Hi All,

Jan, are you compiling a list of soundcards that work with the Allocator?

Has anyone found a way/attempted to use the Allocator with an RME Digi96/8 PAD card? This would be the preferred card of the ones I own. Unfortunately, there is no native software/hardware to route the audio path such as Totalmix or DirectWire for this card.

Thanks

I use the Digi96/52 Hammerfall card. It's the same series as yours and I assume the drivers are similar or the same as well.
Do you use an external ADAT DA? I use mine with Alesis AI-3 box and have no problems whatsoever.
Try the demo and if you get no problems running it, you are good to go.

Jan

Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately, the Digi96/8 PAD card does not have the same DSP capabilities as the Hammerfall series, i.e. no TotalMix etc. I would need a program similar to Virtual Audio Cable to do signal routing from my media player app to the Allocator, although I believe there was some doubt that VAC itself would work because of ASIO incompatibility. I was curious if anyone had found a working solution for this card.

Right now my card has only stereo analog outputs, I would need to purchase either an analog expansion board or an ADAT d/a box like the Alesis you mentioned to have a fully operational system, but I need to get the signal into the card before I worry about getting it out

Otherwise I have a Prodigy LT which will probably work, although I would rather use the RME card if I could

The previous post is mine, I thought I was logged in

I don't have DSP in my RME card either.
I come out SPDIF from my motherboard (it's build in- Asus board) into SPDIF on the RME card. That works only partially good since the motherboard sound chip resamples everything to 48kHz. Of course I can plug in a CD player's SPIDIF output into it as well.
You could use the Prodigy for digital out, or any other inexpensive sound card with digital out for that matter.
Come to think of it, the Digi96/8 has a digital input header on the card itself (inside the computer). You might have digital audio pins on the motherbord. Check for it.
If you used ASIO output plugin for Foobar, maybe you could loop the SPDIF signal from RME card's out back to the input.
Just set the sync to internal.

The Prodigy has DirectWire drivers, which let you route Windows WDM Drivers outputs to ASIO inputs within the card. The converters on the Prodigy are supposed to be of good quality. Give it a shot and let me know. One of my Beta testers has a Prodigy card and I have not heard any complaints from him. I assume it is compatible with the Allocator.

Jan

Thanks Jan

Would you ask your tester with the Prodigy LT if he would mind posting his setup and settings. I have it sort of working now, but there is some unexpected behaviour and I would like to compare my setup to a known working one.

Hi there,

I am using a Prodigy 7.1 LT card on Win XP (Tiny XP Rev2 - to be exact).

Machine Specs:
Intel D865GLC mainboard - genuine intel brand - not asus, gigabyte, abit etc.
512MB (2 x 256 MB) DDR400 generic ram (running in dual channel mode).
P4 2.6C CPU (The "C" denotes Hyperthreading, however I have turned it OFF in BIOS, as the audio seems to stutter/crackle slightly with HT turned ON )
300GB IDE HDD - Western Digital 8MB Cache (nothing Fancy)
IDE CDROM Drive - Generic Brand

I am using Audiotrack Prodigy 7.1LT Drivers version 1.17 (available from the Korean page - the USA site is pathetic )
(In fact I am furious about the lack of driver updates for this card - especially considering how they marketted it as having the best driver support 'now and forever' .. you can't even MUTE line-in via the windows mixer control panel... you must do it inside the Prodigy sound panel. Which is a very big deal for me )

I have directwire'd the output from MME channels 1 & 2 and WDM channels 1&2 into the ASIO input channels 1&2 respectively. (so yes, ASIO input 1 has both WDM output 1 and MME output 1 going to it..and same for ASIO input 2 and MME output 2 and WDM output2. I have also clicked the output to OFF on the MME, WDM and ASIO column header (It the rectangular button just below the heading name, which changes between OFF and OUT). By setting it to OFF, it prevents the unprocessed sound from being sent out of the card, giving you only what comes out of CONSOLE/Allocator (depending on how you are running it) - ie: the final mastered product only

I am running a latency of 256 samples, and have forced the S/R (sample rate) to 96Khz. I tried to do this because I will be running video on this machine, and such a low latency and high SR produce only a small initial lag... so the video is still in sync. But it does have pops and clicks sometimes ... So I'm still at a loss of how to to fix (maybe its just not possible to have this as a movie machine ).

I think thats about it.. let me know if I can be of anymore help.
I'm VERY new to all this audio/computer audio stuff.. so I might be making some assumptions/configurations which are invalid or innefficient.. if so, please let me know.

Cheers
Ice

If you get only some crackles at 256 samples you are doing great. I'd say increase the buffers to 1024 and see if they go away.
The light version of Allocator is in the works. It will have about 1.5 msec latency on a fast computer- so sync problems with video should go away. The drawback is- no Arbitrator section. Might not be a huge deal though. You have to really listen for it. With movies and their synthesized LF channel effects you might not even notice any difference.

Thanks.

Unfortunately, I dont fully understand the benefit of (or how to use) arbitrator.
I believe it has something to do with group delay/ alignment.. but its beyond me atm.

I was under the impression that Allocator isnt just and electronic/DSP crossover, but it also prevent phase warping whilst it opperates (is this correct?). I am willing to 'sacrifice' the arbitrator aspect (which I havnt got to work yet, as I dont understand how to set it up) if the sound will still be fairly accurate sound quality wise.

I'm not a TRUE audiophile.. but I do enjoy high quality sound... some of the theory is just a bit beyond me atm, and unfortunately I dont have the time or money to devote to truely understanding it all.

Yes, the Arbitrator section, when dialed in so it closely reflects the final acoustic Allocator/speaker curves, corrects the phase shift that is normally introduced by crossovers.
Your speaker can reproduce impulses much, much better that way.

Thun,

Thanks for the info.

I was using the 0.9.5 allocator the other day, and for some reason it plays fine for a few minutes then goes into crackling/popping mode for a while.
I can sort of bring it back to normal if i play around with CONSOLE (starting/stopping the audio stream), minimize/start/stop my audio player.

But I cant figure out why this happens .

This is using an AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1 LT @ 96Khz, 256 Samples (latency), running 1 instance of Allocator, 3 small FFT analysers, and 3 small time alignment programs (1 for each stereo channel pair - tweeter LR, Mid LR, Sub MONO).

I am pretty sure I had arbitrator turned off, as well as most of the EQ's for each XO (low,mid1,mid2,high).

Switched to the new allocator version 0.9.10, but got crackles/pops straight away, non stop... even when using 1024 samples.

Might try turning HT back on... or look at getting a P4 3.2+ CPU? Its cheaper than building custom passives @ $600/pair.

Are you positive you are using the 0.9.10 with all of the associated files?
Did you do a brand new install with a new serial?
That version has actually reduced problems with crackling noises for most systems and it uses new dspmod files instead of the old dspcore.dll.
See if turning on the hyperthreading helps any.
A faster processor is not really required here.

Hmmmm.... OK. I'll retry.

How do you do a fresh install?
Unzip, copy to new location, enter serial number?

I am using the Demo download from the main page.
But it never asked for my user key.

Hence it wont open my custom settings.. or last for > 20 mins .

Am I missing a link from somewhere? There is now place to enter my serial number in this one that I have DL'ed.

Cheers,
Ice

hi ,

I have no cracking isuses with prodigy card at 512 or biger bufer size . I am using pentum M cpu with asus adapter to 478 slot .
operating system - windows XP .