Extremely Odd USB Audio Issue

refractor

Member
I'm running a Windows 7 64 Bit OS. The USB firmware on the III is up to date and as are the latest drivers from the website.

Now oddly, the USB audio will just drop out after a while. The guitar continues to be audible, both on headphone as well as monitors and I can see it on the Axefx meters too. But there's no output from my DAW/PC, even though I can see the meters on both showing outgoing output signal. This outgoing signal will not reflect on the Axefx meters either. Now if I reboot my computer as well the III, the audio will be back. But again after an unspecified amount of time (and unfortunately this has happened each time I wasn't playing back any audio) the USB audio will disappear. Restarting the Axefx alone doesn't solve the problem either. The only way to get it back running is to reboot the computer.

Any clues on what's going on? I've tried re-installing the drivers too. Doesn't solve the issue.

EDIT : Forgot to add, Axe Edit works as usual even when the audio has dropped out.
 
Maybe some kind of power saving functionality of the computer? Is this a laptop? You could test this by playing back audio for a long time (e.g. over night?) and see if it still happens.
 
This is happening to me as well and I'm on Mac. Seems to me to be something in the AFXIII. Only thing that fixes it for me is rebooting the AFXIII.
 
I've had this problem too (Windows stops outputting sound but Axe-FX still produces sounds), but didn't know how to report it since it's so random.

I just checked and my USB Buffer Size is already set to 256 (max) on the Axe-FX and 512 for the ASIO Buffer Size in the FAS USB Audio Control Panel. I just set that to 1024 samples and lost audio and restarted the Axe-FX. Audio is back. I'll report back if there are any more random drop outs.
 
Increase USB buffer size.

This doesn't seem to do anything. My buffer was set to 512, which is fairly reasonable I'd say. I just set it to 1024, made no difference. I then proceeded to restart the unit post this and now the Control Panel shows ASIO not active.
 
Maybe some kind of power saving functionality of the computer? Is this a laptop? You could test this by playing back audio for a long time (e.g. over night?) and see if it still happens.

No, I'm quite certain it isn't that. I'm using a desktop and in all the instances, it hasn't gone to sleep when this has happened.
 
Oh, no that's not what I meant. It's possible that USB busses go to sleep after a certain time of inactivity. I use this for extreme powersaving with my laptop. Maybe it's a Linux only thing, I don't know, but it could have been a possibility.

But based on the other experiences it's completely unlikely! Hope you guys (and Cliff) will figure it out!
 
Oh, no that's not what I meant. It's possible that USB busses go to sleep after a certain time of inactivity. I use this for extreme powersaving with my laptop. Maybe it's a Linux only thing, I don't know, but it could have been a possibility.

But based on the other experiences it's completely unlikely! Hope you guys (and Cliff) will figure it out!

I'm definitely not cool enough to use Linux, haha. I never had this issue with the II. Hoping it's just a bug with the driver.
 
Setting USB Buffer to 1024 in the FAS Control Panel did not stop random audio drop outs for me. And like I said, it was already maxed at 256 in the unit itself. An annoying problem, but power cycling the Axe-FX resolves the issue.
 
Setting USB Buffer to 1024 in the FAS Control Panel did not stop random audio drop outs for me. And like I said, it was already maxed at 256 in the unit itself. An annoying problem, but power cycling the Axe-FX resolves the issue.

For me the power cycling makes no difference at all. In the USB Control Panel, I can see 'ASIO not active'. This stays even after multiple power cycles.
 
UPDATE : This seems to just keep getting worse. Audio dropped out and wouldn't come back on inspite of PC as well as AxeFx restart. I'm pretty certain this is a driver bug. Hope you guys look into it tomorrow.
 
I'm gonna go for an Apollo 8 with Thunderbolt 3 expansion card to avoid the USB issues. I just so wish AXE IIII would've had TB3 so I wouldn't have to spend an additional $3k.
 
Looks like there's been no update in about a week. I hope Fractal is looking into this because it's definitely not an isolated incident.
 
Back
Top Bottom