All on Mac? Anyway, I am a Pc user and w/o the power supply SSL wont startup at all.

same here its a problem for PC and MAC users alike

sorta ironic that you bring up FS for coming w/ optional stuff when you have to pay 60+ dollars for the CD adaptor but it comes free w/ SSL...i'd much rather have a free $60 CD adaptor JUST IN CASE instead of a free $10-$15 dollar power supply...could just be me...
plus- i bought SSL and then realized that it didn't come w/ a power supply...i looked around in my room for 3 minutes MAX and found 4 different AC adaptors that met SSL's specs PERFECTLY...it's a pretty common adaptor

well when FS originally came out it was just for vinyl not CD.. plus it came with 3 vinyls instead of 2..

Don't forget the free Stanton Cart needle FS came out with. OOOHHH LA LA :-)

Anyway.... How do you know if one needs the DC adapter? Mine works find without one. Does it have to do if the PC supports USB 2.0 or 1.1. I'm not sure if there is a voltage difference from one to the other. Let me know. I may just get one for kicks. I agree it's a standard voltage, so I'll find something around the house to test it with.

so far, the only people that i have heard of that have needed the power supply were either mac, laptop, or mac laptop users...it's not Rane or Serato's fault(s)...the standard computer should be able to put out enough voltage to make the black box run. I've used mine on four different comps (PCs) and they all put out enough voltage

Something that you may not have considered is the added expense that including a power supply would incur. The cost of a power supply for us would not be that much less than what you can buy them from at Radio Shack, however the effect on the final retail price would mean that you'd end up paying more for the same power supply if we included it.

In other words, we'd have to put the price up more than it cost you to buy it yourself. So not only would a whole lot of people who don't need the power supply end up having to pay us for it, you'd all have to pay more for it than if you got it from Radio Shack who buy them by the million.

Not to mention the added hassle that we'd have to have 4 different versions of Scratch LIVE, because different countries use different voltages and different pins. That would cause stocking issues because Rane would have to maintain four stock levels for four essentially identical products.

Believe me, you are way better off buying your own power supply *if needed*.

By the way, we are just as surprised as you that many computers appear to be below standard when it comes to USB power supply, and we are looking into possible solutions for future version of the hardware.

Did you allready find an explanation for that odd behaviour? All other USB devices I have tried worked fine so far.

not all USB devices require the same amount of power to run them... SSL was designed assuming the USB ports on laptops where up to the specifiction of USB 1.1, but some computer makers like to cut corners (pobably to improve battery life and say "oh our laptop has ~5 mins more battery life than our competitors" IMO). SSL did the right think to use USB and not include power adapters and not us(SSL users that dont need the PS) stick the $40 - $50 bill (stocking, shipping, packaging and what not...that gets added to a $10 PS)

If youre talking about the "same amount" of power, are you talking about Amperes? I know my notebook can handle up to 500mA, SSL uses 300mA and it doesnt work w/o the external supply. Or is this some other specification that my notebook does not meet... its an IBM notebook, which was very expensive :-D

I hear you Nick, my brand new 17" PowerBook was expensive too. I assumed that a $2800 laptop would definitely meet the spec, but it does not.

For a start, it supplies 4.8V instad of 5V. That is not a problem, because we built the box to cope with that, the problem is when the box is trying to start up. To comply with the USB spec, a computer needs to be able to supply up to 500mA, and the USB spec allows you to draw up to ten times that for a short amount of time when you start and the voltage should not drop below a certain level. The problem is, my laptop drops to 4.1 V at this point, and the box resets again and again.

So it is not to do with the total normal current the box needs which is only 300mA, it is to do with the behaviour of some computers during the startup cycle. By the way, I have spoken to some people who tell me that some other USB powered devices fail to work on their 17 inch PowerBook, so they were kind of expecting it.

My 17" Power book seems to be fine. Is this situation with the powerbook plugged in?

17

AJ, thanks for the input. So basically during the initilisation process the SSL-box needs more than the specified 300mA, and then the notebook drops the voltage as it cant cope with higher amperes, allthough it should?

When you say



"when you start"... you mean start the pc, or plug in the SSL-box?

My Mac works without the power supply but I have had problems with SSL so I bought the power supply to eliminate one possible factor for the problems I was having.

Does using the power adapter, even if you don't need it, reduce strain on the computer? Am I just adding more tangled wires to my already cluttered dj bag or is using this thing beneficial to stability?

Yes, when the box starts up. Like I said, the spec allows you to draw something like 5A as long as you only do it for 10 microseconds (or something). All I know is, we're well within the specification, we don't pull anywhere near as much as we're allowed, and yet some computers respond badly. We're investigating how badly those computers fail the spec and trying to work out what could be done.

In answer to G-man's question, a power supply always reduces the current draw on the laptop. If you plug in a power supply the box only ever draws 100mA from the computer, increasing battery life.

Does 'current draw' affect your cpu's performance ? Is this is a case where your system either works or doesn't work with the ac adapter? If it does work without the adapter is there any reason to use it anyway other than increasing battery life ( which is seemingly irrelevant since I never run my mac when it's not plugged in )? The less pluggin in of things the better... I've been carrying around a power strip lately to accomodate that big ass adapter plug and if it's unnecessary I'd like to leave it at home.

thanks.

No, it doesn't affect cpu performance. The only other reason to use a power adapter is to allow you to leave scratch live plugged in and remove your laptop so that another DJ can play using normal records without unplugging your SLU. It has the same function at home, maybe you have a permanent Scratch LIVE setup, and sometimes you take your computer away and play with normal vinyl - a power supply allows the thrus to function without a computer present. Other than that, if it works you won't see any difference.

Just wanted to add, it makes sense to use the power supply anyway. If in any case your machine crashes/stops playing, then you can still change to playing real vinyl, but this can only work if the SSL box is powered by an external supply otherwise, during the crash/reboot the USB bus is not powered, and then of course the SSL box is not powered either. This saved my life with FS when it crashed and took my whole pc to the death, I could easily fall back to playing real vinyl.

MY buddy has a toshiba A75 P4 3.0ghz, and is getting a USB bus bandwidth exceeded msg in winxp.. he doesnt have the SL dc adapter... but he also has an M-audio audiophile soundcard... he only gets the error when both the SLU and his new soundcard are plugged in... normally he doesnt need the DC adapter to use SL... Do you guys think getting the DC adapter will solve this?

thanks

Definitely not. Bandwidth and power are completely unrelated. What is happening is that our 9 channel sound card and the M-AUDIO 8 channel sound card simply cannot be used at the same time because USB only has a limited bandwidth. Like I said in another discussion ( scratchlive.net ) Scratch LIVE uses over half the available USB bandwidth, and since the audiophile is 24 bit, it uses even more. You don't need to be a mathematics professor to realise that two devices that use more than half the resources each can't be used together.

Now, if they were both USB2 devices, that would be a different story...

So SSL uses 24bit AD/DA's?

The M-AUDIO Audiophile soundcard transmits 24 bit signals. BadCompany was asking about using that soundcard at teh same time as SL. My statement was "since the audiophile uses 24 bit, it uses even more [bandwidth]."

We use 16 bit, they use 24 bit, which is why they use more bandwidth than us. Make sense?

Sure, it was just a bit confusing for me, thanks for the clarification. (Plus I was surprised about 32bit internal accuracy, then 24bit output was not out of range ;-) )