Fed up

[Royalston]

Hello
I have yet another problem with my hopelessly useless Ti.

Its simple: Turn on Ti.
"establishing usb connection"
"usb connection has been lost"

I have tried different USB ports. The are some things plugged into other usb ports but that is neccessary (I have a usb keyboard and a midiman)- another of the Ti's quirks is that Virus Control will not lauch fully unless I have midi plugged in. Im not using it thru midi but VC asks for it. Actually, plugging in midi cables doesnt work either. VC rarely starts or works.


Im on a G5, OS X 10.4.2, SX 3.1.
Ive been doing this for years - I know how to get a synth working (or I used to at least). I'm really really sick of this.
I waited a year for a synth that doesnt work.

Very very dissapointed.
Royalston

[ben crosland]

I have not heard of these problems before. I'm wondering whether you may have a faulty unit?

At any rate, I'd recommend you get in touch with Access support about this.

[Royalston]

thanks ben

[guyur]

Ooooh, I have the same problem too. I'm starting to think there's a bad batch goin round.

[Royalston]

guyur
check your USB cables

that seemed to make a difference for me - The one that access provided with the Ti was faulty. Swapping it solved the connection problem, but Virus Control still doesnt launch.

It did launch immediately after I swapped cables (in an empty SX project), but after I tried using VC in a song that already had elements in it, it failed the USB test and it doesn't launch any more.

It seem random as to whether the Ti will be seen by audio midi setup...

Access support seem as confused about this as me.

[torpor]

one thing that you can try that may provide some interesting results is to get yourself a PCI->USB adapter //just for the Virus TI//, put it in your PC, and plug the TI into this adapter all by itself.

there is definitely a situation with **USB** in the PC world, in that not all USB controllers/chips are considered equal. if you have problems with sustained throughput on your PC motherboard when using USB, then one thing you can do to verify/get around this problem is put another USB controller in there, on your PCI bus, and use that exclusively for your audio/midi needs, leaving the onboard USB ports for your peripherals ..

not saying this is 'the' solution to your problem, royalston, but for sure, were i in your position, i'd get myself a decent-quality USB/PCI card and give that a try, to see if if provides some kind of solution. and it shouldn't be -terribly- expensive to get good quality USB on a PCI card for your PC ..

[Royalston]

hmmm

firstly - im on Mac not PC. (g5 2x2.3)

secondly - what if its the virus and its software thats faulty - if I buy a a PCI card it *might* not fix anything. Then I will have wasted more time and money on a synth that isnt working.

thirdly - Ive been testing the ti with as little usb devices plugged in as I can. It should be abe to work. Everything else I use is firewire.

I'm in contact with access support but they seem to reply once every 2 days, with answers like 'did you do what we told you to do?'

I write back 'yes'...and wait another 2 days for a new suggestion. Access support must be busy at the moment. I feel sorry for those guys.

Royalston

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

Yes im sure there busy at the moment. Last 7 yrs have gone pretty much without a hitch.

DS

[kolektor1]

hi all,

well i m getting the same usb connection lost as you guys, my ti was ok til today, tried another usb cable , another port same problem...

dont know what happen but i just installed a mac osx on my pc , n i installed the virus on it which was working great, i dont know if there is a link between this n my problems...

but now its stopped to work on both os ! f..k

any clues?

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

I think the reality is this....

Virus TI and TI software is mostly fine and bug free. The inconsistencies appear to be computer related. VC worked fine on my purpose built Carillon (audio pc)......but like shit on my Dell desktop. Im sorry my observation seems simplistic.....but I just dont have the time for trouble shooting and beta testing. My point is, VC works perfectly in the 'right' environment.

There is only so much Access can be expected to do. I dont beleive it relates to faulty Virus's either.

Some people will always experience performance/integration issues.....its a hard fact of life. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I dont know why mine works fine......

DS

[psy604]

if you're able to flash the OS it's kind of proof, that low data rate transfers do work.

try a shielded cable (with ferrit beads near it's ends) to prevent
high data rate transfers from being disturbed by radio interference
(which may be caused by unshielded cables or devices nearby).

good luck ...

[LivePsy]

Also you have to try getting the TI to work with another computer, and it would be helpful to try a newish Windows PC or Intel Mac. You may not be able to get access to a different computer, but its the only way you can determine if the TI is the problem or your computer. Its no good assuming that either are fine, you have to try it.

B

[Monobeat]

Agreed. I thought my TI was the problem for a longtime. I kept on blaming it and blaming. Then I switched to a nice, new, barebones system and it's worked ever since and has outperformed any of my other equipment by leaps and bounds. Don't be so quick to rule out your system.


It's soooo worth reformatting everything and starting over to take advantage of the TI technology. If I would have given up, I don't know what my music would sound like now...

; )

[djbrownie]

Actually the TI Snow at my store does this all the time, i've stopped trying, given up.

