[sdiy] More of that S/PDIF stuff.

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Ya'll.
         Well apart from the fact that the glorious Yamaha O1V and it's 
podule doesn't do what the guy who sold it to me said it would. And apart 
from the fact that it seems Humpty has once again struck down some of my 
most precious data in the guise of doing me a favor. The S/PDIF thing 
works! So thank you all for your input. If only you guys wrote operating 
systems the whole world would be saved from tyranny. I thank you greatly 
and this time I even left my pants on while doing it.

However. Apart from an order of magnitude jump on the Schodinger scale of 
logistical nightmares, it would now seem I have a potentially new problem. 
Possibly an unsolvable one. (Or was that his cat that came up with the 
scale as pay back for Schrodinger having locked him in the box in the first 
place?)

Anyway, the route question goes a little like this. "How messed up do you 
think the S/PDIF signal would become if I tried to drive multiple inputs 
from a single output?" Now I know in video, you get a bit of a signal loss 
but nothing the receiving end can't handle. [USUALLY] But there is no kind 
of AGC in an S/PDIF or AES/EBU receiver is there?

It might come down to trying to distribute synch through the mixer from a 
single source. And then on to S/PDIF inputs of which I hadn't planned on 
actually using. And even then, I have to hope that every device will oblige 
me by accepting it's master sync from an input that isn't actually in use.

It would mean that I would have to distribute some sync from digital 
outputs I don't have. It would also mean that I would also have to clock 
the master through the desk and distribute it from there because in some 
cases I actually WOULD need to use the inputs as actual inputs and... Well 
you get the picture. And all this assumes that everything would accept 
this. I already know of one that won't.

Oh but it gets even better. I'd have to derive the master sync from an 
aging AWE32 sound card because it doesn't even have a digital input. Let 
alone a half decent driver. Anyone got the jitters already?

RANT MODE:
What the hell do these dick wad digital mixer manufactures think they're 
doing? If I wanted to SWITCH the signals I'd have bought a zippy box and 
bunged a rotary switch in it. I paid the big bux (And trust me, down here 
we're talking BIG bux for this stuff) for a frigging mixer!. You'd kinda 
expect it to MIX hu?

Other people can make this happen. I'm led to believe that it's not 
actually that hard given that these guys can, and do, make their own chips. 
You probably don't even have to do that. But the best bit. The bit that 
really has me thinking about becoming an Olympic standard, gold medal 
winning, limb breaker, is that it took something around 2 years for these 
assholes to get back to me with what was supposed to be the definitive 
answer. An answer that led me to buy this over priced podule thing in the 
first place. An answer that assured me it would actually do the job. Sure I 
could get my money back but there's more at stake here than that.

OK. I'm calm now. Thinking of blue skys and with open fields. The wind 
blowing lightly through the tall, strong trees. And the gently swaying of 
the dead bodies hanging lifelessly by the neck from them. I feel much 
better now.

So If I'm going to salvage something from this mess, I've probably gotta 
think of some ultimately cheap-assed way of distributing some digital-audio 
signals. Any thoughts on this at this point would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Fortunately, I used GPS when I buried that hatchet.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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