Defective unit?

S

slackasayak

Member
I received my AX8 last week and am thrilled with it! My old Strat has never sounded so good! :)

I've seen a few strange things, though, and wonder if the unit is defective. They happen after selecting a preset using the footswitches (e.g. FS1/1):
  1. Sometimes an arbitrary screen is displayed. It happens maybe once an hour. At first I thought it was fat fingers, and that I was accidentally brushing against the Page button, etc, but I've been careful to avoid that, and it still happens. I think AX8-Edit was running at the time, which may be relevant.
  2. Once, a dialog displaying "Bank N" popped up. The bank number decremented after about 1/4 second (seemed in time with the tempo button flash), and eventually cycled. I couldn't get rid of it with Exit, selecting another preset, etc, so I cycled the power. I took a brief video if anyone's interested. AX8-Edit wasn't running, but the unit was USB-connected. Disconnecting didn't stop the cycling.
Has anyone else seen anything like this? I hope it's some strange firmware issue, because I'd hate to be without the unit for long.

Thanks
 
Ax8edit will take control of the screen on the unit. The displayed screen should not be completely arbitrary though.

The other thing sounds strange. Could it be, you have some sort of MIDI signal going out of the computer through the USB port?
 
i had the same kind of problem playing over a clic track in Reaper, i think its was due to midi information send form Reaper.
curious to hear a moderator comment on that!
 
slackasayak said:
Sometimes an arbitrary screen is displayed. It happens maybe once an hour. At first I thought it was fat fingers, and that I was accidentally brushing against the Page button, etc, but I've been careful to avoid that, and it still happens. I think AX8-Edit was running at the time, which may be relevant.
Click to expand...
AX8 can cause the unit's displayed screen to change. Without AX8 connected does it happen? If it's only with AX8 connected I'd say it's normally. There is a rule of thumb: edit from software or from hardware, never both. If you want to keep it connected via USB, pause AX8 edit before trying to use the hardware interface.

Once, a dialog displaying "Bank N" popped up. The bank number decremented after about 1/4 second (seemed in time with the tempo button flash), and eventually cycled. I couldn't get rid of it with Exit, selecting another preset, etc, so I cycled the power. I took a brief video if anyone's interested. AX8-Edit wasn't running, but the unit was USB-connected. Disconnecting didn't stop the cycling.
Has anyone else seen anything like this? I hope it's some strange firmware issue, because I'd hate to be without the unit for long.
Click to expand...
I've never experienced this. It sounds strange for certain. Would like to see the video.
 
Thanks for the input, all. I typically run AX8-Edit while I'm using the device, because I'm still getting to grips with the interface of the latter. So far, AX8-Edit seems very good at pausing itself after an edit from the device. I've got the "Change the AX8 to the FS page when pausing communications" setting enabled, though. Not sure if that creates some sort of race condition.

My DAW (Reaper) wasn't running when any of these glitches happened.

As requested, here's the video:

.

Be warned: watching paint dry might make better viewing! You should be able to see 12 seconds of the bank selection dropping from 35 to 12. What you won't see (because I wasn't clever enough to capture it) was that while it was in this mode I could select presets: F1 to the preset list, an FS, then the momentary display of the preset name, all partially obscured behind the bank selection dialog. You also won't see that once it got to bank 1 it cycled back to the top, and repeated until I turned off the device.

My device is at the end of a 16' USB cable connected to a cheaper repeater, another 2' cable, then my MacBook. I wonder if that's the heart of the problem. I think I'll try running the device without the USB connection for a while, to rule out a load of possibilities.

But first, I have firmware upgrade business to attend to! :)
 
@slackasayak I'm trying to put my AX8 in a state where it shows that "Bank X" modal on the screen like that. I've never seen it do that before. And...I can't.

I thought maybe it would happen if I set F1 to bank down with no function set to F1-hold. Nope.

Did Fractal-Bot happen to be running? Maybe it had triggered a backup?

If it only happened the one time I'd probably shrug it off as something random. If you can re-create it, let us know.
 
@iaresee I've never seen that "Bank X" modal either, before or since. I just tried changing banks from AX8-Edit, wondering if that might display it, but no. I even slo-mo recorded it, just in case it was very quick.

No, Fractal-Bot wasn't running.

Of course, it's a brave new world now, with 4.0 and a new version of AX8-Edit that no longer needs to offer the "Change the AX8 to the FS page when pausing communications" option, so I'll see how it goes and keep you posted if it happens again.

Thanks, as always, for your help.
 
Thanks for reaching out, @joe rogers. I'm pleased to say that none of these issues have recurred since I upgraded the device firmware and AX8-Edit. Coincidence? Who knows?

Over the course of perhaps 50 hours of use I've only seen one strange thing, and it's happened twice. I'm curious to know if anyone else has seen it happen.

When you tweak one of the 8 amp control knobs, a little popup displays the name of the value being changed and the new value. It stays up for 2 seconds before it disappears. Twice, this popup has displayed spontaneously, when my hands were nowhere near the device. Once the device was disconnected from USB. The other time it was connected: AX8-Edit was running, and it automatically paused, as expected.

I wonder if maybe there's a little dust in one of the knobs. I wasn't quick enough to notice which value was being changed, or if it was the same one both times.

I haven't noticed it happen again over the last couple of weeks. If it recurs or becomes more frequent, I'll follow up.
 
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