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Synchronization
• 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 will not work. If you want to make abso-
lutely sure this will not 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 Project Syn-
chronization Setup dialog and that the desired Sync
options are activated, see “Sync Options” on page 240.
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
network.
As the computers are made active, you should see the
small Sending 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 – do not worry about this, it is
just so the network knows internally which one is which.
• You can double-click on the name in bold (which is the
name of the computer you are currently working on) and
set it to whatever other name you wish.
This name will appear in the System Link window of every computer on
the network.
Ö If you do not see the name of each computer appear-
ing once you have made it active, you may have to check
your settings.
Go through the procedure above again and make sure that all ASIO
cards are listening to the digital clock signals correctly, and that each
computer has the correct inputs and outputs assigned to the System
Link network.