#SERIOUS Newtek Concerns
15 messages in this thread
NEWTEK UPDATE:
I did indeed receive a used Toaster replacement board from Newtek on Thursday,
which was exactly two weeks after I'd sent my board to them, less 2 days total
travel time, = a turnaround time of 10 days, with never an explanation of why
it took so long. I never had any response from the lady in the 'executive
office' who was going to 'take the problem straight to Tim'. (Presumably Tim
Jenison, founder and Prez of Newtek.) I also sent a very detailed, yet
extremely polite, letter directly to Mr. Jenison, from which I've had zero
response.
The saddest part of the whole deal is that this board exhibits exactly the same
problem, which is a weird crosstalk that shows up only when the Toaster's
signal is routed through my UVW-1800 Beta SP recorder. The recorder has
already been exchanged once by Sony, and the second one shows exactly the same
phenomenom. In addition, every cable has been replaced in the system, and I
went to painstaking lengths to eliminate any possibility of a ground loop.
Thus, since the crosstalk that was showing up was of two images, both
originating within the Toaster, I deduced that the only remaining culprit had
to be the Toaster. Newtek said that it was due to poor filtering within the
UVW deck, and suggested that I purchase a low-pass filter from Smith AV to help
alleviate the problem; the engineer at Smith maintained that, in his opinion,
the crosstalk was due to poor isolation of signals within the Toaster, which
makes a heck of a lot more sense to me. In any event, by using a DPS Personal
Component Adapter to provide a YC signal out of the Toaster, I've been able to
eliminate about 80% of the problem. I also went ahead and ordered the low-pass
filter, hoping that this might take care of the rest of it.
No matter what the outcome, it's my opinion that Newtek was incredibly
apathetic to my problem, demonstrated by not returning phone calls on repeated
occasions, and leaving me without a working piece of equipment for nearly two
weeks, without even showing the common courtesy of explanation. This behavior
certainly bears consideration when I decide on future purchases.
Thanks to all who responded with suggestions and encouragment,
Jerry
Jerry,
I hope the filter does it. If you need me to do any more testing with my
Toaster and UVW-1800, don't hesitate.
Thanks, Jim. This weird little problem has turned into a real nightmare, and I
hope I'm gonna get it resolved soon. I may take you up on some more little
comparison tests, since we eventually have the same setup.
Jerry
Jerry,
I don't know anyone who had a Toaster repaired & was told what was wrong
with the unit. They only received a bad photocopy of a "form note"
saying that the unit was fixed or replaced.
As far as noise problems, one guy who after checking for ground loop found
that his monitors were to close to his toaster. In fact Friday, I had
noise pulsing through my video. The signal from the machine looked find.
I found that when I went through either of my TBC-IVs the pulse came back.
I tried everything, then for some unknown reason, it went away.
Oooh video gremlins.
Joe Maulucci >>> Accadia Electronic Arts
DTV & DTP BBS 1-716-882-1774 CNet
Joe,
This has indeed turned into a 'video gremlin'. I've moved equipment to various
and sundry positions in relation to each other, all to no avail. I've
absolutely eliminated the possibility of a ground loop. There's an 8' ground
rod outside supplying ground to ONE receptacle; that receptacle is connected
to no other ground; every piece of gear draws power through that receptacle,
and there's a seperate network of wires connecting the chasses of every single
piece of gear in this suite.
Oh well, I sure wish my noise would "just go away" like yours did!
Jerry
Jerry,
Sounds like you got things grounded alright, boy what a setup!
I'm editing this week again at cable so I'll see if the problem
returns — Yeah, have toaster will travel.
Joe Maulucci >>> Accadia Electronic Arts
DTV & DTP BBS 1-716-882-1774 CNet
Jerry,
Do you have cable TV? If so this may be the source of your "video
gremlin" Aging outdoor RF-line amps can introduce unwanted voltages on the
incoming cable shield and and when you connect this shield to your –
"seperate network of wires connecting the chasses of every single piece of
gear in this suite." – you may get what I got; audio hum and strange video
interference. I had to totally isolate the incoming cable with a
transformer.
