A band I work with has had a studio live 16.4.2 in service for about 9 months. About 6 months ago I bought a macbook pro, airport express, and iPad for remote mixing. When we first set up, the universal control program asked to update the boards firmware. No problem there and the system has worked flawlessly since then.
Fast forward to 30 days ago when I went to my local dealer and bought my own. The price and feature sets match the types of shows I would be doing with it.
I took it home and hooked it up the same way I always hook up with the bands mixer. It asked to update the firmware and then proceeded to repeated crash during the firmware update. That sent me to the presonus knowledge base where I discovered that the version of firmware on the mixer (1.12) could not be directly updated to the current version (1.15) but must be incrementally updated. OK so I strip the current version of universal controller and install the older version which appears to work (no error messages) then strip that off the computer, reinstall the current version and reload the current version to finalize the firmware update.
Which again repeated crashes.
So I start a service ticket where I find out that the version of universal controller needed to update from 1.12 to 1.13 will not correctly run under Mac 10.8, even though it did not give any error messages.
The end of service ticket 1 was that the firmware at that point was probably tanked and I could either return it to them or to the dealer.
So I returned it to the dealer with instructions to make sure I got a machine with firmware at least 1.13.
At the dealer we open a box to check the firmware and then went through the update process. It appeared to work, and I hooked up the wireless and seemed to have remote control of everything.
I took it home and spent a couple of hours tweaking the effects and setting up a couple of basic show templates. I racked it up in a case.
I took it to a show we wanted to record, hooked up the capture and everything froze before I had line checked the first channel. Tried again without the computer. Still immediately froze. Tried reloading the firmware and it went all the way through the process but finished with a message that a firmware error had been detected.
I took it home and started service ticket 2. After going through their runaround like did I have the correct FireWire cable (despite the one they said was wrong has worked for 6 months on another mixer), they concluded something wasn't right in the firmware and I could send it to them or return it to the dealer.
I made it clear that if I was returning it that it was the second time for a brand new mixer and if I had to go back to the dealer it would be for a refund. I offered to allow them to drop ship me one that was already updated. They would not bite on that.
When I went back to the dealer, he offered to try pulling another from stock or to have the distributor drop ship me one. I elected for a refund and now have a new 01V.
For the record, mixer #2 also felt clearly warmer than the first mixed or the bands mixer in the area near the main outs. This leads me to believe some of the recent reports of certain mixers overheating.
Thinking back over the last couple years of posts I can remember extremes of both positive and negative experiences. It now seems to me that the inconsistencies are just part of the line. Which box you get off the shelf at the dealer matters. It may seem I only allowed presonus two strikes, but my final and greatest concern was the rate at which apple updates their systems and the move away from FireWire in general. If apple has already updated their system past where it can be used on machines that a large dealer has sitting in stock, that does not bode well for future updates.
On the positive side, after two service tickets, two escalations and repeated emails, I am apparently (by their techs own admission) as qualified to troubleshoot these machines as anyone they have in tech services.
Fast forward to 30 days ago when I went to my local dealer and bought my own. The price and feature sets match the types of shows I would be doing with it.
I took it home and hooked it up the same way I always hook up with the bands mixer. It asked to update the firmware and then proceeded to repeated crash during the firmware update. That sent me to the presonus knowledge base where I discovered that the version of firmware on the mixer (1.12) could not be directly updated to the current version (1.15) but must be incrementally updated. OK so I strip the current version of universal controller and install the older version which appears to work (no error messages) then strip that off the computer, reinstall the current version and reload the current version to finalize the firmware update.
Which again repeated crashes.
So I start a service ticket where I find out that the version of universal controller needed to update from 1.12 to 1.13 will not correctly run under Mac 10.8, even though it did not give any error messages.
The end of service ticket 1 was that the firmware at that point was probably tanked and I could either return it to them or to the dealer.
So I returned it to the dealer with instructions to make sure I got a machine with firmware at least 1.13.
At the dealer we open a box to check the firmware and then went through the update process. It appeared to work, and I hooked up the wireless and seemed to have remote control of everything.
I took it home and spent a couple of hours tweaking the effects and setting up a couple of basic show templates. I racked it up in a case.
I took it to a show we wanted to record, hooked up the capture and everything froze before I had line checked the first channel. Tried again without the computer. Still immediately froze. Tried reloading the firmware and it went all the way through the process but finished with a message that a firmware error had been detected.
I took it home and started service ticket 2. After going through their runaround like did I have the correct FireWire cable (despite the one they said was wrong has worked for 6 months on another mixer), they concluded something wasn't right in the firmware and I could send it to them or return it to the dealer.
I made it clear that if I was returning it that it was the second time for a brand new mixer and if I had to go back to the dealer it would be for a refund. I offered to allow them to drop ship me one that was already updated. They would not bite on that.
When I went back to the dealer, he offered to try pulling another from stock or to have the distributor drop ship me one. I elected for a refund and now have a new 01V.
For the record, mixer #2 also felt clearly warmer than the first mixed or the bands mixer in the area near the main outs. This leads me to believe some of the recent reports of certain mixers overheating.
Thinking back over the last couple years of posts I can remember extremes of both positive and negative experiences. It now seems to me that the inconsistencies are just part of the line. Which box you get off the shelf at the dealer matters. It may seem I only allowed presonus two strikes, but my final and greatest concern was the rate at which apple updates their systems and the move away from FireWire in general. If apple has already updated their system past where it can be used on machines that a large dealer has sitting in stock, that does not bode well for future updates.
On the positive side, after two service tickets, two escalations and repeated emails, I am apparently (by their techs own admission) as qualified to troubleshoot these machines as anyone they have in tech services.
Firewire is going to be replaced by USB 3.0 IMHO.