Well I thought the tearing was all taken care of, but it was still there. So I have been on a mission for the last week or so to find a fix for it. I learned from several other Flex 5000 owners that they also had the tearing with external gear. I have a friend that is really good with diagnosing audio and we did the most logical thing, start from scratch and add the rack gear one piece at a time till we could isolate what the problem was.
1st we started with the mic straight to the rig, Ok no tearing or any issues.
2nd Mic to preamp to rig, the tearing was there. I needed the preamp to have enough drive for the rest of the audio gear so we needed to figure out what was going on. I tried several different buffer settings, and also mic gain in the software and mixer gain for the 1/4 bal line input. What we found is rather unusual. You must run the software mic gain slider at 0 when using an external preamp. I set the mixer gain all the way at the top and the mic gain to 0, then use the mic gain on the preamp to get my ALC and MIC meters to between -2 and 0 on the meters.
Everything works perfectly now, I am using my PR-40 with all my rack gear and the above settings and my audio reports have been great.
I sent an e-mail to Flex about the tearing problem and how I fixed it and they are trying to duplicate my set up and see what the issue is with the software mic gain. Personally, I think they should just leave it and make a note that if you are using external gear with a preamp set it to 0 and be done with it.
So any of you 5000 guys that have the dreaded tearing with rack gear give this a try. I have already had a couple of other guys on the Flex reflector tell me it worked for them as well.
I also had another friend record me on AM and he put up a youtube video of his flex receiving my audio !! Pretty cool.
Here is the link if you want to hear how it sounds !! W1MSG on 75 meter AM with external audio rack - W1AEX - YouTube
1st we started with the mic straight to the rig, Ok no tearing or any issues.
2nd Mic to preamp to rig, the tearing was there. I needed the preamp to have enough drive for the rest of the audio gear so we needed to figure out what was going on. I tried several different buffer settings, and also mic gain in the software and mixer gain for the 1/4 bal line input. What we found is rather unusual. You must run the software mic gain slider at 0 when using an external preamp. I set the mixer gain all the way at the top and the mic gain to 0, then use the mic gain on the preamp to get my ALC and MIC meters to between -2 and 0 on the meters.
Everything works perfectly now, I am using my PR-40 with all my rack gear and the above settings and my audio reports have been great.
I sent an e-mail to Flex about the tearing problem and how I fixed it and they are trying to duplicate my set up and see what the issue is with the software mic gain. Personally, I think they should just leave it and make a note that if you are using external gear with a preamp set it to 0 and be done with it.
So any of you 5000 guys that have the dreaded tearing with rack gear give this a try. I have already had a couple of other guys on the Flex reflector tell me it worked for them as well.
I also had another friend record me on AM and he put up a youtube video of his flex receiving my audio !! Pretty cool.
Here is the link if you want to hear how it sounds !! W1MSG on 75 meter AM with external audio rack - W1AEX - YouTube
