Problem with Ashley Protea

Randy Gartner

Randy Gartner

Junior
Jan 12, 2011
465
18
18
72
Pennsylvania
randygartnersound.com
Tonight,in the middle of the first set,I started to get a loud modulating sound from the monitors.It was so bad the band had to stop. I looked at the protea 4 channel digital eq and all 4 channels were muted,but the 2 monitor channels ( channels 3 & 4) had 2 red lights ( first was mute not sure what the second red lights were )plus the graphic display on the screen disapeared and was replaced with the Ashley logo.
The Protea 4 x 8 processor lost lap top control and the unit showed all 4 inputs and all 8 outputs muted.But the weird thing was it still passed audio . I pulled the monitors out of the eq and ran them direct out of the board ( APB Prodesk) for the rest of the set.
At break,I turned off both units and they powered back up and everything was fine.This never happened before. I have had the processor about 6 years and it was sent back over the winter for a tune up. The eq is maybe 4 years old.Never had a problem with it before. Have any of you experienced anything like this??????? Anyone have a clue as to what happend?
 
Re: Problem with Ashley Protea

Sounds like low voltage, the logo display usually only happens on power up.

Did you have any other issues, say a tube guitar amp that didn't sound right?
 
Re: Problem with Ashley Protea

Tim McCulloch said:
Sounds like low voltage, the logo display usually only happens on power up.

Did you have any other issues, say a tube guitar amp that didn't sound right?
Click to expand...

Hi Tim,
I don't think it was low voltage for 2 reasons. When I ran into low voltage situations before,I noticed I was lacking headroom on the board.That was not a problem last night.Also,the keyboard player usually has problems when we run into low voltage situations and he was fine.
Everything sounded fine right up untill the problem occurred.The noise was just in the monitors. All 4 channels of the eq showed mute yet they were passing signal. Channels 3&4 ( monitors) had 2 red lights,1 was mute the other could have been clip lights full on?I have to read the manual to find what the second red lights are because I never saw them before. The logo stayed on the whole time untill I rebooted at break.
I also can't understand how the processor & eq showed all channels muted while the laptop display showed everything working even though I could not make changes with the laptop and could not physically unmute the units by pushing the buttons.This was at a fair.Could it have been a power surge or momentary power drop out?
 
Re: Problem with Ashley Protea

You'll probably have to call Ashly on Tuesday. My next guess is a PSU issue, but those seldom repair themselves with a reboot. 'Til a puzzlement.
 
Re: Problem with Ashley Protea

Last summer a friend of mine had his Protea out of no where output a screaming sine wave
to all outputs. Lucky the show had not started but I heard that it turned lots of heads. Funny thing was after that one time it would not do it again.
Power cycled many times, baked it in the sun it always worked fine. Ashly
replaced the controller IC free of charge.
 
Last edited:
Re: Problem with Ashley Protea

It is not uncommon for those processors to do exactly that. You are going to want to send it in to Ashly, and they'll replace the bad chip.
 
Re: Problem with Ashley Protea

I did e-mail Ashley and they want me to send it back so that's where it's going.My tech guy thinks it was a voltage spike that caused them to lock up. He said he's seen it before and thinks it probably wouldn't happen again.It was at a fair so it's possible was a spike.
 
Top Bottom