Snap, Crackle, Pop

[glendower]

Okay, I finally have the sound on my computer set up the way I want it once again. Compatibility issues solved by ditching the Via chipset and moving to Intel again. That aside... here's what I have:

SW1000XG
Santa Cruz w/ SCD-15
MT-32 connected to the Santa Cruz.

The Santa Cruz is also acting as my mixer with the SW1000xg on the Line In jack and the MT-32 on the versa jack (you can set it to be analog out, analog in, or digital out... kinda neat). Tonight I was just testing to make sure that everything was working well (and, well, any excuse to listen to music...). I noticed while listening to the KQ4 intro that during the peak of the fanfare at the beginning of the piece I started to get a lot of crackling and popping in the audio, the display on the MT-32 was also dimming a bit... I want to call it a "flicker" but it wasn't going out completely... just dimming.

The power supply that I use is not from Roland but is a radio shack 9v 800mA model. The standard one is 1.2A, right? But the unit only draws 650mA? I assume that the 650mA is RMS and not peak, so is it possible that I'm underpowering the unit for the louder parts?

The other thing that I'd considered is that the output of the MT-32 is too high for the input on the card and that's the source of the noise, though the SW1000 never causes problems like this.

Right now the MT-32 is powered off and I want to see what you guys think before i power it back on... or is this just some of the MT-32's known distortion and I just don't know enough to recognize it?

Thanks!

[Alistair]

KQ4 MIDI's often have problems, especially the intro and closing themes.
Make sure your MT-32 is:
a. Not set above 80 for volume
b. Not set above 75% in Windows mixer coming into the Santa Cruz

The real question is- are you having problems with any other MIDI files? If not, then you know where the problem lies.

- Alistair

[glendower]

The others have sounded okay, and I don't remember hearing this problem much in the past-- but I didn't play KQ4 with it very much. I am pretty sure that it's a volume problem, but I just wanted to make sure that i wasn't under-powering the unit and risking some kind of damage

Thanks!

[Rhizome]

The standard one is 1.2A, right?

1A, actually

I did discover that under amperage will cause the light to go dim, sometimes even cause a hum (results from my Yamaha MU100R). Under voltage usually results in just the pixels being duller than they usually are.

[Ari]

The standard one is 1.2A, right?

1A, actually

I did discover that under amperage will cause the light to go dim, sometimes even cause a hum (results from my Yamaha MU100R). Under voltage usually results in just the pixels being duller than they usually are.

This is, indeed, a well known problem with KQ4, and the solution is, as Alistair wrote, to lower the volume of your MT-32.

[glendower]

yep! it works great-- and it's really not much quieter at 68 than it is at 100. Weird I remember the first time I played KQ4 on my friends' tandy (we split the costs-- he took the 5.25 discs and I took the 3.5-- I had a Tandy, too, but we played it on his first)... I can't imagine how blown away I would have been if either of us had had an MT-32!