My Focusrite 2i4 started acting up on me so much I nearly wound up in the looney bin
I'm not kidding either because this 2i4 has been driving me absolutely nuts as of recently .
Where do i even start ?
Aside from having to run a beta driver on my Win 8 64 machine because I would get dozens of lost ASIO buffer readings in Samplitude (all versions including Pro x2 ) I bit the bullet and have been using a Beta driver on that computer .
Focusrite support suggested me to go Beta a while back (about a year ago ) , OK I can roll with that .
The lowest buffer setting I have ever gone on that machine is 512 .
BTW never had that type of problem ever in X 3
Most of my personal time spent with music regardless of the intended activity , be it recording , practicing , studying , or just listening to music is primarily done with head phones .
Such is Life when a Night Owl is living in an apartment .
ATM-30 is the better of the two sets of headphones I have on hand at the moment.
Over a period of time I started noticing that the sound I was hearing in my Cans were not always sounding balanced .
Intermittently at various times my right side would sound weaker . This started happening about a month or two ago .
I do my best to keep my ears clean and I started wondering if I had a wax buildup . My doctor confirmed my ears were fine .
Then all of a sudden Magically for some unexplained reason both sides of my cans would be balanced and play nice together.
That would not last long and without rhyme or reason it would go back to an unbalanced state .
Then I started wondering if it was the headphones were giving up the ghost .
The thing is up until a couple of days ago I primarily used my i Mac as my general all purpose computer.
The screen is larger than whats on my laptop and I have gotten in the habit of watching the various how to videos online while I follow along trying to keep up as best as I can .
That computer has a Yamaha Audiogram 6 hooked up to it for convenience sake . That way I can keep my Win computer and 2i4 separate .
I started remembering that my headphones sounded fine over there w the Yamaha .
FWIW I put that computer away so I can focus on learning SPlat reading the manual with no distractions .
Anyway , I do remember having the same intermittent balance problems the times I hooked up my 2i4 to that computer .
I think the straw that got the Camel finally thinking about going to the back doctor for a check up was when I started using the 2i4 on my Win 10 lap top .
I did install the correct drivers and overall when the sound is balanced I'm pretty happy up to a point .
A couple of things started happening that I was not cool with .
First the 2i4 has 2 sets of outputs and in Win 10 the only thing I can bring up is a slider for the 2i4's control panel .
There is no option for even switching the out puts to the second set .
The sliders range is somewhat limited it only goes up to 10 ms...I have it set a 5 at the moment ...
no matter where I look I can't change anything as far as I can tell so far ...
I set up my Win 10 machine following the general guidelines of disabling the Real teck S C in the device mgr, setting my power options to never letting anything go to sleep , and running with the WiFi off while doing musical tasks ...
The 2i4 in Windows 10 exhibited a certain quirk that annoyed me at first . Every time I booted up fresh from an off computer state to an on state in Win 10 , either Win 10 or the 2i4 didn't want to play nice . I have no idea which it was and all sounds for any app or even playing an MP3 were garbled ...
I would restart the computer and then it would accept my 2i4 and I was able to go ahead and do my music .
Oddly enough through trial and error I found that if I opened up SONAR in Win 10 before I did anything else , I would not have to do a restart and my 2i4 would start working . I would then have access to all the normal expected features and sounds with the exception of dealing with a quirky unbalanced sound stage ..
Tonight I drew a hard metaphoric line in the sand and said it's either you or me 2i4 .
You have been running my a$$ around in circles driving me nuts for way too long .
I grabbed what was left of my a$$ stuck it in a paper bag and drove it down to Radio Shack to pick up some contact cleaner .
When I got home I went to unscrew the screws and they were in to tight . I didn't want to strip them so I did a quick surface clean and worked what I could access .
Then I lined up a few various computers both PC and Mac , hooked up the 2i4 , gave it the benefit of the doubt .....
Ran all the possible tests I could do short of hooking up my studio monitors and blasting them ...
Have to do that one during the day ...
Ran mono , ran stereo , panned right , panned left , no matter what I did the 2i4 read about 3 Db less on the right side ...
headphones or speakers at low or medium volume it didn't matter ...
sheesh BTW my headphones also sounded like $hit on the right side .....
Finally after a few hours of this cwap I said too myself I've had enough .
I grabbed my MacBook , hooked up my Apogee GiO , plugged in my headphones , reached in my cupboard and found an herbal enhancement . Didn't fire it up . Then I threw on some Hendrix starting with All Along The Watchtower .
I turned the $hit up so loud that an Imaginary Pete Townsend started yelling from across the pond telling me to turn that $hit down or else I would end up with permanent hearing damage LOL
I took his advice and I was rather comforted with the fact that my headphones were working perfectly ....
It was only then , after my exhaustive test had run it's course , did I decide to fire that herbal bad boy up .
On a such a fine Saturday night w just me and the pooch , Hell Yeah I got to find a way to ease some of the pain LOL
Now I got to figure out what to do and where to send my 2i4 ...It is way out of warranty .
I honestly wonder how this is gonna play out.?
for those of you that like it short , sweet and to the point , sorry about the rant .
Kenny
post edited by kennywtelejazz - 2015/12/13 08:58:55