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INPUT TRIM GLITCH!


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Has Line 6 acknowledged the ABSOLUTELY DISASTROUS LINE TRIM GLITCH in their StageScape mixer firmware?? I've seen threads about it, and have even seen Line 6 reps post in them, but none have so much as acknowledged the actual glitch... ???

 

I've had the glitch several times during rehearsal, and aside from the disgusting sound it causes, and worrying about every one of my $1000 speakers, I've dealt with it by performing anywhere from 1 to maybe 5 power down/up cycles... I am running the most recent firmware.

 

Running sound for a band the other night, I had several issues with the input line trim cranking itself to MAX while I'm attempting to make slight adjustments to it. In fact, it even caused SEVERAL CHANNELS to also go to the MAX, causing a massively disgusting noise inside the venue. This is unacceptable.

 

I am interested to know if this is a firmware issue, or if anyone from Line 6 has had anything whatsoever to say about it. I have invested a ton of money into this system, and it's imperative that I can trust that this will never happen at a venue again.

 

Does anyone have any information on this matter?

 

Should I plan to reinstall my firmware??

 

ALSO, one other problem with the mixer is the MAIN volume knob...it doesn't smoothly increase or decrease main levels, rather it slowly moves, and not always in the direction I'm turning the knob. It seems to meander up and down randomly as I turn the knob in one direction. It will eventually get there, but why is it not precise?

During a glitch that I mentioned above, I was trying to quickly turn down the system, only to have it INCREASE the volume rather than decrease it...unbelievable!

 

I used my iPad to control levels for the rest of the night...

 

Please, lay it on me. I want to know everything that is known about these issues!

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If you notice above all the topics Line6Tony put an announcement entitled "Why is Line 6 not responding".  That may answer part of your question in regard to Line 6 not responding.  As for the rest of us... we don't know what the problem is...

 

I love my mixer but it hasn't been without it's problems, I'm trying to get them rectified at the moment.  There is really no other mixer that has all the features this mixer has.  All I need now is to have it completely trustworthy. I'm hopeful. 

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Yup, I did read that, but I also saw a rep reply to a thread about this, without mentioning a word about the issue. Sure has been a looooooong time since any firmware updates... No excuses for this oversight and delayed remedy. The mixer is awesome, when it's not blasting out the eardrums of club patrons due to a SOFTWARE GLITCH.

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Have you opened a service ticket with Line6?  They've been very helpful with me.

 

I've had the same problem with inputs that you've described.  Sent to the factory for servicing and it came back working fine.  

 

I think it's a grounding issue that has been described elsewhere on this board.  Basically the input level decreases significantly on it's own and then when you manually try to bring it back up, it jumps up quite a bit.

 

I haven't seen the issue with the Main Volume knob that you described.

 

I've used my M20D a whole bunch so I've had a lot of chances to get data points.  The input gain issue is the only thing that I've personally run into but it was pretty bad for a while.  Again, Line6 service has been very helpful.

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My mixer had done the master volume knob gone wonky thing a couple of times.  I can't recall how it got fixed, it could have been with the firmware update but maybe not.  So it's possible that was a firmware glitch.  And realistically so could all the other issues.  So far the problem and fixes have been anecdotal.  In my personal experience, I would say that if I have a gig or a 3 to 4 hour rehearsal, it will most likely happen once or twice during that length of time but it doesn't necessarily take a long time to happen, it could happen in the first 5 minutes. 

 

The point is it's very random, and very difficult, unless the repair tech wants to gig with the unit, to duplicate the problem in order to see what is actually happening.  Even then when it happens and then fixes itself within a second, how does a repair tech say, "OK I got it"?  With my unit, I could be getting full volume from my mic, then maybe there's a little instrumental break and when I step up to the mic, the volume is way down but by the time I finish singing that line the volume comes back.  This is on my vocal channel I've had channels go quiet for a more extended period only to have it come back crazy loud after making some adjustments.  Which begs the question, "when have you seen a mechanical issue behave like this?"  I mean without wiggling a cable or something. And as a matter of fact wiggling the cable does nothing.  If I'm in the middle of a gig the mic is on a stand and no one is near the board.  But i can't mechanically recreate the issue at home. 

