Dual Soundcard setup

lynskey

Firstly, thanks for making my soundblaster live work really really well. KX drivers make my sad little sound card ROCK!!!

I have been searching your forum for details of how to set up a dual soundcard system so i can record 4 mono channels onto seperate tracks in cubase.

I've found lots of useful stuff, mentioning connecting the 2 cards with the spdif etc..etc.. but i must admit, its all a bit beyond me.

Can anyone give me an idiots guide to doing this, from start to finish.

Thanks again.

Mike

Doug W

Hopefully I have this documented correctly, I am MIDI illiterate and so the setup described below is for analog audio. You will have to get help elsewhere for MIDI but what I describe works for me. I would appreciate any comments, from anyone who sees something that is missing or could be improved.


I currently have 2 SB Live cards in my puter,
CT4830 and CT4870
I refer to the CT4870 as the SEND card and the
CT4830 as the RECEIVE card.

The 2 are hooked together by an SPDIF cable
I am not going to describe all the pins here,
but on each of these cards there is a 40 pin
AUD_EX connector.

Here are a couple of sites if you want more info
on the connectors:

http://people.freenet.de/apslive/digital.html
http://alive.singnet.com.sg/musician/aps-rewiring/
The SPDIF cable is connected at the CT4870
to Pins 17 (white conductor), Pin 18 (black conductor).

The SPDIF cable terminates in the CD-SPDIF connector
of the CT4830 (white cable to the left).

Neither card cares what color your wires are, but you
knew that.

Connecting the cards as described here makes the output
from your SEND card appear as "CD Digital IN" in the
CT4830 INS "N" OUTS mixer
and the
CT4830 Recording mixer

After you have installed your 2nd card and the SPDIF
cable and given it a couple of reboots, maybe 3 for
good measure:

Double click the KX Manager which should be an icon
in your tray now.

At the bottom right the card description should be there,
In my case it says:

CT4831 10k1 [7c40]

click on that box and the other card should show up, select it:

CT4871 10k1 [7c60]

It should be mentioned here that even though I have a CT4830 and
a CT4870, KX calls them CT4831 and CT4871-don't lose any sleep
over it.

Now check to see that your SPDIF connection is working:

Right Click on KX Mixer

Settings->SPDIF/I2S Status...

The Receive Card (CT4830) shows the following:

SPDIF Inputs: [R-Rate Locked; S-Stream Locked; V-Valid Audio]
spdif A: 2109204 Freq: 47997; [R] [S]
spdif B: unused
spdif C: unused or same as B
SPDIF Outputs:
(0): 2109204 (1): 2109204 (2): 2109204 (24 bits / 48000 Hz)

The Send Card (CT4870) shows the following:

SPDIF Inputs: [R-Rate Locked; S-Stream Locked; V-Valid Audio]
spdif A: unused
spdif B: unused
spdif C: unused or same as B
SPDIF Outputs:
(0): 2109204 (1): 2109204 (2): 2109204 (24 bits / 48000 Hz)

I don't know why it says 24 bits while I am using a 16 bit recording
program but it works so "what da hey!". Somebody else can explain that.

Here are the Mixer settings that I have at the moment,
NOTE that I am not using MIDI right now so the mixers
are not set up for that, these may not be optimal
or even sane but I am able to record 4 AUDIO tracks
in SYNC so I am not sweating it:

CT4870 Master
----------------
Master Volume-16
Wave PCM-inf
MIDI Synth-inf
AC3-OFF
Toggle 'Swap Front and Rear Mode'-Selected

CT4870 INS "N" OUTS
----------------
Generic SPDIF out-12
AC97 In-100
The rest are-inf

CT4870 Recording
----------------
Everything-inf
Reverb and Chorus are set to 100 but not enabled

CT4870 AC97
----------------
Everything set to-inf
LineIn selected
3DSE-Off

CT4870 fx
----------------
Wave Stereo Reverb-inf
Wave Stereo Chorus-inf
----------------
----------------
----------------
CT4830 Master
----------------
Master Volume-100
Wave PCM-inf
MIDI Synth-inf
AC3-OFF
Toggle 'Swap Front and Rear Mode'-Selected

CT4830 INS "N" OUTS
----------------
Analog Front-0
AC97 In-100
CD Digital In-0
The rest are set to-inf

CT4830 Recording
----------------
Master Recording Level-100
AC97 Rec Level-12
CD Digital Rec Level-12
The rest are-inf
Reverb and Chorus are set to 100 but not enabled

CT4830 AC97
----------------
AC97-LineIn selected
3DSE-OFF
Analog Recording Gain-22
LineIn-4

CT4830 fx
----------------
Wave Stereo Reverb-inf
Wave Stereo Chorus-inf

I am using N-Track as my sequencing program.

In PREFERENCES I selected 48000 as the Sampling
frequency

Audio devices->advanced
Show MME devices-not selected
Show WDM devices-not selected
Show ASIO devices-SELECTED
Show Direct Sound devices-not selected

Use up to 4 Output channels
Use up to 4 Input channels

Good Luck,
Doug

lynskey

Cheers for that doug. Thats great! i'll give it a try and let u know how I get on.

Thanks again mate

Mike

Doug W

Mike,

Hope it works for you. I forgot to mention that at this point I have left the DSP pretty much unchanged, except that I disconnected the unused ASIO inputs running straight from the prolog to the epilog. Just right on the end of one cable and select DISCONNECT.

In N-Track,

KX ASIO input 0L corresponds to N-Track input 1L
KX ASIO input 0R corresponds to N-Track input 1R

and so on, and those inputs seem to work fine. For your particular program you may want to search posts in here and the ASIO forum to check on which inputs to use as I seem to remember reading that with some programs you have to do a little flip flopping around. I haven't paid that much attention since I don't own any of those programs,

Doug

lynskey

Well I've just managed to pick up a sb live platinum from ebay for £10 which should arrive this week, so i'm sure i'll be back then as i'm using Nuendo so i'm bound to get stuck with the setup. Thanks again for all ur helpmate.

Mike