THE NOOB CHRONICLES
Well, I still don't have an extended period of down time anywhere in sight, so I'm not really going to finish this project for a few weeks at least. But I did have a spare moment yesterday morning to go ahead and try installing the Pro Tools cards in "reverse" order, with the Core card in slot 4 and the Accel cards in 3 and 2. Booted up, launched a simple test session, hit play, and the crackly loop problem was gone. Tried a bunch of different playback engine settings, still fine. On the down side, there were some USB problems that I didn't get around to diagnosing. Big deal.
This is where the technical gives way to the philosophical. The OCD part of me is struggling to to consider the problem solved, but the best advice from this board has been "If it works, it works. Go record music." Think of it this way: When you put together a model airplane, you're supposed to put a tiny bit of glue on both parts and then stick them together. If you just put glue on one side, will the parts stick? Of course they will. But you haven't done it *right*.
Anyway, I've got a great big sack of hooray for anybody who can tell me exactly why this configuration hates it when the Core card is in slot 1, dammit. In the meantime, I'm going with appeasement. I'll forge ahead with the 4-3-2 (and someday 1 'cuz I want another Accel card) configuration and get my plug-ins ported over and try running a really big fat session with virtual instruments and all that stuff. Pending the results of those tests (which are still a week or two away), the official recommendation of this thread is "put the Core in four!"
Okay bye.
P
