RME Support wrote:MC wrote:It seems there has been some confusion. The points raised by ramses do not apply to your setup, you don't need to do any of that.
No, he's right, it's quite possibly an issue outside the Mac, the return signal from the card apparently never reaches the DA because that unit seems to just convert the signal from the AD due to an incorrect configuration.
That's why I asked if the phones output works, no reply yet.
I intended to illuminate the setup from the ground up. From the screenshot of the HDSPe settings (3rd image) you can see that only the 3rd MADI port (BNC) is in use, which suggests that both devices are connected in series via BNC cables.
[In my opinion, the MADI ID for the two devices should also be assigned correctly, or is this only required if there are features such as auto-assignment or devices are remote-controlled via e.g., RME Connector, which in my opinion is not the case with the converters here?]
However, it is noticeable here that the 3 buses are set for 96k frames, but at the bottom of the “Input Status” box a sync with 48k frames at 96 kHz is displayed. This could indicate that the MADI frame size is not set the same on all devices.
The screenshot of TotalMix (picture 1) was not very helpful because only channels 1-44 are shown, but no inputs and outputs of the 3rd MADI bus (channels 129..192). Main Out is set to channels 131/132, which is the 2nd stereo pair of the 3rd MADI bus. But you can't see any output signal here, unfortunately you can't see the inputs either, so you should have scrolled the channels further to the right.
The question here is whether a) the routing from/to MADI is correct on all devices and b) whether the TotalMix FX routing is also ok.
To be able to configure / check the routing on the M-32 devices a LAN connection is needed for both devices.
Then some screenshots which show the routing.
According to the manuals no basic routing is provided from MADI to the outputs or from the inputs to MADI.
So this needs to be configured.
I see the following as an option to consider
[but as buying new stuff, cables and SFP, takes time, maybe it is best to first make it work this way using BNC]
I would possibly simplify the setup. However, this would require different cabling and corresponding transceivers (SFP modules). I would use MADI Bus 1. Then channels 1…32 would be used, which would be much easier. It would also provide galvanic isolation.
In that case, you might not need the daughter card for BNC, saving a slot in the computer, provided you don't need the AES port/breakout cable.
I would also daisy-chain both M-32 Pro II units on the optical MADI Bus 1, so the channel numbers remain 1…32.
Then, if the other buses are not needed, you could hide them (using the hide function in the Channel Layout of TM FX).
Optionally, you could also activate the option [x] mirror MADI1 Out to 2 & 3 in the HDSPe settings. This way, only the 64 channels from Bus 1 are displayed, and they are mirrored to the other 2 buses. This might make things easier if no additional buses are needed and you want to manage the channel numbers more conveniently.
At 96 kHz, this would only be channels 1…32 (due to channel multiplexing and the mirroring of MADI bus 1 to 2+3].
Proposals
For somebody who knows such MADI setups it should be possible to get it working if there are no other pitfalls because of a quite dated Apple computer. But this here needs a validation of settings from ground up. This way nobody really knows whether everything needed has been done.
Best would be to be on site to see whats there. But even remote support with teamviewer or teams and screensharing would be better than having to support this all only based on written text. There are a few things that you need to see otherwise you can never be sure whether it is configured as it should.
BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13