 

I run both my Voice Live 3 vocal processor and my GR-55 guitar processor in stereo.   I was just in my basement playing guitar through the board when I noticed the guitar volume dropped.  When i looked at the board I saw that the right channel was way back and the left channel was normal.  I plugged from channels 7/8 into 13/14 and both channels were even in volume.  Both were stereo linked and I actually did the channel swap function ensuring that all the settings were identical.  No wiggling could get channel 8 to come back.  But when I came back a day later and checked to see if it was still not working, it was back to normal.

 

So while the evidence based on other user's experiences is compelling to suggest mechanical, I'm not 100% convinced that this couldn't be some sort of firmware issue.  Like some kind of random gating going on or just signal interruptions based on some sort of firmware malfunction.

 

My mixer is in right now getting repaired (again) for these exact issues.  They are replacing the entire input/output assembly, they are even going to allow me to keep the loaner board for awhile in case I am at a gig and start having issues.  If this repair works, perhaps it is mechanical, I'll better be able to say after a few months of using the mixer.  But it the problem persists, I'd be leaning toward a software issue.

 

Either way it's puzzling and annoying.

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I get your point but where does "well known issue" end and "huge numbers" begin?  I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just keeping an open mind.  I don't know that I agree that it would necessarily be "huge numbers" or "possibly all" if it turns out that the issue is in the firmware.  Firmware has to run on a processor, so the issue could be in the way the two are working together.  Just the fact that Line 6 indicates that one way to try to fix an issue is to re-install the firmware would indicate that the firmware can get messed up on some machines and not all.  Because not everyone is told to do this and not everyone has felt the need to.   If it was every machine that would indicate that they need to do a wholesale fix of the firmware for everyone to install.

 

As mentioned in my case, it's very random.  If, in someone else's unit, the issue occurred but with far less frequency than what I am experiencing, that person may not even realize there is an issue with their mixer.  I can tell you that it was a lot of testing and experimenting before I concluded that it was my mixer.  I have a microphone, with a cable running to a voice live 3 (which has a lot of parameters) then two cables (L & R) running to the M20d (which also has lots of parameters including gates).  So when this first started happening,  I didn't immediately think it was the M20d.  I thought it was the mic first, then went on trying to check everything I could think of, but then you just have to keep using the unit until it happens again.  Point being, there was a lot to check.  Two things happened to convince me that it was the mixer, a) I read of similar symptoms on this forum, and b) I started to notice it never happened when I rehearsed with my same setup through a different mixer.

 

As I said I'm not convinced either way.  As I am dealing with this issue I'm less convinced of one thing or another and I'm not even sure everything is related.  From the day I got this unit, the headphone jack didn't work properly, one side kept cutting out.  This was an issue where jiggling the jack could get it temporarily working.  Channels 13/14 behave similarly, it sounded and reacted like a bad cable until we tried numerous cables.  Both of those, issues have been repaired.  These other issues are different in behaviour and have not been resolved as of yet.  The wonky master volume knob, where you turn the knob and it just does what it wants, came and went on it's own.

 

My fingers are actually crossed that it is mechanical, if it is, then when they replace the entire input/output assembly it should, in theory, take care of the problem.  I guess just having dealt with this for so long, I'm not all that confident that when I get my board back it's going to work perfectly.  They re-soldered and tested all the connections last time the board was in, but the issue is still there. 

 

I will also say that it wasn't really just my idea that it could be firmware.  I put in a support ticket with Line 6. They advised that they don't ship internationally and that I need to deal with Yorkville Sound in Canada who are the authorized repair techs.  I called Yorkville and discussed the issues with one of the techs.  He said he had heard of the issue and that he was inclined to think it was in the firmware and suggested one thing he would want to try was to replace the entire motherboard.  As I said they are starting with the input/output board, I guess the motherboard will be next, eventually I may only have the shell that is my original mixer.

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I'm pretty convinced the input trim glitch is a hardware issue.

 

I had it, read many of the forum posts here.  Started a support ticked.  Line6 took the mixer back to the factory and according to their tech, cleaned the grounding clips.  Mixer has worked much better since.

