Maudio Delta 1010 & 44 help? Fixed!

Hi all,

I am running a Delta 1010 & a Delta 44 for a total of 12 inputs. I have them synched together in the driver software and am trying to record 10 live tracks of the band.

The recording starts out fine but after a while probably anywhere from 30 mins to a hour the Delta 44 starts distorting and losing it's synch to the Delta 1010. You can hear the 44 tracks are out of time from there on out.

Can anyone suggest a fix or should I scrap the Delta 44 and go with a differnt brand? I can't afford to replace the Delta 1010.

Any help appreciated!

Have you tried using the ASIO drivers?

I tired to use ASIO, but someone said that you can only run one card at a time with ASIO

ORIGINAL: JohnnyPhilko

I tired to use ASIO, but someone said that you can only run one card at a time with ASIO

That's true but I seem to recall that multiple M-Audio cards can all use the same driver. WDM allows multiple drivers but you would have to specify one card as the master clock and the other as a slave and then connect a digital output from the master into the slave. If you just have 2 separate, free-running cards you're going to have sync problems.

The Delta driver has an option of Multiple cards in Synch and that's what I selected, but it doesn't seem to be working that well. I don't believe the Delta 44 has an input for a seperate clock source, so I can't physically connect it to the 1010.

I can try ASIO again, but I don't recall the 2nd card showing up when I switched from WDM mode.

Thanks for talking this through with me. :-)

ORIGINAL: JohnnyPhilko

Hi all,

I am running a Delta 1010 & a Delta 44 for a total of 12 inputs. I have them synched together in the driver software and am trying to record 10 live tracks of the band.

The recording starts out fine but after a while probably anywhere from 30 mins to a hour the Delta 44 starts distorting and losing it's synch to the Delta 1010. You can hear the 44 tracks are out of time from there on out.

Can anyone suggest a fix or should I scrap the Delta 44 and go with a differnt brand? I can't afford to replace the Delta 1010.

Any help appreciated!

Yes,.. the problem with the 44 is that there are no digital connections so you can't get sample rate clock in or out. Sorry.

You CAN use the 1010 and 44 togehter in sync and you can use them in ASIO mode. in fact, I believe you NEED to use them in ASIO mode. I believe in WDM mode you won't be able to sync the clocks.

set sonar to ASIO, close and restart it for it to take affect.

while sonar's closed, make sure your HARDWARE SETTINGS tab on your M-audio panel is set to MULTIPLE CARD SYNC and the MASTER CLOCK is set to INTERNAL XTAL.

I have the same problem, running a Delta 66 and an Audiophile 24/96 together. It doesn't happen as frequently as you are seeing. It happens whether they are synced through the software, or linked with a spdif cable. Obviously something is causing them to lose sync, but I haven't figured out what it is. I have lost some good takes because I thought they were recording OK, only to find out they weren't. At this point, my only solution is to close and re-open Sonar every so often. I use the WDM driver, so they must be able to sync with that driver because most of what I record is fine. But I will try the ASIO drivers and see if it solves the problem.

I will try ASIO again tonight and see if I can get it to work, if it doesn't I may try calling MAudio and see if they will take the 44 back and maybe get another 1010. I wish these companies would make sure things work correctly before releasing them!

ORIGINAL: Beagle

You CAN use the 1010 and 44 togehter in sync and you can use them in ASIO mode. in fact, I believe you NEED to use them in ASIO mode. I believe in WDM mode you won't be able to sync the clocks.

This is true and I confirmed it with M-Audio. The Multi card sync will only work in ASIO mode.

It works just fine, with one hitch for me. If I'm playing back, and I decide to trim a track or change the fade at the same time, I will get a drop out. Also If I nudge while playing back it will drop out. Not 100% of the time, more like 20% of the time.

I use a 1010 and 2 44s for 16 tracks.

(I have emailed cake 2 times about this with no response)

If I'm playing back, and I decide to trim a track or change the fade at the same time, I will get a drop out. Also If I nudge while playing back it will drop out. Not 100% of the time, more like 20% of the time.

