs7) which all behave the same and I've tried drivers 5052v3 and 5057v3, which also all behave the same (regarding the 16 input limitation). I am eager to try 5069v3, the one recommended for XP SP3 when I upgrade to SP3, after my current project. Maybe I'll even see if I can use it while running SP2 just for fun, because they're so easy to uninstall and revert back.

[rosaf]

Well, I had tried unsuccessfully with 7.3.1 and upgraded to 7.4.1. I don't want to revert to 7.3.1, but will try to use the drivers you mentioned, thanks!

[yeahforbes]

Perhaps your cards are just not properly synchronized (Locked). You need to select "Single and In-Sync" on all cards, which is a bit counter-intuitive. Assuming you don't have an external wordclock or anything, you'll want to set your first card to Internal Xtal (short for Crystal) and subsequent cards to Wordclock. Get a BNC cable (or male-male BNC coupler) and connect the black BNC on card 1 to the beige BNC on card 2. If you don't have a BNC cable handy and still want to try synchronizing, you can use an RCA cable and connect the white S/PDIF out on card one to the red S/PDIF in on card 2. For best results a coax ("digital") RCA cable is best, but a short length of anything (or best yet, a male-male coupler) should be ok. In that case you set card 2 to S/PDIF clock source instead of Wordclock.

When I use driver 5052v3 all cards will say Locked, but when I use 5057v3 only cards set to Internal Xtal say Locked. Nevertheless, recordings still seem to be synchronized despite the Unlocked status.

[tsylvester]

Version 7.1 allowed multiple cards, the only version that I've heard that this... 'glitch' had slipped by. Everyone workin @ the local guitar center knew about it. It was no secret which is the way I think it should be imho.

[yeahforbes]

Heh, whenever one of us finds something you can't do in M-Powered, or something M-Powered does poorly (like all the skipping when you activate inserts and such) we always joke that "somebody got paid a lot of money to program that in!"

I'll have to try going back to 7.1 and trying my inputs 17-24. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

[wildomac]

sorry not been keeping up with the thread . .

The drivers are the newest you can download and I've not had to sync anything.

We popped both in and away we went.

Although Pro Tools see's the third card my colleague can't access its in's and outs.

He uses the third (or did, thats another issue) with soundforge.

[rosaf]

NOW IT WORKED!! I've followed the instructions above, using a coaxial RCA cable. And this is using Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4! Thank you soooo much!!

[yeahforbes]

Glad to hear it!

It would be interesting to hear from people using several Deltas that aren't 1010 or 1010LT to see whether the limiting factor is 16 inputs or 2 cards (i.e. try 3 or 4 of the Delta 44 or 66). Although, anyone looking for so many inputs would only buy 1010's I suppose.

Any input from the official M-Audio members?

[yeahforbes]

Please...?

[Peakdesign]

Yoforbes! With 5057 up I was able to run Prostool-M, but with 5052v3, which seems to work the best for ASIO, it says hardware not detected. I was running version 7.4.1 as I recall. Have you tried that combination? Any ideas?

[yeahforbes]

Unfortunately I'm stuck in the world of 7.3 until I shell out the 50 bucks or whatever. I prefer buying gear than every little update so maybe when 8 comes out I'll go for that!

[chapisag]

What about running 2 1010 Lt cards with nuendo 2 in the same pc?

I really need more inputs, to record more channels at a time.

[yeahforbes]

Pretty much any other DAW software, I assume Nuendo too, uses the ASIO drivers which allow up to 4 Delta-series cards to work simultaneously, yielding up to 32 analog in's and out's (plus 4 S/PDIF in's and out's). Pro Tools is the exception, using it's proprietary DAE engine rather than ASIO, and the M-Powered DAE engine is crippled down to 16 analog + S/PDIF as we discovered earlier in this thread. In short: yes, do it! I have three 1010LT's and successfully record 24 analog in's simultaneously in other DAWs, although I haven't tried Nuendo.

[ftflow]

This is a very useful thread, thanks. Has anyone tested recording digitally?

I'm thinking about getting three Delta 1010LTs to record 6-channel digital PCM audio using the three respective S/PDIF inputs. But I want to make sure it will work (that I will in fact get 6 clean channels of digital PCM syncing correctly).

I'm assuming world clock is the way to go, and by the sounds of it there's more than one choice regarding DAW software.

Thanks for your input!

[yeahforbes]

I first must admit that I've never tried such a scenario, but my experience with the cards might be able to shed some light on the issue. You would set all the Delta cards to use S/PDIF as the clock source, and all set to "Single and in-sync" below that. However, if your 3 source S/PDIF outputs aren't all from the same piece of equipment (or separate units locked together with wordclock) then your resulting audio files will not all be the same length (and Pro Tools won't even let you try it). If one piece of equipment is sending out all 6 channels then they should all be clocked the same and there wouldn't be a problem.

If your 6ch is from 3 independent sources that can't be synched with wordclock, the next thing to think about is whether they have unused S/PDIF inputs as well. You might be able to take some piece of gear with an S/PDIF output and use RCA splitters to send identical streams to all 3, and if they're smart enough to lock on to that (being that the units won't be in record mode) then problem solved. Kind of a hack, but if it works cool!

[ftflow]

I first must admit that I've never tried such a scenario, but my experience with the cards might be able to shed some light on the issue. You would set all the Delta cards to use S/PDIF as the clock source, and all set to "Single and in-sync" below that. However, if your 3 source S/PDIF outputs aren't all from the same piece of equipment (or separate units locked together with wordclock) then your resulting audio files will not all be the same length (and Pro Tools won't even let you try it). If one piece of equipment is sending out all 6 channels then they should all be clocked the same and there wouldn't be a problem.

If your 6ch is from 3 independent sources that can't be synched with wordclock, the next thing to think about is whether they have unused S/PDIF inputs as well. You might be able to take some piece of gear with an S/PDIF output and use RCA splitters to send identical streams to all 3, and if they're smart enough to lock on to that (being that the units won't be in record mode) then problem solved. Kind of a hack, but if it works cool!
Thanks yeahforbes.

The source outputs are all from the one machine. :) But clearly M-powered is not for me, do you think (e.g.) Sonar can simultaneously record 6-channel S/PDIF with this configuration? Just triple checking that it will work on the software end!

[yeahforbes]

I haven't used sonar, so I'd see if they have a demo version available.

[ftflow]

Well, to just follow up on my original enquiry, I got the three 1010LTs (which I'm loving), and am happy to say that I can simply use Adobe Audition 1.5, a sequencer I've been using for ages, to digitally record 6 channels of digital audio (which happen to be at 24-bit 88.2kHz) through the three respective S/PDIF stereo inputs.

The cards install flawlessly and work together like a breeze. All the S/PDIF inputs show up in the list of input devices to choose for each track in Audition's multitrack mode.

Couldn't be happier. :)