Blank screen and no sound - again..

edo

edo

Power User
Vendor
Last night we were playing a gig in front of 3k people and the axe froze 4 times upon patch change. That is beyond acceptable and I need to get this sorted out for the rest of the tour. Anybody else experiencing this? Where should I start troubleshooting, ethercon cable, power conditioner.. Has anybody figured it out?
 
Ether-con cable would be my first shout, unreliable beyond belief, I would never use one live. Faslink every time for me.

You don't say which model you have, which version of MFC (I am assuming that's what you have)

Which firmware on both units

And has it happened on these patches before? You say again, so I am guessing this is not the first time its happened?
 
I'm on 3.02, axe fx 2 mk2, mfc mk3. It happened before (both on 2.01 and 2.04) and it happens randomly. Yesterday it was preset 1, 10, 12 and 18, last week in was preset 9 and 15, so I'm quite sure it has nothing to do with actual presets, but it has to do with the mfc / pc messages. I shall try a midi cable then and see what happens
 
edo said:
I'm on 3.02, axe fx 2 mk2, mfc mk3. It happened before (both on 2.01 and 2.04) and it happens randomly. Yesterday it was preset 1, 10, 12 and 18, last week in was preset 9 and 15, so I'm quite sure it has nothing to do with actual presets, but it has to do with the mfc / pc messages. I shall try a midi cable then and see what happens
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I would, I have had bas experiences with ethercon type cables in other applications, faslink cable is the way to go, after all its just an XLR cable at the end of the day. Much more robust and less to go wrong.
 
I played two shows yesterday, and at the first one, literally seconds before we were about to start our set, I looked down and my MFC had timed out. I looked back at my Axe and realised the screen had frozen and had partially garbled pixels on it. I quickly reset the unit, and it behaved normally for the show, and the one after that too. The fact it did this even briefly does raise cause for concern. I'm using an XL, with a mk3 MFC and I use a quality XLR cable.
 
Maxsys said:
I would, I have had bas experiences with ethercon type cables in other applications, faslink cable is the way to go, after all its just an XLR cable at the end of the day. Much more robust and less to go wrong.
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The thing is that axe fx 2 has no faslink, so i'd need an adapter and at the end of the day I'd still be using an ethercon partially..
 
craiguitar said:
I played two shows yesterday, and at the first one, literally seconds before we were about to start our set, I looked down and my MFC had timed out. I looked back at my Axe and realised the screen had frozen and had partially garbled pixels on it. I quickly reset the unit, and it behaved normally for the show, and the one after that too. The fact it did this even briefly does raise cause for concern. I'm using an XL, with a mk3 MFC and I use a quality XLR cable.
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My mfc does not show timeout, it shows blank presets i.e. "S001 " without song title and the axe fx screen is blank with no sound coming out
 
edo said:
The thing is that axe fx 2 has no faslink, so i'd need an adapter and at the end of the day I'd still be using an ethercon partially..
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Apologies, missed the bit about Mk2, I would go Midi and see what happens, its got to be better than ethercon.
 
I've used Midi with all my Axe FX II's and have never had a problem..
I tried a Cat 5 Cable once and it locked up... It was on my original Axe FX II, turns out it was a damaged Cat 5 Port on the Axe. I sent it in for repair got it fixed and never used it again.
Use the Midi connection...
 
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IMHO a dual midi cable connection, 1 from controller Out to AXE In and 1 from controller In to Axe Out, would be the most reliable connection for gigs. Also, since I've never experienced a lockup or had a power brownout with the AXE, I'm not sure how the AXE reacts to power brownouts. A computer could lockup , reboot or turn off. The AXE has an on/off switch, so I would assume it would try to reboot and possibly lockup, if the brownout was a quick one. So if you had a power glitch or surge, or bad power connection, the AXE could have locked up. The only way to prevent that is to have a UPS, instead of just a surge protector. I have 2 Yamaha LS9 32 boards and a few other digital boards. I've experienced lockups on all of them. As a result, I now have the consoles plugged into UPSs.
BUT, there have been a couple of members reporting lockups with their FXII MK2 units. But they claim it just started with the latest firmware. And you said it happened before (both on 2.01 and 2.04). So your problem may be the ethercon or power.
 
Holyoli said:
By the way Edo, yesterday's evening you played in my hometown :) saw you and the band, nice gig!
Pic taken with my phone ...
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That's a nice place you live in! Crazy people there..!! lol

Anyways, thanks for your suggestions guys, will experiment tomorrow and report back
 
Also, if you're using complex patches, the settings may not all be saved (this has *nothing* to do with CPU load). I had a problem switching to dead patches only to find the send block level was saved as zero even though I set it to unity. I could re-save the patch and it would work fine, until the next time I powered on.
 
GM Arts said:
Also, if you're using complex patches, the settings may not all be saved (this has *nothing* to do with CPU load). I had a problem switching to dead patches only to find the send block level was saved as zero even though I set it to unity. I could re-save the patch and it would work fine, until the next time I powered on.
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What do you mean "Dead Patches"?
 
I've had similar behaviour with both Ethercon and also corrupt patches.

Since going to 7-pin midi I've never had a connection issue again.
 
Also using a mkii Axe with a midi cable into my Mfc. Been playing live with it for a year and a half with no issues.
 
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