Can't get HDR-24/96 to record anymore

[JohnW63]

Right up front, I am an IT person for our district, and I know very little about mixers in general, but because I facilitated the repair of the D8B last year, when the 30mb hard drive failed, they call me about all things in the sound room now. I appologize ahead of time if I ask ignorant questions, because as far as this mixer goes , I certainly am.

We have a D8B and a Mackie HDR-24/96 that one of our high schools has used for 14 years. Recently, we have had a problem, where we can't get it to record. The hard drive is not full. It is connected with 3 optical cards ( OPT-8 ) from the D8B. It plays previously stored items back from the HDR. I have the clock set internal on the D8B and word clock on the HDR. The BNC cable goes from clock out on the D8B to the clock in on the HDR. I made a new cable to connect the two clock cards to remove any doubt, since the existing cables looked sloppy. ( Note: They had 2 cables, in the past, but it seems you really only need one connected in the right way depending on which clock will be the master, based on my reading of the manual. ) When I have the sound board students show me how to record, it shows a blank audio with no wave form, as far as I can tell.

What settings should I check to make sure the software is configured correctly ? How do you tell the D8B to use the OPT-8 cards as an output choice ? I find it hard to believe that all three would fail at once.

Of course, they really need this working by ..Friday !

Thanks for your help.

[Bruce Graham]

Hi JohnW63;

I am not an expert but I will give it a try to see if I can help.

On the d8b in the "setup" section you will see a "Digital" button. Select it. You should see the card listed in the 3 spaces (Tape 1I/O 1-8. 9-16, etc. This is also displayed in the "Window on the console when as boots. You need to make sure that your card are selected in each tape return section. OPT-8

You will also need to check the "Sample Rate" on both the d8b and the HDR. They need to be the same so the "clock" the audio properly. This is in the "Digital" section as above at the bottom. Change it from whatever it is to the other (there are only 2 choices) on the d8b and try recording. Se if you signal.

Speaking of signal, is there something routed to the Tracks? If may be a stupid question but it could have been overlooked.

Check the Clock referencing to make sure you have the d8b as the master and HDR is a slave to "word Clock". Also check the the button on the back of the HDR near the BNC word clock input is pushed in. This adds a 75 ohm termination to the signal. It sounds like you have this section correct but it doesn't hurt to check.

Are you using the d8b to "arm" the tracks for record? If so, is the "record" light on the HDR solid when you press record?

Start there and let us know if any of that worked. I will try to check in later tomorrow (Thursday, Nov 6)

Good luck
Bruce
from Canada

[JohnW63]

Speaking of signal, is there something routed to the Tracks?

It was this. I had to read up on a Mixer 101 web site to understand all the terms, then go back to the manual, where I read about channel routing. By default nothing gets routed to the tape outs. I then printed up those pages and showed them to the students running the mixer and asked if this was being done properly. I had assumed they had all this down, as fast as they were pushing buttons and moving dials. However... they had NOT checked for assigned channels to the tape outs. Once I had the head kid start doing this, they could record.

Even though I stumbled on the solution, prior to checking back here, I appreciate the suggestions of what to look for. While this all runs ON a computer, it is far from the normal know how an IT person has.

[Bruce Graham]

Hi JohnW63;

Glad it worked out.

You are right that even though it is a computer there is a lot of Audio Knowledge required to make these things work right.

There are many people here on the forum that can help you, AND, it sounds like the students at the school could use a little guidance as well.

There is all kinds of resources here if "they" ever want to get away from Mechanical Hard drives and switch to Solid State Drives. I have done this myself with 2 of the drives just to see if I could get it to work. After getting a grip on SATA I managed to do it with no problems.

Also there are way to upgrade the school's HDR to take hard drives larger that 32 gb. Chnaging the BIOS chip at a cost of $120.00 US does the trick. Very much worth the money.

Again glad it all worked out.

Cheers
Bruce

[JohnW63]

I would LOVE to move them off the aging hard drive ! I was darn lucky to dig up an old 30mb last year when the original one failed in their D8B. I'd be happy just getting them to SATA. After that, is moving them from ver 3 of the Makie software to ver 5 on that D8B would be nice. Then... would it work on a newer OS than the ver of Windows it has ?

Point me to the links !

[Bruce Graham]

Hi John;

Sadly you CAN NOT move to version 5.0 or 5.1. That version requires a code that is supplied by Mackie and you have to purchase it ($150.00 I think), BUT, the server that generates the code crashed a while back and they are not fixing it. If you install Version 5.0 or 5.1, it will run a Demo version for 10 minuets then stops. Version 3.0 is it.

It is really too bad as Version 5.1 was great! You will see people selling codes on ebay but "buyer beware". I do not recommend buying a code as you never know if it will work or not.

There are other threads in the d8b forum bout this 5.1 issue. Check them out. There are a lot of very knowledgeable people working on it. Perhaps you may be able to contribute to getting it up and running!

Also, there are threads regarding moving to SSD and SATA in the HDR Forum (this Forum). You can search using the "search field". You will get the hang of it once you try it.

The biggest thing is that the HDR runs uses IDE hard drives, and only supports up to SATA II. It doesn't work on SATA III. You can purchase IDE to SATA II converters or adaptors from ebay. But look the the therads first.

On ebay, if you type "Mackie HDR" you will see all kinds of "parts" and extra cards, etc, for the HDR. Same goes for the d8b (Mackie d8b). There is a fellow who sells the "BIOS for larger Hard Drives" there. Mackenziejoyous is his handle.

Also, in the HDR Thread in this forum is a guy named Mike Rivers. The Thread is call "New Home for The Last Mackie Manual". He was on the design Team for the HDR and knows pretty much all there is to know about the HDR. He also has a book published call "The Last Mackie Hard Disk Manual". It can be purchased through "Cafe Press", just Google it. It is worth having it on hand.

I found the SSD's I purchased from Amazon but there are also SSD on ebay. Once you know the tech spec for the Hard Drive finding an SSD is easy.

Let me know what you find or if you have other questions.

Good luck
Cheers
Bruce