Massive issues with the UA-25EX
I bought a UA-25EX today and already spent hours trying to get it to work properly, but it causes so many seemingly unrelated issues that I don't even see where there could be a source for the root problem.
I will list the individual issues I encountered so far:
- Drivers in the box were outdated
First of all, the driver cd that came with the device only supports installations up to Windows XP... . Ok, this is the time of the internet, where you can now get away with having 3 generations outdated drivers shiped with your product, because downloading the real ones only takes a minute. I wouldn't even have given it a second thought if there haven't been so much more further issues.
So, to make that clear: I am using the Win7 driver right now, which should be the appropriate one you'd think.
- No sound at all
Nothing really. Neither from instrument (connected via Midi by the way), nor mp3 started on the PC. Oh, I checked the troubleshooting page at the end of the manual. Lets go through the usual compendium of 'doh'-advices there quickly: "Did you connect the headphones?" Uh-huh, "Is the front volume knob of UA-25EX up?" I bet you, "Could the digital input switch be turned on?" It could, but it isn't, "Samplerate 96khz?" No!, "Is the Windows volume down?" 100% up for the device, and I would go further, but this laptop ain't a russian machine.
That's it for the manual -not enough-, so I looked into the readme of the downloaded Win7 driver, where there is an additional line to make it work with Windows Mediaplayer. They basicly tell you, you have to set it up as the standard device, because normally it isn't. Yet, in Win7, it is, so this is never an issue. Funny how the Win7 specific readme doesn't know this and talks about this as if it was an entry problem you just have to fix before anything works. It's fine by default.
All the other troubleshooting advices are not of more help, and sometimes even oddly specific in the required stupidity to cause a problem. Like "Did you maybe unplug and plug in the usb cable while recording?"... . The text after that should not be some soothing advice, but "Then keep away from computhors!".
So nothing works here, and I am left without idea why this is and where even to search for answers.(googling didn't help so much, so I guess it is not exactly a standard problem to have with the device, which at least makes me kind of hopeful) The manual makes it seem like you plug it in and go, but that only results in silence for me.
- Flashplayer crashes
While the device is plugged in, any instance that requires the flashplayer (nowadays nearly every site you visit on the internet) crashes the flashplayer, but only after freezing for around 30 seconds, in which the whole laptop is numb and responds to nothing. And it does that on every site again. I guess the audio is just conflicting, and possibly I will have the same problem with numerous other programs too, which I didn't test out, due to the overshadowing of the core problem: "No sound at all"
The flashplayer also crashes when I unplugged the device again btw. . That means, if I used it at some point in the current session, I can forget trying access the internet without restarting my Pc all over. In fact, I cannot do alot of things after I used the device (even after unpluggin it again), which brings me to the next issue.
- Blocks all other audio
When I unplug the UA-25EX, I still cannot use any player, not mediaplayer, not vlc, not nero's programs, none of my audio editing tools, not any kind of sound replay-'whatsoever'. It is completly jammed until I restart the computer. For the Mediaplayer; the program starts usually, but the audio never plays back - all the files are stuck at time 0.
Plugin the device in again does not release this problem by the way. Audio files will still be stuck, some programs just crash.
- Computer cannot shutdown anymore
So I had to restart my computer alot with this machine trying its job, but whenever I had the device connected to the Pc, no matter if I unplugged it or not, I am not able to shutdown my computer. Instead it freezes eternally in the shutdown screen, until I switch it of manually. ..Something is seriously spreading corrupting influence here. I researched a little what needs to be done to cause these kind of shutdown problems, and I found that only resource conflicts can cause this to happen.
So, after this all in the last hours, I cannot really say I am pleasently surprised with this 200€ metal box I bought. The lack of matching error reports on the internet makes me kind of hopeful though that anything might just be a bad dream, and the true problem lies with me somehow. But where is it?
Ok, thanks for anyone who tries to help in advance.
Ah, and my laptop is a Asus N55S with i7 2630QM Quadcore, running with Win 7 64bit Home. I am trying to connect to a Yamaha CLP-370 E-Piano, but that is of no meaning at this point, because, as I said above, it isn't even replaying the normal mp3 music samples until now.