Still on RME Digi9652: SPDIF Input - how to get this to work?

[DrNI (Niels)]

Hi there!

I’m still using this old RME Digi9652 PCI card. It works very well and gives me 24ch ADAT I/O (at 48khz). It is hooked up to a Yamaha 01v96i still, and it’s the clock master in my little universe, distributing clock successfully via WordClock to both that console as well as an RME OctaMic II and a Behringer SRC2496.

Now I would like to use the SPDIF input on the Digi9652. I hooked it up to the SPDIF output of the 01v06i, because I’d like to have 26 channels. But it’s just that nothing ever comes in on channels 25/26 in the Digi card.

I checked the cable, I checked the output of the 01v96i, I even checked if the breakout cable of the Digi is broken. It’s all good. Still no input.

Now what could I do?

I set SPDIF to Coaxial in alsamixer. There are two SPDIF sample rate sliders in alsamixer which perhaps are meant to display the sample rate, not to set it? I’m not sure.

/proc/asound/R15/rme9652 reads “IEC958 sample rate: undetermined” – however I’m not sure if this refers to the input or the output of the Digi card.

Is my card broken? After all, it’s been in use (successfully) on Linux since 2007 or so. I currently run Ubuntu Studio 24.04 with Jack talking to the Digi card, not Pipewire. So it’s basically like in the old days. ADAT I/O works without any issues, I’m very happy with the rest of the setup.

Any ideas on this issue are welcome.

Best
Niels

Here’s my /proc/asound/R15/rme9652:

ME Digi9652 (Rev 1.5) (Card #1)
Buffers: capture 0000000001edd931 playback 00000000b93f14ed
IRQ: 16 Registers bus: 0x91000000 VM: 0xffffb895c0a05000
Control register: 244077

Latency: 512 samples (2 periods of 2048 bytes)
Hardware pointer (frames): 512
Passthru: no
Clock mode: master

ADAT1 Input source: ADAT1 optical

IEC958 input: Coaxial
IEC958 output: Coaxial only
IEC958 quality: Consumer
IEC958 emphasis: off
IEC958 Dolby: off
IEC958 sample rate: undetermined

ADAT Sample rate: 48000Hz
ADAT1: Sync
ADAT2: Sync
ADAT3: Sync

Timecode signal: no
Punch Status:

 1: off  2: off  3: off  4: off  5: off  6: off  7: off  8: off 
 9: off 10: off 11: off 12: off 13: off 14: off 15: off 16: off 
17: off 18: off 19: off 20: off 21: off 22: off 23: off 24: off 
25: off 26: off

[Schmitty2005]

Maybe there is something helpful in these posts ?

RME HDSP 9652 Support

Hello, I was wondering if someone who has had success using the RME HDSP 9652 could help me out with configuration to get it working with JACK and ALSA. If you could describe the distro you are using and the necessary steps to get the hardware working with alsa and JACK that would be awesome. I was using Tango Studio 10.04 unsuccessfully. I don’t mind switching to another distro if it offers better support for this card.

[DrNI (Niels)]

Unfortunately, the RME Digi9652 is a different card than the HDSP 9652. The latter has an early version of TotalMix built-in The Digi doesn’t have any of this. Which isn’t an issue for me because I don’t need it in this setup. – Thus hdspmixer is only working for the HDSP, not the Digi.

[Schmitty2005]

If I owned this and wanted it to work, I would download a different , maybe older, ‘LiveCD’ version of a Linux (Debian or Ubuntu / Arch / Suse)and see how it works on that. Other distros do things differently, and it may be better or worse configured. I know this isn’t much help, but it is always a shame to replace working hardware because of driver issues.