2 live drives, 3 sblives.....

rubber_glove · Feb 18, 2003, 03:48 PM

hi:

hopefully no-one here will want to kill me...

right now i have 2 sb lives and one live drive which i have chained together through the spdif input on the live drive, which gives me 8 (mono) multi-track inputs, and i am about to acquire (for free, woo hoo!) a second live drive and another sb live....

so, the question is: what would be my best setup in order to maximize the number of multi-track recording channels. naively i would have 2 from each live drive (we'll start talking stereo here) and one from each sb live card (neglecting the digital inputs, of course). but, i understand that this is not REALLY the case - i will need to chain these cards together in some way, digital output going to digital input. this means (as i'm scratching my head) that i'll only be gaining one additional stereo channel to do multitrack recording onto (plus a bunch of physical inputs which will be mixed down to that stereo channel)?

as i visualise it, i only have one more digital input on my current setup (the optical one), so the optical out of the new Live drive will go to the optical in of the current one (the coaxial spdif input is already in use by my second sb live. i suppose it would be better to connect the second live drive here, but that doesn't change anything in terms of numbers of channels). damn, that's a lot of cables.

so, by my count, there is one stereo channel that i cannot use (?).

that is (to clarify the above messy paragraphs), if i connect the optical and coax digital outs of live drive #2 to the respective inputs on my current live drive (thereby disconnecting the 2nd sblive CARD i have in my box), i will have a total of 5 stereo multitrack recording channels and that's all i can do? i would have ..... 2 'wasted' inputs? (one from the sb live card connected to live drive #2 and one from the sb live which is not connected to a live drive).

is there a digital input somewhere that i am missing? i briefly tried to fiddle with the pins on the sb live cards when i originally added my second sb live card, but the cd spdif input seemed to be disabled when the live drive is plugged in (i.e. no sound came through it from the second sb live card). does anyone have any experience wiring these cards internally when there is a live drive involved? or for that matter any experience with 2 live drives?

on another note, is there no multitrack recording PROGRAM that will let me use the asio inouts of two (or three) sound cards at once?

my great thanks for anyone who took the time to read all of this
and any help would be much appreciated.

rubber_glove

blcl · Feb 19, 2003, 07:43 AM

I think as i have read your quite long post, you want to increase your recording chanels. But you should know, ASIO can work together with one card only at a time. So you cannot have more inputs than you alredy have, 8 mono chanels.
In fact you want more, you have to switch form ASIO to Direct x or muktimedia driver, where you can enable all of the inputs you have on your soundcards. However, you will lost the low latency possibilities of kx.

Just try it!

BLCL

Daniel Drummond · Feb 19, 2003, 01:37 PM

Yep, only one card can use ASIO at a time, but there is a workaround. You could connect the other card digital output do the digital input of the first card and have more channels routing this digital input to ASIO.

njoha · Feb 19, 2003, 02:21 PM

With the setup u described, u can have 12 mono inputs. You can connect the sb without the live drive with another internally by using the CD SPDIF so u can have an additional 2 mono inputs (u said u can have 10 with your current connections).
Use the digital CD cable that came with your sb and connect one end to the pins 17&18 on the card without the live drive and the other end to CD SPIDF IN on your main Sb card (the one u'll use for asio).

The pins i described are on your card where the live drive should be normally connected and are numbered (there is a number on the first pin and on the last one). 17 is the signal and 18 is the ground so be carefull of how u'll connect the cable.

It works for me with 2 lives, i don't know why it doesn't work for you. Maybe some mixer settings or something.

Here http://people.freenet.de/apslive/digital.html is a guide for this, unfortunately the figures show a value card with less pins but on the bottom of the page u can see the pin descriptions for a live. Just to give u an idea.

rubber_glove · Feb 19, 2003, 04:56 PM

hi:
i think i will try the internal wiring idea again when i get the new card...

i had tried it previously, but could not get it to work. on the tread i posted on this forum (a few months ago) no-one posted who had done it with two cards AND a live drive.
so, the thought was that maybe this just doesn't work with a card that's already connnected to a live drive....
i was going to try a bit more investigation (trying the wiring with and without the live drive), but i got lazy and just ran a cable from the card into the spdif input on the live drive, which worked fine for my purposes...

the whole question might be a bit academic anyway, i don't really see how i would need 12 mono recording channels anyway (nor do i have the hard disk space required to do...um...60MB a minute for TOO long....). i think i'll just wire together the two lives with live drives and find some other use for the other card (the one without a live drive of it's own)...
i mostly just wanted to know if another configuration was possible, which would allow for more utilisation of the inputs on the cards....

