User manual

434
Synchronization
Settings for the audio hardware
When you send VST System Link data between comput-
ers, it is important that the digital information isn’t changed
in any way between the programs. Therefore, you should
open the control panel (or additional application) for your
audio hardware and make sure that the following condi-
tions are met:
• If there are additional “format settings” for the digital
ports that you use for VST System Link data, make sure
these are turned off.
For example, if you are using an S/PDIF connection for VST System Link,
make sure that “Professional format”, Emphasis and Dithering are turned
off.
• If your audio hardware has a mixer application allowing
you to adjust the levels of digital inputs and outputs, make
sure that this mixer is disabled or that the levels for the
VST System Link channels are set to ± 0dB.
• Similarly, make sure no other forms of DSP (pan, ef-
fects, etc.) are applied to the VST System Link signal.
Notes for Hammerfall DSP users
If you are using RME Audio Hammerfall DSP audio hard-
ware, the Totalmix function allows for extremely complex
signal routing and mixing in the audio hardware. This can
in some situations lead to “signal loops” in which case the
VST System Link won’t work. If you want to make abso-
lutely sure this won’t cause any problems, select the de-
fault or “plain” preset for the Totalmix function.
Activating VST System Link
Before you proceed you need to make sure that VST Sys-
tem Link is set as Timecode Source in the Synchronization
dialog and that the desired Sync options are activated,
see “Sync Options” on page 431.
After setting up the inputs and outputs, you now need to
define which input/output should carry the actual VST
System Link information.
The System Link networking signal is carried on only one
bit of one channel. This means that if you have an ADAT
based system which normally carries eight channels of
24-bit audio, once you activate VST System Link you will
have seven channels of 24-bit audio and one channel of
23-bit audio (the least significant bit of this last channel
will be used for networking). In practice this makes no dis-
cernible difference to the audio quality, since you will still
have around 138dB headroom on this channel.
To set things up, open the VST System Link panel:
1. Open the Device Setup dialog on the Devices menu.
2. Select VST System Link in the Devices list to the left.
3. Use the ASIO Input and ASIO Output pop-up menus
to define which channel should be the networking channel
(and thus become a 23-bit audio channel, in our example).
Quite often you will be able to leave these pop-ups the way they are.
4. Click the Active checkbox at the top of the panel.
5. Repeat the steps above for every computer on the net-
work.
As the computers are made active, you should see the
small Transmitting and Receiving indicators flashing on
each active computer, and the name of each computer
should appear in the list at the bottom of the pane. Each
computer is assigned a random number – don't worry
about this, it's just so the network knows internally which
one is which.