TOPIC:

Going back to this issue of distortion of 2channels and giving you an update, one customer did send us unit as explained previously. We did test this unit for the past week now and using a very complex set of scripts, we couldn't get a single time any default of distortion/noise/swap of channels.. We're therefore faced with something that is even more random that what we're being explained here (i..e unit powering with noise every 2days as per report from customer). We're not sure to be honest what could be the difference here. We keep going back to the wiring since we know 100% sure that faulty wiring will cause noise, but then again hard to say since some of you made sure it wouldn't be the case. So I guess we're faced with a mystery bug.

here is what I propose,

@ Cal900, tw1l1ght, please update your tech support ticket to our team (i..e forum isn't the path for support/rma) and we'll take it from there.

@ AidenL, it sounds like you already have a ticket opened and we're just waiting for your comments to help you further. So you should be all set.

Hoping this info helps.

DevTeam

Thanks for your reply on here and thank you for the detailed reply on the Ticket also.

Id like to apologise for my apparent impatience - I guess that the delays imposed by the time zones and so on have taken a day here and there out of the response time, and made the process longer than i expected. I also accept that you needed time to test in detail, rather than offering a hurried solution.

Also, the fact that everyone else said that your support was superb, I was amazed at why my issues were appearing to take so long to be responded to.

I'll give it another try, and I hope that it will be a good result this time. I have heard great things about your company and your product, and I hope I'll be one of your followers when the issues are resolved.

Thanks to you and Nick for your help.

devteam wrote:

@ AidenL ,

We've already answered few comments offline to your tech support emails offline so I'm not 100% sure if there is much to add here. I would hope that all the answers we provided would give you more information as to what happened to your file? We did test it, we did run some further script and did clarify all this information in the tech support ticket. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard for everybody to realize that "random events" (i.e. sometimes my level is low) isn't something that we can easily troubleshoot over a 1h test bench. If it was, we'd be more than happy to help. It requires for us to run a file over time and along multiple scripts doing powercycling/checking some random sequences.

"I've done all the basic troubleshooting, and have Dropboxed my project as requested on the 29th October and haven't heard a word back since."
While everybody here here has been very busy lately, we did received your file on a Friday afternoon (29th) and explained on the Nov 3rd of November that we would load the file which we did right away as our technician got some free time. Maybe you didn't receive that tech support ticket? Sorry to hear that.

As mentioned in our tech support ticket, we're behind our products and are more than happy to help! Sometimes a simple email suffice to know what's the progress on the testing. Since you've purchased your unit from a dealer, they would be able to help organize a replacement unit for you. That's a simple process.

Hoping all this info helps and sorry to read you're so upset about us. Just understand that we're here to help, just not within 24h over a week end period especially as sometimes it's much harder than it looks (i.e. completely random event)... Feel free to contact us or call us if you have further questions.

Devteam

Short update from my side:

I had the DDRC-88As power-supply plugged into the switched power out connector of my AVR - so it gets powered on/off in sync with the AVR.
A couple of days ago I plugged it directly into a wall-socket - since then I had neither random pops nor the crackle issue.

Keeping my fingers crossed it stays that way.

Might be worth a shot for others with similar issues...

Will keep monitoring for a couple more days before I go forward with tech-support. They offered to swap out the miniSHARC module as next troubleshooting step.

Raphael

Dear All,

Good news is that after few days of intense troubleshooting by few engineers, quite a lot of scripting to debug what was really a random effect on only one unit here in the office (back from the field thanks to Adam!), we were able to:
a) See the symptoms on 1/40 to 1/60 reboots. Completely random obviously
b) Figure out a way to investigate what was triggering that symptom (by far the hardest since it would boot fine on all other units).
Long story short, we may have figured out what it was and the even better news is that a firmware fix should do it. So in an effort to get more feedback (since we don't have anymore faulty units here), we've just released a new DSP firmware packaged under a new DDRC-88 v1.06 utility.

To test it out, go to your download section, get the DDRC-88A utility (we're assuming that you're running the latest firmware?), simply connect to the unit and click on the "REFRESH DSP" button. No need for any firmware upgrade upgrade if you were running the latest firmware.

Please keep us updated so we can learn if that does the trick. It surely did on our side. Thanks!

DevTeam

This is GREAT news!

...will install the update tonight.

Thank you,
Raphael

By occasional distortion... Do you mean loud static pops? Mine has just started doing this randomly across the channels.

tw1l1ght wrote:

This is GREAT news!

...will install the update tonight.

Thank you,
Raphael

Did it work for you? I did as they suggested , and if it did anything it made static pops quieter, but still very noticeable. My static pops are randomly happening through random channels.

I cannot tell yet, my unit behaved kinda strange after the update:

The evening I updated the unit, all went well - no noise, no pops. But the next day when I powered it up again (~12hours later) I had instant pops across all channels in 1sec intervals - all the time. Even powercycling the unit didn't help.

I then refreshed the DSP again with update 1.06 and the pops where gone again. Since then I noticed one random pop over the last 2 evenings.

Have not powercycled the unit more than 2 times since then, so I cannot tell if the crackling issue is gone yet.

I updated my tech-support ticket with my observation aswell, but b/c of the weekend I have not heard back yet.

Any news regarding noise/pops?

I have tried the instructions from above, and I am still getting the static pops from random channels. I have even turned it off and I am still getting them.... they might be quieter, but they are still there and can be heard easily from any seat in our Home Theater.

I noticed no noise since I installed the update, random pops are gone aswell.

However, I had that "instant random pops on all channels directly after powering on"-issue I mentioned above again a couple of days ago, but that vanished once I powercycled the 88a.

devteam wrote:

Dear All,

Good news is that after few days of intense troubleshooting by few engineers, quite a lot of scripting to debug what was really a random effect on only one unit here in the office (back from the field thanks to Adam!), we were able to:
a) See the symptoms on 1/40 to 1/60 reboots. Completely random obviously
b) Figure out a way to investigate what was triggering that symptom (by far the hardest since it would boot fine on all other units).
Long story short, we may have figured out what it was and the even better news is that a firmware fix should do it. So in an effort to get more feedback (since we don't have anymore faulty units here), we've just released a new DSP firmware packaged under a new DDRC-88 v1.06 utility.

To test it out, go to your download section, get the DDRC-88A utility (we're assuming that you're running the latest firmware?), simply connect to the unit and click on the "REFRESH DSP" button. No need for any firmware upgrade upgrade if you were running the latest firmware.

Please keep us updated so we can learn if that does the trick. It surely did on our side. Thanks!

DevTeam

I have tried as you suggested, and I have also tried turning the unit off via the windows interface, and I still get random static pops...granted they are considerably quieter then they were but they are still very noticeable. Do you have any more fixes to take care of this? I leave mine on 24/7.

@ ellisr63,

Sorry for missing your post. Please bear in mind that this forum is for users/community use only. It's is "not" a way for us to keep track of issues with a customers as it's very very hard to track issues on 1000's of customers posting. We do have a full fledged tech support system for that purpose. Support - > Contact US.

Please start a tech support ticket if the issue remains. Thanks.

DevTeam