Harris Z16HD problems... Help me...

Hi all,

We have the following:

• Harris Z16HD transmitter
• Harris HDxFM exciter (dual)
• Harris HDE-200 exporter
• Harris HDI-100 importer
• Harris HD-Link STL

The importer & exporter are at the studio, and the HD data is streamed through the E2X channel of the HD-Link to the exporter port on the exciters.

This is rig is killing us. The HD goes down daily, the Exgine cards lock up daily, the HD delay alignment wanders back & forth by as much as half a second.

All firmware & software versions are current: 4.40, 8.45, 4.4.71, 1.3.6, 4.4.7, as per the spreadsheet from Harris.

I had this same rig at my last gig, except the exporter was an HDE-100, and it worked perfectly. It only needed to be kicked a couple times a year.

Help. I'm new to this company and this rig. They've been having these problems on & off for a year. I thought I could nail it quickly, but not a thing I've done has helped.

Has anyone else heard of problems with this system?

Thanks.

I'm no expert on this particular setup, but it sure sounds like you're having issues with the Exporter. Is your exporter locked to a 10Mhz GPS clock? If not, that will cause the delay wandering. Have you spoken with support at GatesAir? They may be able to get a loaner exporter out to try.

Yes, the exporter has its own GPS antenna, and is the "clock locker" for the whole system. It has outputs for 10mhz, 1pps, and 44.1, which feeds the importer, which in turn has a unique audio card setup to perform sample rate conversion from our 48khz systems and ensure there are no dropped AES frames on either the HD1 or HD2.

At the transmitter end, there's an ESE ES-110 GPS clock reference with 10mhz output that feeds the exciters.

I've checked the GPS receivers on both ends to make sure they're locked, and they are.

We've had Harris techs out here twice and they can't find the problem. And they've been very gracious and provided us a complete pile of loaner gear, including the importer, exporter, and exciter, but the loaner exciter crashes & locks up more than our existing gear. BUT...there is more to this part of the story. When I set up the loaner gear at the studio, and monitored it with a Belar FMHD monitor, the exporter delay still wanders, but the exciter Exgine card behaves. But then when I installed it all at the transmitter, the exciter lasted three days and then started to go bonkers in the same ways as our originals, but it degraded further to the point where now it lasts about two hours after a reboot before it locks up. Our original equipment is actually working better - relatively speaking.

On the chance it's a heat problem, I pulled both exciters all the way out on their rack rails and fashioned a cardboard baffle to direct cool air from the HVAC at them. The loaner exciter is still crashing, but interestingly it seems that our existing exciter is wandering less with the delay. Where before it was going +/- 8000 frames (about 2/10th second), now it seems to be around +/- 50 frames or less, which is about 1 millisecond. This is just since yesterday, so the jury is waiting to see what happens over the next few days.

Understood. Not being there makes it difficult to help you with anything worthwhile, but it sounds like you and GatesAir, in one way or the other, swapped a lot of gear around. The only other thing that comes to my mind that wasn't in the swap-out, was your CD Link. Based on your description of the chain, the CD link would be the wild card here. Is there some setting on the exporter or importer that allows the clock to be sent also down the CD Link? I'm wondering if you have a setting in there which is confusing the importer by sending a delayed clock pulse which is in conflict with the clock at the TX site. I've actually seen something similar with another brand of HD Radio system, where the assumption is GPS clock is only at the TX site, but it sees a slightly delayed clock up the STL.