[djbrownie]

oh, i should add that the ti desktop used on the same computer with the same usb cable and the same virus os works fine. new intel mac pro, os 10.5.3

[psy604]

have you ever tried that snow on a windows PC?

maybe there's a problem with the Snow RTAS plugin in combination with Intel CPU?
(on PC there's a separate plug-in .dll file for the snow, so i guess on MAC it's similar)

got no clue of TI Snow or MAC ... but i think it would be worth a try to narrow down the reason.

or a VST wrapper/adapter would be worth a try, too.

[///OSS]

yeah the reality is that it's impossible to make a piece of software be flawlessly compatible with every variance in hardware out there...so in the case of it's integration features, they are highly dependent on a good stable tested setup.... it's a hit or miss really but more hits than misses I believe at this stage in the game...I have 3 completely different setups and it SUX in one of them but the other two it performs with flying colors.

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

yeah the reality is that it's impossible to make a piece of software be flawlessly compatible with every variance in hardware out there...so in the case of it's integration features, they are highly dependent on a good stable tested setup.... it's a hit or miss really but more hits than misses I believe at this stage in the game...I have 3 completely different setups and it SUX in one of them but the other two it performs with flying colors.

This proves my point. The TI software in itself is probably about as stream lined and bug free as its ever going to get. The Virus is a finely tuned instrument, everything is streamlined/tweaked for audio application. I have a custom built Carillon Audio PC and never experienced the problems others seem to have. Then I tried it with my regular Dell desktop and hit a number of sporadic issues that couldnt be reliably replicated.

99% of PC's built are multipurpose with bullshit components and drivers/software/code that hasnt been updated for years. All this junk bullshit code floating around the motherboard is bound to cause problems with a sensitive system such as Total Integration. I have said time and again, I honestly dont think the problem nor the responsibility is entirely Access's. They should not be expected to troubleshoot the average bedroom studio, hobbyists bullshit computer set up.

I think its very nice that Access are seen to be trying to improve the situation with their regular updates. I for one believe them when they say they have been unable to replicate the issue on their own machines in the office/factory.

I bet any of you £10 that if you were to use a purpose built audio pc that has no junk compoments/software then the overall response, performance and reliability of your Virus TI (and music software in general) will be a hell of alot better.

Thats just my opinion....

DS

[jonkull]

My 2 cents...for people that think it's a computer/OS issue because the Ti is perfect, stable and bug free.

This is the kind of thing people kept telling me the first month I owned my Ti and couldn't get it to work...I was having USB connection issues, drop-outs and lock-ups. Then when I finally sent it in for a warranty service (after several weeks of back and forth with Access support) it was determined that the problems I was having were due to a faulty logic board in the Virus. Now I have a new logic board and the Virus works perfectly. It's not always the computer/OS sometimes it's the Virus itself. I wasted money on cables and time on repeatedly reinstalling my computer's OS and audio software when I could have had a working unit simply by sending it to a service center or returning it to the store and exchanging for a different one. But everyone (people on the interwebs, the retailer, Access and me) assumed that the problem was with my computer.

My suggestion to the OP would be (as had been said by others) try some new cables (and a different computer if you have access to it) then contact Access and have it opened up and looked at by a tech.

[tmielke]

My new multimedia pc with a msi mainboard showed the same problems while my old work pc with a low price Asrock mainboard worked well. So much for 'don't buy crappy hardware'. Fortunately I had a 3xUSB/2xFirewire PCI card in the old computer which I don't need there any more. Plugging it into my newer pc solved the problem for me. Maybe it's an issue of backward compatibility. Maybe some newer chips don't support old USB1 features well, on which the Virus relies...

[teethofgold]

to the original dude's issue, on the mac you can go to apple menu>about this mac>more info to access the system profiler.

from there look through your USB device tree. according to access, the virus needs to be on a dedicated USB bus. just because they are separate physical ports doesn't mean they are separate busses, as often there are internal hubs for USB (where the two ports on the front are one bus, and the two on the back are another, for example).

try experimenting with plugging stuff into different ports to see if it makes a difference, all the while monitoring using the system profiler.

for a simple test, plug the virus into one and a mouse into the other, at which point you can confirm if the virus works... then perhaps you can get an external usb hub (cheap) for your other devices.

[dysamoria]

Some people will always experience performance/integration issues.....its a hard fact of life. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I dont know why mine works fine......
DS

here's the reason: there's too many chefs in the kitchen of the computer industry and 90% of them want THEIR version of a "standard" to be the standard. The rest of the problem is people who think this is ok and think that it's NORMAL for computers to be the one tool that is allowed to be so unimaginably inconsistent from machine to machine (even when they are CLONES of each other, they behave differently - been there, done that). Oh and developers not caring enough to follow specifications as documented if they can do something easier for themselves, and selling things before they're fully debugged. Take mLAN. It totally, 100% takes over the Firewire bus. The bus is useless for anything else once mLan is on. This is the complete opposite intention of the very creation of firewire.

