Dag Henning Kalvøy
Visitor
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Have I bought a useless plug-in? - 2006/08/25 07:27
Hi,
I bought Wormhole2 a couple of days ago, in order to transmit audio between a TiBook (1GHz, 1 Gb ram, OSX 10.3.9) and a new MacBook (2 GHz, 2 Gb ram, OSX 10.4.7). I tested the demo first, which was promising.
However, it turns out that Wormhole2 seems unusable for the live usage I intended it to (which is also advertised on the Wormhole web page). It works very well for a varying period of time, then after some minutes (maybe two to ten) the sound starts cracking and distorting. Eventually, the sound disappears completely, and I get a "the connection has timed out" message. Then, after a second, it seems the connection resets, and is fine for another couple of minutes until the cycle starts over again. This is what happens consistently when transferring from MacBook to PowerBook, or sending an insert loop to the PowerBook, both with built in sound card used.
When transferring from PowerBook to MacBook, or when using different sound cards (RME Multiface for the PowerBook, Tascam US428 for the MacBook - both with the latest drivers) the problem is somewhat different. It seems like what's an accumulating bandwidth problem in the previous situation, is "solved" in the new situation by shifting the received signal gradually increasingly out of sync, by frequent little glitches (maybe every 20 seconds or so).
Both problems of course renders the Wormhole2 useless. Buffer and latency settings have no effect on the problems. Network settings are the same for both situations, ethernet configured manually with 1000baseT speed, and full duplex (settings I for a while believed helped the situation a bit). I'm using a cross over ethernet cable tested to 350 MHz, no hub. Plug-in hosts on both Macs were Max/MSP and Ableton Live, both tested with various low latencies, mostly 256 samples. The host settings don't seem to make any effect on the problem, however the "gradually out of sync" situation resets to sync whenever any sound card setting changes.
OK. These are complex situations, I hope I've included the vital parts. I also hope I haven't wasted my money on this plug, which is a really great idea if it works.
Dag Henning
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