Steve Mackie, ICA Inc.
Smac @;-^D 70714,1567
ICA service Inc.
Steve,
No, the closest cable TV signal is around 40 feet from this room, and is no way
connected…
Thanks, though,
Jerry
Jerry,
I know how frustrating ground loops, faults, etc. can be. For the last
15 + years I've worked in an office building as an electrician. We've run
power for HP's, Honeywell's, IBM's,DEC's, and others. When there were
problems and the engineers hit a brick wall – the excuse of last resort
was always " It's gotta be a bad ground! Get the electrician?"
Needless to say I developed a bad attitude towards computer techs that
cried "Its not MY equipment – IT'S YOUR GROUND". I've drilled thru 10
inches of concrete for ground rods, busted out walls to get to stuctural
beams, ran miles of wire for "isolated gounds"… well you get the
picture. Over the years manufacturers have designed out or around most
ground related problems. My premise for this conclusion is the fact that
I'm drilling fewer holes and busting out fewer walls now (or maybe the
techs are getting better)! I still do run into problems tho'.
My "audio hum gremlin" was a pain. When I first disconnected my main
cable feed I still had the hum, although it was a few DB lower, it was
still there. I ignored this and went on to other possibilities, but after
many hours of frustration I returned to the only lead I had left, the
cable TV feed. Upon further investigation I discovered that the cable
shield was grounded to my water pipe under the house and the water pipe
was connected to the ground wire that went to the main electric panel's
neutral bar which in turn was connected to the neutral wire of every piece
of equipment I had. I lifted the cable ground and bingo, hum gone.
Ground faults can be extremly hard to find and most of the time it's
another way of saying "I don't know why…" Of course it is NOT SAFE TO
REMOVE SAFETY GROUNDS from any incoming wire system (electical, phone,
cable, etc.). But since the cable company was unwilling to fix the faulty
line amp(s) my only other choice was to go without TDC, TLC, CNN, CSPAN,
A&E, etc..
Good luck finding your gremlin.
Smac @;-^D 70714,1567
ICA service Inc.
Many thanks, Steve.
You wouldn't believe the number of explanations I've had about what constitutes
a ground loop. The most common explanation has been that a ground loop is
created when two pieces of equipment, that are grounded to each other in some
way, are connected to different electrical grounds. Well, now that I've
absolutely and positively eliminated that possibility, I've been told that a
ground loop is constituted by the chasses of two pieces of equipment being
connected by more than a single connection, no matter what their electrical
ground situation. IOW, even if two pieces of gear are positively sharing the
same electrical ground, ANY other connection between the two chasses
constitutes a ground loop and is likely to cause all the related problems. For
instance, a Toaster and a deck that share an electrical ground, and have a
single video cable between them, are in ground loop. Go figger…
Jerry
I was talking to my local Toaster dealer about ground loops. I told him
about the common ground theory. He showed me the NewTek Toaster Trouble
Shooting guide. It said that the Toaster should be the only thing
grounded & to lift the ground on everything else.
It stated that the Toaster could not cause interference, that if you were
experiencing noise between the two channels, it could be a ground loop,
and it offered the above solution.
Joe Maulucci >>> Accadia Electronic Arts
DTV & DTP BBS 1-716-882-1774 CNet
Joe,
Yeah, the explanation of ground looping that I gave came straight from Newtek;
i.e. there should only be ONE connection between the chassis of the Toaster and
any single piece of equipment, ostensibly that one connection being the ground
provided by a video cable connecting the two. Of course, to follow this
through completely, we're talking about also ensuring that there is no ground
connection between that deck and any other deck connected to the Toaster. This
will involve some inconvenience for me, but I'm gonna try it anyway. My "B"
source deck, a UVW-1600 normally feeds a component signal into the UVW-1800's
component input. When I'm doing straight cuts, I just flip the input switch on
the 1800 to 'Component' for a cleaner signal. Of course, those three BNC
cables are providing 3 ground connections between those 2 decks; then both
decks are grounded to the Toaster via a BNC cable each, which definitely
constitutes a ground loop according to Newtek, AND, all of that doesn't even
take my nice network of interconnecting ground wires into account… Then
there's also the consideration of audio cabling: my Amiga feeds its audio
outputs into a little Fostex sub-mixer, which then feeds into the main mixing
board, which of course also receives feeds from every other piece of
audio-producing gear in the suite, including the aformentioned video decks.