I can't imagine they're going to support these types of edits WHILE you're playing back. that's not a function of the 2 or 3 Delta soundcards in your system - that's sonar functionality and I really doubt they support edits like that while the transport is running.

I think the multi-card sync works in WDM as well, otherwise I wouldn't be able to record anything. I just finished tracking a whole song using both cards in WDM. There is an entry under "known issues" in the Sonar readme that says:

M-Audio Delta 1010 Distortion With 5.8ms Latency

When using the M-Audio Delta 1010 set at 128 sample buffer size (configured in M-Audio Delta control panel), setting the mixing latency in SONAR to 5.8 milliseconds may results in distortion if either or both of the following is true:

1. An effect is patched into a track and the track is armed for recording.
2. An effect is patched into a track and Input Echo is enabled on that track.

They don't say what they mean by distortion, but I have had circumstances where a file will play fine at 2.7ms but not 5.3ms, again is fine at 8.0 ms etc.

I think the multi-card sync works in WDM as well, otherwise I wouldn't be able to record anything.

I'm sorry, dan, but that's not true. you can run multiple cards of any kind in WDM driver mode. they don'thave to be delta cards, they don't have to be m-audio. the problem with that set up, however is that ONE of those cards will be used as the TIMING MASTER and the other will be subjected to the timing of that card's clock. therefore using 2 or more cards in WDM mode CAN be done, but you will likely have timing problems between the two cards, especially in longer clips. short clips should be realatively closely in sync, but longer clips will start to drift apart from each other in WDM driver mode because of the separate clocks.

M-audio has designed the delta series so that, when in ASIO driver mode, you can sync up to 4 cards to the master clock on the first card.

When I connect the cards using a spdif cable, and slave the second card to the master clock of the first, according to the Delta drivers, it says it is getting it's clock from the first card.

ORIGINAL: Dan DAmico

When I connect the cards using a spdif cable, and slave the second card to the master clock of the first, according to the Delta drivers, it says it is getting it's clock from the first card.

Yes, that is the best way to do it. Forget that they are sound cards, same rules apply for any two deivces connected with a digital (audio) cable. Since SPDIF is single direction only you have to use the SPDIF out of the one that will be the clock and connect that to the SPDIF In of the one that needs clock.

If you want to also run a monitor mix between them you can hook up both SPDIF cables so you can go both directions. SPDIF can carry clock and audio at the same time, unlike word clock that only does clock.

Hi All,

Thanks for the help!!

I tried ASIO last night! At 1st I was confused by the way they labeled the inputs, then after looking at it for a while I realized what they did, so I sat a boom box in front of some mics going through both cards and played a radio station and let it record for a hour and 45 minutes. It recorded fine!!! YAY!!! Of course the real test will be this Sat when I try to us it for real with the band, If it is going to break it will be then!! :-)

So it looks like it's fixed! :-) If not, I'll be back! :-)

I get the impression that many card manufacturers take the view that they must support WDM becuase that's the Windows standard but the support only needs to be at a consumer level because serious users will want ASIO drivers. So many times I've seen sound card problems with WDM solved by moving to ASIO. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people doing serious work with a WDM system just that for any given system there is a greater chance that the ASO drivers will work better than the WDM. This is, in part at least, a result of Microsoft's apparent contempt for serious digital media users.

ORIGINAL: Dan DAmico

When I connect the cards using a spdif cable, and slave the second card to the master clock of the first, according to the Delta drivers, it says it is getting it's clock from the first card.

Then you dont have a delta 44, they have no external connection to a clock or spdif.

The above will work for a 1010, but not a 44. Muliti card sync with ASIO is the only way to sync a 44.

^ rod's absolutely correct. the 44 does not have SPDIF, the Delta 66 or the 1010LT do, but not the 44.

Hi all,

Well I used the ASIO driver mode last night and recorded 10 tracks for several hours until I hit the 2 gig limit and everything worked fine! So I've learned my lesson, I will be using ASIO from now on! Thanks a lot everyone for helping! :-)