K3 box audio monitoring

[Adam Sonnenfeld]

I’m still troubleshooting the problem and found some more information:

My setup goes from the Kona card to the K3 box. I then go out of that with dual SDIs to Blackmagic’s HDLink that sends video to an Apple 23in display. I was hoping to do audio out of the K3 box but I just tried plugging into the HDLink and found the same problem, SDI is only carrying the right side audio, and the RCAs on the box are probably fine. Is there a setting I should be looking for to get the card to output audio properly?

[Bob Zelin]

this is what you are going to do.
You are going to go into FCP, and open up any project you like. Bring up BARS AND TONE (like NTSC bars and tone) from the “film strip”. Hit PLAY.

Take one RCA output from the K3 box (white is left, red is right), and with a cheap RCA cable, stick the RCA cable from white into your audio monitor (like your home stereo system). Do you hear tone ? Now, move the cable from white to red. Do you hear audio ?

If you don’t hear any audio from either the red or white output (left or right channel), close out of FCP, and go into the AJA Control Panel (do you know where this is?). Play back an SDI source or HD-SDI source into the Kona 3 (do you have an SDI source ?), and monitor the output of the K3 box – first left channel (white), and then right channel (red) – do you hear any audio. To do this test, you must have the INPUT tab of the AJA Control Panel selected to EMBEDDED AUDIO, and you must have the CONTROL TAB of the AJA Control Panel selected to INPUT PASSTHROUGH. Are you familiar with these settings in the AJA Control Panel ?

Bob Zelin

[Adam Sonnenfeld]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your reply. I am familiar with the Kona Control Panel and I’ve followed your instructions for testing with color bars. Unfortunately I don’t have an SDI source so I can’t run a passthrough. Both RCA jacks are working fine, and it looks like this stereo problem is really coming from my mixer and not the Kona.

But in running the test I found another issue. I could not hear the color bars tone in the viewer unless I set the Monitor Audio to 3-4 in the Analog Out tab. I added tracks to the timeline and found that I can’t monitor more than two tracks over the box at any one time. Is there a FCP setting to output all tracks as stereo, or is this a setting in the Control Panel?

Thanks for your help,
Adam

[Bob Zelin]

Both RCA jacks are working fine, and it looks like this stereo problem is really coming from my mixer and not the Kona.

REPLY –
how can it be your mixer – the Kona 3 has NO ANALOG AUDIO INPUTS.
Do you have a mixer with AES outputs, because you cant send the output of an analog audio mixer (like a Mackie) into a Kona 3.

Bob Zelin

[Adam Sonnenfeld]

I’m only talking about outputs. The analog RCA outputs from the K3 box.

I had a dead channel on a brand new mixer which I swapped out for a new Mackie. It’s working great.

Do you have any ideas regarding my other question about audio track playback?

-Adam