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HW6 and MOTO Ultralite optical out

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JulianMoney-Kyrle

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HW6 and MOTO Ultralite optical out

PostFri Apr 02, 2021 6:22 am

I have a multichannel system which I had been running with six pairs of active Behringer speakers at the front (cycling pipes between them to reduce intermodulation distortion) and a single pair of Spirit by Soundcraft speakers at the back for surround, with everything routed in addition to an SVS subwoofer. I use a MOTU Ultralite Mk 4 as my audio interface. This only has eight balanced outputs, but there are an additional eight channels available through an optical output, which I route to a Behringer DA converter which also has eight balanced outputs.

After upgrading to HW6 and using the 96KHz processing and the other sound enhancement options my first impression was that the sound was much better over all. However, when I then experimented with moving two pairs of speakers to the side for use with multichannel samplesets the spatial location of the sound wasn't always what I expected. I then found that some of the speakers weren't speaking at all. After a lot of troubleshooting I eventually realised that at 96 KHz the Ultralite only has four digital channels, not eight, and that what I had assumed were stereo pairs were simply duplications of the same channels.

So I was left with twelve channels altogether and not fourteen. I took the opportunity to ditch the Spirit by Soundcraft speakers, which weren't as good as the Behringers, reallocated the channels and swapped the cables round as necessary. I am happy with the result, and the better signal processing in HW6 has greatly reduced the muddying of the plenum that I had ascribed to intermodulation distortion in the speakers but was perhaps harmonic distortion from HW itself.

I thought I should post this in case anybody else has had a similar problem and hasn't yet figured out what is going on.
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mdyde

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Re: HW6 and MOTO Ultralite optical out

PostFri Apr 02, 2021 6:32 am

Thanks, Julian.

[Topic moved here.]

Yes -- some audio interfaces do allow less audio output channels at 96 kHz. (Also the ADAT standard supports eight channels at 48 kHz, but only four at 96 kHz.)
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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JulianMoney-Kyrle

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Re: HW6 and MOTO Ultralite optical out

PostFri Apr 02, 2021 7:15 am

I wasn't aware of this detail of the ADAT standard, which is probably why the Ultralite is designed to work this way.

Thank-you as always, Martin, for your detailed, accurate and comprehensible explanations.
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mdyde

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Re: HW6 and MOTO Ultralite optical out

PostFri Apr 02, 2021 7:32 am

Thanks again, Julian. You're welcome.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.

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