StudioLive 2442, 1642 and 1602 with Universal Control Ai, SL Remote & QMix
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Our band has a couple of 16.4.2 legacy boards, so we are pretty familiar with the units. We just played in a club that had a house system with a 24.4.2 board.

The club owner and former sound man knew of no problems with the board. No one had used the system for about a month.

When we started playing, the lead vocalist's mic was cutting out very badly in all four aux mixes (two floor wedges and two in ears). The mic was not cutting out at all through the mains or when solo'd in headphones.

After the first song we moved his mic to a new channel, copied the FAT channel over, and it was fine the rest of the night. About halfway through the night, though, the bass players mic started doing the same thing.

Seeing as it was happening in all four aux outputs we were using, but never FOH, I'm short on ideas for what could have been happening. I'm thinking a problem within the aux processing in the 24.4.2? Is that possible for something to impact multiple aux outputs? Nothing else was cutting out, so I ruled out some sort of snake issue with multiple returns.

The only thing that was different was our soundman is left handed and prefers the vox on channels 1-4 where the board typically had drums on 1-4. So if there was an issue with the aux sends on those channels, maybe no one noticed it previously?

Has anyone ever had this problem with one of the 16.4.2 or 24.4.2 legacy boards? If we go back to that club, I'd like to try to avoid the issue.
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by SwitchBack on Thu Aug 03, 2017 11:19 am
That's new to me. Since all analog hardware and converters still seem to work (none of the inputs or outputs cut out completely) I would suggest it's a firmware problem or a corrupted scene. Did you check the firmware version?
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by philipangell on Thu Aug 03, 2017 3:04 pm
It was the latest 24.4.2 firmware. If it was one aux send, I would have been thinking bad jack, snake, Xlr cord to monitor, etc. But it was happening to all the aux sends, so I'm leaning towards something with the board.

I've never seen or read about this issue.

If we go back again, we'll use channels 17&18 for the vocals and see if the problem is gone. If we're really curious in the third set, maybe we'll go back to channels 2 & 3 and see if it's back. 😀
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by wahlerstudios on Thu Aug 03, 2017 3:30 pm
I guess the problem has to do with fader banks/circuit boards inside the board. The board is "devided" into several fader banks, handling inputs and outputs. Most probable aux 1 and aux 10 are handled by two different circuit boards, so try aux 7, 8, 9 and 10, if they have the same problem.

The solution in this case would be to replace the circuit board bank handling auxes 1 to x (could be aux 8).
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by SwitchBack on Thu Aug 03, 2017 4:02 pm
I stick with the firmware/scene suggestion.

The inputs were cutting out in auxes but not in main. So the input circuitry and the channel faders seem to be fine.

Only the mics were cutting out from the auxes, not the rest of the mix. So the aux output circuitry and level pots seem to be fine.

So the problem is in the mix, which is all digital and bits and bytes. I'd reflash the firmware and preferably start with a clean scene.

It still doesn't completely rule out a hardware problem, e.g. a problem in one of the mixer's memory banks. But those problems usually end in a massive crash. There's hope :)
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by wahlerstudios on Fri Aug 04, 2017 5:17 am
You are right, the only analog parts in the chain are the gains and the faders. Everything else is digitally controlled and therefore recallable, which does make the problem even more mysterious. So the problem might have to do with corrupted scenes/presets, which is mostly caused by a shut-down of the board while it is still saving the actual settings or hasn't yet started to do it. The only thing to do is a factory reset, which will wipe out any setting of the board. Would the owner agree to "kill" everything stored in the board? Is there a way to save settings/scenes before renewing the board...?
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by SwitchBack on Fri Aug 04, 2017 7:12 am
Sure.

Connect the mixer (firewire) to a computer which is known to work fine with classic SL mixers. Make sure the computer has the latest version of UC for classic SLs on it. If UC flags that newer firmware is available it will replace the mixer's firmware without erasing scenes and settings. Either way then open VSL and hit the 'Get' button. This will temporarily (!) copy all mixer scenes and settings to VSL.

In VSL you then have the option to backup scenes, setings and even the mixer's entire memory to computer. The full backup is nice but only allows a full restore. Saving separate scenes and settings too allows you to be more selective later on. Then close VSL.

With the backups in place it is safe to do the factory reset, which is available from the little UC window. This will do a clean install using the firmware version from UC, restoring the mixer to the default factory settings only. Then open VSL and restore any scenes and settings needed (first to VSL, then 'send' it to mixer memory). Done. :)

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