 

Some people much smarter than me have made some good posts here suggesting that it's a grounding issue.  I found them pretty convincing.

 

I've only had the screen freeze up maybe a total of 3-4 times, always fixed with a reboot and doesn't reoccur with any frequency.  My mixer gets's Heavily used so I have a lot of data points.

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To be clear, I'm not saying it isn't I'm just keeping an open mind about it based on the behaviour and the suggestion from the repair tech that I spoke to.  To be honest before he suggested that possibility I was just thinking mechanical due to all the things I had read on this forum about the issue.  In all my years of gigging I have never had a mechanical issue behave like this.  The volume drops but doesn't cut out completely, there's no crackling sound associated with the drop then it just comes back to full volume without touching anything.  It's almost like it's ducking or gating in some way.  I've never had a bad cable, input jack or any kind of faulty connection behave quite like that.  So I'm not shelving the possibility just yet. 

 

Either way, I'm not attempting to fix this issue myself.  I just want to get my mixer back working and reliable.

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 In all my years of gigging I have never had a mechanical issue behave like this.  The volume drops but doesn't cut out completely, there's no crackling sound associated with the drop then it just comes back to full volume without touching anything.  It's almost like it's ducking or gating in some way.  I've never had a bad cable, input jack or any kind of faulty connection behave quite like that.  So I'm not shelving the possibility just yet. 

 

The way a digital fault manifests can be very different from how an analog fault typically manifests.

 

You cannot directly compare what happens with an analog connection to how something can affect a digital, 100% electronically controled input section.

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Well, I get that, but if you follow my other posts I relayed that I had some issues on this board with channels 13/14 and the headphone jack that behaved exactly like you would expect from a faulty mechanical input connection. ie; when the signal went it went completely and you could wiggle the cable and sometimes get it to come back intermittently completely with the expected crackling sounds.  So the fact that this board is controlled digitally, so in essence by firmware, doesn't exclude it from behaving the way an analog board does when it has a faulty mechanical connection. 

 

I do understand, that in theory, there could be some sort of mechanical issue that would affect the way the firmware relays the information.  If I wasn't clear enough in my previous posts.... I am not saying I believe it is the firmware,  I am 1000% aware that this could fully be a mechanical issue.  This has been my main belief of what the problem is all along.  The only reason I am keeping my mind open to the possibility, however remote, that it could be a firmware glitch is, as I said before, a repair tech suggested it (as a possibility, not a total belief) and the strangeness of the behaviour.  I think it would be a disservice to the possible global fix to just exclude a possibility, that's all.

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Yes, Line 6 advised that they do not ship internationally and advised me to contact Yorkville to deal with the issue.  They advised me to let Yorkville know about the service ticket that I had opened and that they would work with Yorkville to work towards a solution.  I have no reason to have less faith in Yorkville than in a direct Line 6 contact.  As has been pointed out, when an issue is so intermittent and random, it's difficult to diagnose and repair.  If you have an input that simply doesn't work, the repair tech gets the board and plugs something into that input and it doesn't work.  They look to diagnose the problem, fix it and then it's easy enough to test if the input is now working.

 

When the problem is intermittent, it's like working in the dark.  They could receive the board, and test it to find that in that moment, even if it's 2 hours of testing (not that any tech has that kind of time) the unit is working perfectly.  So they have to go by the notes that were sent, guess what the issue might be, fix that and send it back. Unless they are going to gig with the mixer for a couple of weeks they won't know if they've actually fixed the unit.

 

If Line 6 was able to really pinpoint what the issue actually is, they could let all their authorized repair centres worldwide know and it would be a once in and out to the local repair centre for each affected mixer.  As of yet I don't know that we are there. Further if Line 6 has figured this out, it should be a sticky on this forum.

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  • 10 months later...

Update:

A while back, we found a work around for the trim glitch.

 

Delete all affected channels and recreate them from scratch.

It seems that only the settings themselves get corrupted.

 

For the first time in over a year I feel confident again running this system.

Wanted to make it known since I know others had the same problem.

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