This just keeps going and going and going…
OTOH, my problem tends to look better the longer the gear is on; according to
Newtek, this suggests that the problem is NOT a ground loop, but possibly an
interaction between the Toaster and something else. This afternoon, I'm
checking the possibility of it being an interaction between the Toaster and my
DPS TBC IV's. Glenn Scott pointed out to me a section in the DPS TBC IV manual
called "Adjusting the Toaster", that describes problems that can occur if the
two are not properly adjusted to work together; oddly enough, I've missed this
paragraph all this time, and the possible symptoms listed in the manual are
absolutely identical to mine in every respect. I'll know in a few hours…
Jerry
You should not remove safety grounds from equipment, it's unsafe for
the operator, in some cases it can increase the equipment's susceptibility
to R.F. and it's illegal (the SGP [safety ground police] are everywhere!)
I think Newtek offered a way of trouble shooting and identifing the
source of the interference, not a solution to it.
The "ideal" audio system ground would be a "star" or single point
ground system where each piece's analog signal ground goes to a centrally
located copper plate (insulated from any other ground) which in turn has
one wire to the AC ground (waterpipe). Then each of the chassis grounds
(safety ground) goes to the AC outlet. All input and output cable shield's
are left floating (disconnected) at the receiving end. (I'm not so sure
about applying this floating shield idea to higher frequency video signals
and I'm not to crazy about hackin-up all my cables)
Those of us who don't have equipment with a "floating" (seperate from
the chassis) analog signal ground, must rely on the third wire safety
ground connected to one isolated ground recepticle (seperate ground wire
to AC ground/waterpipe). This, I believe, is the way Jerry hooked up his
system (chassis ground wires, in a "star" configuration, to one outlet –
then to the ground rod).
All this talk about ground loops had me searching thru stacks of stuff
to find my secret SGP file on grounding – (access on a need to know basis
only!)… I found it! So for anyone that's interested here's a list of
info sources:
A CLEAN AUDIO INSTALLATION GUIDE, by A. Burdick,Benchmark Media Sys. Inc.
5925 Court St. Rd., Syracuse, NY 13206
WIRING AN AUDIO-VIDEO PROD. FACILITY, by E.Howard, Broadcast Eng.Mag. 9/86
GROUNDING AFFECTS NOISE & SAFETY, Sound Info Series data sheets by Yamaha
Corp, PO 6600, Buena Park, CA 90622
WHAT'S ALL THIS GROUND NOISE STUFF, ANYHOW?, by B.Pease, Electronic Design
Mag., 6/24/93, pg.70
ELIMINATING NOISE: A HUM-BLE LIMERICK, by Peter Utz, AV Video Mag, 6/92
North Hills Elec. Inc. (516-671-5700) offers several video isolation
transformers which can be used to eliminate ground loop problems.
Isolation transformers work if you know the source of the problem. I used
a home made one to solve my cable TV gremlin.
Smac @;-^D 70714,1567
ICA service Inc.
Jerry, sorry to hear about your service problems, after all, you sold me my
first Toaster. It is still working fine, and I have learned a lot. Of course,
I have had upgrade fever since day one. Hope things work out in your studio.
I probably have the same kind of noise problems, but I'm not sophisticated
enough to even try to fix them. Maybe that's good, eh? <g>
-take care, and good luck (really). Thanks for getting me started in Video.
Someday soon I hope to start actually making money.
-aloha,
-danny
Danny,
<< Thanks for getting me started in Video. Someday soon I hope to start
actually making money. >>
Glad you're having fun, many thanks for the well wishes, and BTW, someday soon
I hope to start actually making money too! :~)
In the 200% (at least) humidity of MS,
Jerry