cheers,
martin

erna.wherethe****aremypants.com

Feb 18, 2003, 03:48 PM	#1
rubber_glove DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: montreal Posts: 66 Rep Power: 0	2 live drives, 3 sblives..... hi: hopefully no-one here will want to kill me... right now i have 2 sb lives and one live drive which i have chained together through the spdif input on the live drive, which gives me 8 (mono) multi-track inputs, and i am about to acquire (for free, woo hoo!) a second live drive and another sb live.... so, the question is: what would be my best setup in order to maximize the number of multi-track recording channels. naively i would have 2 from each live drive (we'll start talking stereo here) and one from each sb live card (neglecting the digital inputs, of course). but, i understand that this is not REALLY the case - i will need to chain these cards together in some way, digital output going to digital input. this means (as i'm scratching my head) that i'll only be gaining one additional stereo channel to do multitrack recording onto (plus a bunch of physical inputs which will be mixed down to that stereo channel)? as i visualise it, i only have one more digital input on my current setup (the optical one), so the optical out of the new Live drive will go to the optical in of the current one (the coaxial spdif input is already in use by my second sb live. i suppose it would be better to connect the second live drive here, but that doesn't change anything in terms of numbers of channels). damn, that's a lot of cables. so, by my count, there is one stereo channel that i cannot use (?). that is (to clarify the above messy paragraphs), if i connect the optical and coax digital outs of live drive #2 to the respective inputs on my current live drive (thereby disconnecting the 2nd sblive CARD i have in my box), i will have a total of 5 stereo multitrack recording channels and that's all i can do? i would have ..... 2 'wasted' inputs? (one from the sb live card connected to live drive #2 and one from the sb live which is not connected to a live drive). is there a digital input somewhere that i am missing? i briefly tried to fiddle with the pins on the sb live cards when i originally added my second sb live card, but the cd spdif input seemed to be disabled when the live drive is plugged in (i.e. no sound came through it from the second sb live card). does anyone have any experience wiring these cards internally when there is a live drive involved? or for that matter any experience with 2 live drives? on another note, is there no multitrack recording PROGRAM that will let me use the asio inouts of two (or three) sound cards at once? my great thanks for anyone who took the time to read all of this and any help would be much appreciated. rubber_glove

Feb 19, 2003, 01:37 PM	#3
Daniel Drummond DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Brazil Posts: 1,137 Rep Power: 0	Yep, only one card can use ASIO at a time, but there is a workaround. You could connect the other card digital output do the digital input of the first card and have more channels routing this digital input to ASIO. __________________ www.palcomp3.com.br/ed

Feb 19, 2003, 02:21 PM	#4
njoha DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 15 Rep Power: 0	With the setup u described, u can have 12 mono inputs. You can connect the sb without the live drive with another internally by using the CD SPDIF so u can have an additional 2 mono inputs (u said u can have 10 with your current connections). Use the digital CD cable that came with your sb and connect one end to the pins 17&18 on the card without the live drive and the other end to CD SPIDF IN on your main Sb card (the one u'll use for asio). The pins i described are on your card where the live drive should be normally connected and are numbered (there is a number on the first pin and on the last one). 17 is the signal and 18 is the ground so be carefull of how u'll connect the cable. It works for me with 2 lives, i don't know why it doesn't work for you. Maybe some mixer settings or something. Here http://people.freenet.de/apslive/digital.html is a guide for this, unfortunately the figures show a value card with less pins but on the bottom of the page u can see the pin descriptions for a live. Just to give u an idea. Last edited by njoha; Feb 19, 2003 at 02:31 PM.

Feb 19, 2003, 07:43 AM	#2
blcl DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Budapest, Hungary Posts: 13 Rep Power: 0	I think as i have read your quite long post, you want to increase your recording chanels. But you should know, ASIO can work together with one card only at a time. So you cannot have more inputs than you alredy have, 8 mono chanels. In fact you want more, you have to switch form ASIO to Direct x or muktimedia driver, where you can enable all of the inputs you have on your soundcards. However, you will lost the low latency possibilities of kx. Just try it! BLCL __________________ BLCL Budapest Hungary

Feb 19, 2003, 04:56 PM	Thread Starter #5
rubber_glove DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: montreal Posts: 66 Rep Power: 0	hi: i think i will try the internal wiring idea again when i get the new card... i had tried it previously, but could not get it to work. on the tread i posted on this forum (a few months ago) no-one posted who had done it with two cards AND a live drive. so, the thought was that maybe this just doesn't work with a card that's already connnected to a live drive.... i was going to try a bit more investigation (trying the wiring with and without the live drive), but i got lazy and just ran a cable from the card into the spdif input on the live drive, which worked fine for my purposes... the whole question might be a bit academic anyway, i don't really see how i would need 12 mono recording channels anyway (nor do i have the hard disk space required to do...um...60MB a minute for TOO long....). i think i'll just wire together the two lives with live drives and find some other use for the other card (the one without a live drive of it's own)... i mostly just wanted to know if another configuration was possible, which would allow for more utilisation of the inputs on the cards.... cheers, martin erna.wherethe****aremypants.com