[Timo]

here's the reason: there's too many chefs in the kitchen of the computer industry

Indeed. The number of possible configurations of all components in a system is gargantuan. And most off-the-shelf PCs are not designed with high-stress, performance music/video production in mind.

There is a way around it, and that's placing your money with people who have tested many, many configurations for music systems and have the expertise and support to back it up.

One company that jumps out a mile is http://www.adkproaudio.com (ships worldwide), the guy behind it is driven to obsession (in a good way) in creating absolute optimal configurations for music production PCs. He buys loads of new stock and torture tests everything with everything, and he sure as hell knows his stuff.

Another UK-based company that I know of is http://www.paqt.co.uk

I reckon if you really want to buy a hassle-free PC it would be worth paying that little bit extra for these kind of services, by people who have tested multiple configurations to come up with ones that work optimally. Ones that allow the system and busses to run unhindered.

and 90% of them want THEIR version of a "standard" to be the standard.

That's the same with Dell, etc.. They're just mass, generic PCs, which are only good for office, gaming, and one other thing (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mKIOsr9LioY). The equivalent of a chicken factory production-line.

[LivePsy]

Having set up many hundreds of computers in my time, I can state for a fact that you can take 4 or 6 computers out of the box and set them up simultaneously side-by-side. They do not behave the same, they ask for different updates and in different orders. Some stumble over simple setups, some are fine. They are NOT all the same even though they all started with the same disk image. I'm just talking about Windows, Office and Acrobat. I have done this experiment many times and its now boring to see 1 out of 6 misbehave with the identical installs.

If you are confident you know what a computer is going to do, then you haven't had enough knocks yet :)

B

[tmielke]

from there look through your USB device tree. according to access, the virus needs to be on a dedicated USB bus. just because they are separate physical ports doesn't mean they are separate busses, as often there are internal hubs for USB (where the two ports on the front are one bus, and the two on the back are another, for example).

try experimenting with plugging stuff into different ports to see if it makes a difference, all the while monitoring using the system profiler.

for a simple test, plug the virus into one and a mouse into the other, at which point you can confirm if the virus works... then perhaps you can get an external usb hub (cheap) for your other devices.

With my pc it didn't make any difference whether I had a device plugged to another connector sharing the internal hub. Both computers have all their onboard usb connectors designed as two port hubs. The decisive difference may be the chipset used, which is SIS on the working pc and nVidia on the non-working one. That would be my best bet for naming a factor that would help to distinguish whether or not a ti would work with a certain hardware. (I don't know much about mac hardware though...)

Btw.: The PCI card I'm now using has three discrete USB controllers with one port each.

[marc]

Hello
I have yet another problem with my hopelessly useless Ti.

Its simple: Turn on Ti.
"establishing usb connection"
"usb connection has been lost"

I have tried different USB ports. The are some things plugged into other usb ports but that is neccessary (I have a usb keyboard and a midiman)- another of the Ti's quirks is that Virus Control will not lauch fully unless I have midi plugged in. Im not using it thru midi but VC asks for it. Actually, plugging in midi cables doesnt work either. VC rarely starts or works.


Im on a G5, OS X 10.4.2, SX 3.1.
Ive been doing this for years - I know how to get a synth working (or I used to at least). I'm really really sick of this.
I waited a year for a synth that doesnt work.

Very very dissapointed.
Royalston

the minimum requirement for the TI software is 10.4.6 or higher.

marc

[spindlenine]

I just wanted to post to second the notion that an earlier poster made - that the issue is probably related to USB rather than the Virus.

I would recommend looking in System Profiler to see if the Virus shows up in the USB section. You will need to go to View => Refresh to see it pop up if you load System Profiler before you plug in the TI. After the connection fails, refresh System Profiler again to see if the TI still shows up in there. If it does, then it might be an issue with the TI rather than your G5 (although that is not totally definitive).

If you decide to try a fresh USB PCI card, note that they are dead simple to install - you can install one in less than five minutes if you have enough space to open up the G5's case. Be sure to get a reputable card from a well-known Mac supplier (such as Belkin); I recently purchased a FireWire PCI card for my old Quicksilver G4 tower, but I can't use it for FireWire networking because it is a dodgy Chinese card I got for cheap on Newegg. That's what I get for being a cheap bastard.

Good luck with the problem - I hope it goes away for you. Let us know if you find a fix.

- max

[Prime NL]

Just a tip...do not buy a combo PCI card as this mostly will not work on a older Mac G4 or G5.

Just buy a dedicated PCI USB card and you are ready to go.

[DeFex]

I started having a problem after i moved my computer, forgot what USB port, installed the latest software/firmware all at the same time! (one of them caused it, im not sure :D)
anyways now i found that i cant load the vst in cubase (sounddriver failed to start) and it works fine in other hosts.

anyways i just set it to the first slot in the vst instrument panel and it seems to be ok now.

mind you i am on a PC.

[IamEvil]

I've not got the ti driver on this pc but going from memory...

If you go to your start menu / access folder , I'm sure there is a Re-install virus drivers option