Why cant Fractal USB reconnect on its own?

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dws2384

Member
I dont find myself in situations where it happens often but when I am and it happens, man is it frustrating.

Whenever I have a device that can go to sleep like a laptop on battery power, phone, ipad connected via USB and the device goes to sleep the USB connection dies. Fine, thats to be expected and common. However, when waking the device up the only way I can seem to ever get it to reconnect is by powering the Fractal unit off and back on again. I can unplug the cable from either end, sleep and wake the external device - nothing. Do Fractal devices only look for one USB connection and once thats established and broken it wont look for another until its powered on again? I dont get it.

I can replicate this on Axe 3 and FM9 with multiple cables and multiple devices - desktop, laptop, iphone, ipad. They all apple though, I dont have a windows computer to try with. Although I dont know why this matters. I have multiple other guitar related products (and many non guitar ones) with USB and I cant remember this being the case with a single one of them. Usually they just reestablish connection when the device wakes up or worst case you unplug the cable and plug it back in. Seems like this shouldnt be a problem. If it is can we at least get a button in Axe-Edit or on the device to retry USB or something? Powering on and off a unit seems like a 20 year old solution.
 
I only have an fm3 but in the years I’ve owned it, maybe 2-3 times I’ve had to reboot to establish a usb connection. Otherwise, It always reconnects automatically under the circumstances you listed with PC and Apple computers (wake from sleep, reopen edit, unplug usb, opening DAW etc)
 
TwinbornAxis said:
I only have an fm3 but in the years I’ve owned it, maybe 2-3 times I’ve had to reboot to establish a usb connection. Otherwise, It always reconnects automatically under the circumstances you listed with PC and Apple computers (wake from sleep, reopen edit, unplug usb, opening DAW etc)
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Ya, its not when the computer screen just turns off, thats mostly just the screen being off but the hard drives still on and the system just in low power mode. Mine reconnects in those instances too. Its not ending the connection. Its more when the computer is on battery and it actually goes into full sleep or you close the lid completely. Same if you lock your phone or ipad. The connection turns off completely. Which I said, I understand, thats normal. The reconnection after this will not work though.
 
dws2384 said:
Ya, its not when the computer screen just turns off, thats mostly just the screen being off but the hard drives still on and the system just in low power mode. Mine reconnects in those instances too. Its not ending the connection. Its more when the computer is on battery and it actually goes into full sleep or you close the lid completely. Same if you lock your phone or ipad. The connection turns off completely. Which I said, I understand, thats normal. The reconnection after this will not work though.
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Interesting, I just tried for you testing on battery full sleep, closing lid plugged in and on battery, and even a full shut down on my m1 MacBook and it reconnects every time without power cycling the fm3
 
TwinbornAxis said:
Interesting, I just tried for you testing on battery full sleep, closing lid plugged in and on battery, and even a full shut down on my m1 MacBook and it reconnects every time without power cycling the fm3
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Weird. What USB firmware are you on? Although, I have had this happen on previous ones too. I dont have an FM3 though
 
dws2384 said:
Weird. What USB firmware are you on? Although, I have had this happen on previous ones too. I dont have an FM3 though
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I might be missing something but checking like you would for the axe fx on setup > utilities > version it only shows firmware 8.0 no USB Firmware listed so not really sure, sorry about that
 
I found a 7 page thread here from a few years ago where people had their connections drop and there wasnt a resolution, sounds like the only way to get it to reconnect is a power down. That seems very archaic in 2024 on a device this expensive. Again, the reason why it disconnects isnt really the issue to me, sh*t happens. I just dont know why it cant reconnect....
 
This has been going on for at least 30 years with sleep and USB connections across quite a bit of hardware. Some work, some don't. It's more or less, part of the process.

My understanding is the USB "bus" isn't able to reconnect to some devices due to the power management architecture of both the computer and the hardware. It's like they cannot perform the "handshake" required to make it happen. I've got hard drives that if THOSE go to sleep I have to restart the computer. No amount of unplug/plug in/on/off Olympics will get those to work for some reason. They need to be there at start up.

Technical term is "driver enumeration" for the reconnecting of all the parts. I'm not counting on it ever being fixed. When I got my very first DAW eons ago the instructions were pretty clear turn off all power management and sleep processes and do it the old fashioned way.

I never let anything I use for audio production go to sleep. I've had zero system induced problems in the past three years on three machines. Now user induced, that's an entirely DIFFERENT story 🤣...
 
m3medic said:
This has been going on for at least 30 years with sleep and USB connections across quite a bit of hardware. Some work, some don't. It's more or less, part of the process.

My understanding is the USB "bus" isn't able to reconnect to some devices due to the power management architecture of both the computer and the hardware. It's like they cannot perform the "handshake" required to make it happen. I've got hard drives that if THOSE go to sleep I have to restart the computer. No amount of unplug/plug in/on/off Olympics will get those to work for some reason. They need to be there at start up.

Technical term is "driver enumeration" for the reconnecting of all the parts. I'm not counting on it ever being fixed. When I got my very first DAW eons ago the instructions were pretty clear turn off all power management and sleep processes and do it the old fashioned way.

I never let anything I use for audio production go to sleep. I've had zero system induced problems in the past three years on three machines. Now user induced, that's an entirely DIFFERENT story 🤣...
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Fair enough.

Out of the probably 50 usb devices (maybe more?) I have used over the past decade the Fractal one seems to be the only one I have multiple issues with though (other than a one off need to reboot everything freeze up type thing)
 
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