Well I experimented some more this morning. Turns out that the dropouts were related to having the two Octa-Captures linked together. In order for all 16 ports linked to show up as possible input sources in Sonar (or anything else for that matter) I had to go to the driver control panel and enable the VS-Expand option. Unfortunately, that seems to cause some noticeable glitches in the output. I was doing some midi scrubbing of a synth track in the PRV. My CPU load was light cause nothing was going on at all. No network device attached or anything. When I disable VS-Expand I lose the second Octa-Capture ports  (even though the devices are both linked and my input ports go over the link to the main outputs on the expander Octa-Capture) but the dropouts go away. This is almost certainly a clocking issue. Interestingly, if I turn off VS-Expand in the control panel it does NOT affect the settings on the Octa-Capture units. I don't know how to interpret this. 

I also crashed Sonar by changing the driver settings to enable the CPU efficiency mode. I guess Roland's view is that the CPU runs more efficiently if your applications crash and the CPU gets to idle more ;-)

I never had any of this happen with the V1.0 drivers. What a mess still. I have to find a way to revert back to V1.0. There really can't be a workaround to this as far as I can see.

Ken

I did hear a rumor that when Ron Paul is close to this audio device, strange things have been known to occur.... Ken, is your system working today?

Jim

:-)

jkleban


I did hear a rumor that when Ron Paul is close to this audio device, strange things have been known to occur.... Ken, is your system working today?

Jim
:-)

Ahhh....if it were only that simple. They have all left and moved on to South Carolina. My phone has stopped ringing with pollsters calling all day. Sadly, none of that has helped my Octa's work better ;-)


Roland does not have the V1.0 system software on their web site unfortunately so I have no idea how I am going to roll this back. I consoled myself by playing my grand piano for 2 hours today. I discovered it had zero latency issues, fantastic sound, and the audio engine never seemed to stop unexpectedly.


Ken

Didn't you get an install CD with the original drivers on it when you got the Octa-Capture?   Mine will be in today and I expect there will be an install CD with the drivers included. 

fireberd


Didn't you get an install CD with the original drivers on it when you got the Octa-Capture?   Mine will be in today and I expect there will be an install CD with the drivers included. 

The drivers are not the issue. I need the V1.0 firmware and I don't think that was on the install disk. That was already in the Octa-Capture hardware. I will have to hunt down my disks and check again. The V1 driver does not work with the V1.5 firmware unfortunately.

Such a drag dealing with all of this though. I definitely appreciate my zero latency grand piano. Kept me sane yesterday after this fiasco.


Ken

Latest update....
 
Just got off the phone with Roland technical support (I use the term loosely...) Apparently, beyond knowing nothing useful about the product they told me that they have NO access to previous firmware versions. That means if you roll forward to V1.5 and it does not work then you are out of luck.
 
Now...I was definitely NOT going to take this as their "final answer." They said they might have to go back to the engineers in Japan to get the older code. I told them that I needed the older versions and was just astounded that they didn't see any issue with not being able to roll back an update. The support person didn't even realize that the older drivers will NOT work with the new firmware and it is documented as such. As of now they are trying to get back to me on this so we shall see.
 
He thought perhaps my computer needed to be tweaked and everything would be fine. Ok...so this is a PCAL system specifically built for audio purposes with three separate disk drives, a 3.46 Ghz processor, 12 Gb of RAM and it was doing absolutely nothing that even made the CPU yawn and I could still get dropouts. That didn't register with him. Neither did the fact that my MOTU was getting 4.3 ms round trip latency at 48 samples at 96 Khz with no dropouts at all. Same project and same computer. Ughhhhh.
 
OK...I am totally flaming here. My apologies....this is fresh in my mind. Thanks for allowing me to vent and I hope this is a cautionary tale for others. I went from a big fan of the OC's to not a fan at all since this update.
 
Ken

Sorry to hear they have no idea.  The V1.0 is built in and apparently not available as a software download.  Some firmware will not allow downgrading, so another issue.  I don't know that the downgrading is an issue with the Octa-Capture but something to consider. 

Also there are complaints on the Pro Tools forum of noise pops, cracks, etc with the V1.5 firmware and Pro Tools. 

I got my Octa-Capture this afternoon.  I'm not going to touch the firmware or control panel for a while, to make sure I want to keep it.  Even then I many not upgrade for a while with users here and on Pro Tools having similar problems.  It connected automatically when I started Sonar X1, didn't have to touch anything.  Surprisingly it plays well with Pro Tools 10, too.  I had a He.l of a time getting the Saffire Pro 40 to work with Pro Tools 10 and once I did get it working it was flakey.

I wonder? If someone who has not updated to the new firmware can do the two button OC startup so the computer sees a new drive can check something?

When you do the two button power up is there anything in the new drive that's on the OC. If so, could it be the 1.0 firmware? Granted, this is a risky thing to try it. Someone could image that drive and send it along to you. Seems very risky though.

Guitarpima


I wonder? If someone who has not updated to the new firmware can do the two button OC startup so the computer sees a new drive can check something?

When you do the two button power up is there anything in the new drive that's on the OC. If so, could it be the 1.0 firmware? Granted, this is a risky thing to try it. Someone could image that drive and send it along to you. Seems very risky though.

Well that is definitely a clever idea but I am also pretty nervous about the risk factor on that one. I am going to run some more experiments today cause I have some ideas about what might be going on here. So....my electrical engineering hat will be on instead of my keyboard hat. Maybe if I make the hat out of tin foil and put some nice wires in it I will receive messages telling me what the problem really is ;-)


Ken

Damn Ken...

An EE... you should be designing these things for us from a REAL USER point of view.

Than we can all complain about you hehehehe

Jim