Dead Virus TI - Before I give it back

[dent]

I recently bought a Virus TI from a dealer here in Australia. They had to source it through an Australian distributor. This was just at the time the Aussie dollar dropped in value compared to the Greenback, so the distributor held back on importing the unit (I assume from the US). In the mean time, my dealer lent me a display unit - which was partially broken, a bung LCD screen and some other oddities. But for the most part, it had been a good unit and I was starting to get to grips with it.

Finally, my unit arrived into the country (4-6 weeks later) and I was told to come in and exchange the display unit ASAP. The trade went down, and I was holding onto a brand-new TI Desktop!!! Everything seemed cool, and I was even happier to hear that a new upgrade, 2.7.5.0, had hit the internet!

I set up the unit, started up Ableton Live, and gave it a quick test. Great, it was a working unit. So I decided to upgrade. The upgrade ran smoothly, and everything seemed fine until I loaded up Ableton and tried one of my unfinished tracks containing several TI parts. Suddenly, I heard a rumble of crackles and distortion coming from my monitors?!

WTF. After a bit of playing with the audio buffer and plugin buffer settings, I seemed to get it to play without crackles - but I was still getting the odd spike or pop. I then loaded up a track containing NO TI parts. It would not play without crackles - no matter what buffer settings...

I searched the knowledge base, this forum, and the one at virusti.com... There were several threads mentioning crackling and popping sounds, but for much much older revisions of the OS. I also noticed a knowledge base article on AccessMusic.de regarding Windows computers with multi-core/multi-processor support. I own an Intel MacBook Pro Core Duo (not core 2 duo), so initially felt this issue would not affect me. HOWEVER, when I turned off multi-core support in Ableton Live, my Virus Ti started to play without a hitch. NO Glitches, crackles or pops. This may have been an okay solution if it was not for the fact that my CPU was a good 20-30% higher while playing tracks - particularly tracks that didn't use the TI.

Arghh!!! I attempted to contact Access Support about the issue I was experiencing. While I was waiting, I made the fateful decision to downgrade the 2.7.3.0... Initially, I thought I would try to downgrade the Mac software side of things only, leaving the TI firmware at 2.7.5.0. To do this I uninstalled 2.7.5.0 Virus Control and re-installed 2.7.3.0 without the Virus attached to my computer. Loading Live, I played the track without TI parts BUT with multi-core enabled. NO CRACKLE!!! I was thinking to myself, great, that fixed it. However, loading the track containing TI parts, I noticed none of the parts were making any sounds... Clicking on the Virus Control plugin revealed why. There was a firmware mismatch with the Virus Control - 2.7.3.0 mac component trying to be used in conjunction with 2.7.5.0 hardware. Made sense I guessed...

So, I figured perhaps I can downgrade the firmware on the unit too... I started Virus Control Centre and tried to restore/upgrade the software. It said that it had detected 2.7.5.0 but would install 2.7.3.0. I clicked the update button, and it proceeded to upgrade (or downgrade in this case)... Several minutes later, it was nearing the end of the update when it suddenly stopped. The Virus reset, and the unit displayed a message about a failed update and having to run Virus Control Center to re-install the firmware. I proceeded to do just this... However, when VCC attempted to communicate with the virus, it said waiting for response, and shortly afterwards, timed out showing a dialog box about it not being able to make contact with the unit!!!

My heart dropped! Perhaps I should use VCC from the 2.7.5.0... Nope, no joy. Holding down ARP and EDIT while powering on, Nope. Holding the exit button while powering on to get the unit into USB Update mode? Nope, the unit was already showing this screen after powering on... I have a Windows XP box at home too, so I tried to download and attempt the upgrade using the Windows installer. No go. Reading some other posts around about failed upgrades revealed that perhaps downgrading to much older OS's might restore communication... Trying several releases (2.0.3, 1.2.3) on Windows, nothing worked!!! I kept getting messages about an Incorrect Flash Rom configuration and to contact support at Access.

Emailing support, I got a response saying my only option was to get the unit serviced - not sure if that meant by them, or by the distributor. I get the feeling that it may be on a plane/boat back to Germany...

Anyway, I have spoken with the dealer and they want to me to bring the unit in tomorrow. Before I do this, I am wondering if ANYONE has ANYTHING that may help me? Any little nugget of info, or perhaps something I haven't tried yet. I will be giving things one last go tonight myself... Perhaps using an older Mac installer might be worth a try?

Karl

[LivePsy]

Sorry mate, it shouldn't be that hard. I've switched between 2.7.3 and 2.7.5 a few times and its always fine. I also get crackles with 2.7.5 when exceeding 50% cpu in Live but it is fine in 2.7.3. But my TI happily updates the firmware back and forth OK.

Just for the hell of it, you mention holding ARP and EDIT: actually you should hold only the EDIT button of the ARP section down to reset the TI.

Cheers,
B