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Speedy Server?

R

Robert Bass

For the past hour or so, it seems to me as though our audio server is playing all the audio files about 1.5% to 2% faster than normal. Do hard drives speed up like this at times?

R
 
I doubt it. It sounds like something wierd with the sound card or a word clock that might control it. It might just be a software wierdness. HD speed wouldn't be the cause of audio pitch shifting. I'd try cold-booting the damn thing and see if that fixes it.
 
I'd go with the cold boot, and if that didn't fix it, reload the sound card driver. And look at its settingt, to make sure it hasn't been inadvertantly been told to run at an increased speed. Hard drive speed is only a factor when it's so slow you can't stream the files of fast enough to play in real time. Which basically doesn't happen...they fail but don't slow down per se.
 
Robert Bass said:
For the past hour or so, it seems to me as though our audio server is playing all the audio files about 1.5% to 2% faster than normal. Do hard drives speed up like this at times?

R
Click to expand...

You didn't mention the name of the system...many have pitch control

I would check and see if the jocks were playing with the pitch controls first, then boot it...
 
Thanks for the replies! I'll suggest the cold reboot if the problem continues.

Our system is the UDS2 from On Air Digital. It only has a pitch control feature when using the Sony CDK3600 CD Jukebox changers. We got rid of those in 2003.

R
 
Back when we used cart machines and turntables, one jock at KOL convinced the manager that "everything is running fast today". I had to call the PUD and make sure the line frequency was right on 60 Hz. Even then, the jock was not convinced. Drugs may have been involved.
 
Bill Wolfenbarger said:
Back when we used cart machines and turntables, one jock at KOL convinced the manager that "everything is running fast today". I had to call the PUD and make sure the line frequency was right on 60 Hz. Even then, the jock was not convinced. Drugs may have been involved.
Click to expand...

Yikes...! A jock high on speed, perhaps? :eek:

R
 
One of our PDs was just diagnosed with diabetes. Apparently, one of the symptoms he noticed was that the music playing on his station sounded to him like it was pitched lower and/or playing slow, although there was nothing wrong with it. So it could be a physiological factor.

Other than that, I had a Scott Studios system once that did not behave well if Windows sound was enabled...anytime somebody did something with the on-air PC that would have caused Windows to go "ding", it made the playout from the audio card slow way down.
 
boiseengineer said:
Not too often the Power Co. isn't 60 hz. Here's a clasic example!
http://www.nrcdxas.org/articles/wabc65.ra
Click to expand...

That aircheck was taken just prior to the Great Blackout in 1965, I was told the speed difference in the music (sourced from mechanical turntables driven by motors) was due to the lack of line voltage (brownout condition) and not from any change in line frequency. My father was a contractor and his electrician was pretty vocal about the events of that particular day. Besides, this was in the days before hysteresis drive motors made their appearance in broadcast turntables.
 
Ouch! Shocked That's painful to listen to. I take it there was no UPS installed?
If that is a turntable or tape player the sound would be due to voltage, not frequency variation. In fact the power companies do a good job of maintaining the frequency. The number of TV frames was originally set up because they wanted to use the AC line frequency to synchronize to. The scan is done odd and even lines to provide 30 complete frames per second. Electric wall clocks also used to depend on the power line frequency as well.

As to a UPS it is meant to keep provide a reasonable voltage to keep equipment running. The output is also closer to a square wave than a sine wave and the frequency is irrelevant so long as it is close.
 
nmoore6676 said:
As to a UPS it is meant to keep provide a reasonable voltage to keep equipment running. The output is also closer to a square wave than a sine wave and the frequency is irrelevant so long as it is close.
Click to expand...

A UPS would have also kept the power stable enough to prevent the mess heard in that sample file.

R
 
UPS? This was 1965. Who needed uninterruptible power anyway. Only took the tubes a few seconds to come back up when the generator came on-line (if you had one) and tape machines and turntables picked up where they stopped. The UPS's of the day were huge banks of batteries running the equipment at the phone company.
 
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