Qu-24 electrical noises during streaming

[TrioAndreasParticipant]

Hey friends! Very good news: I just upgraded my firmware to latest
Qu-16 Firmware V1.93
Current Version – Released January 2018
And this noise is gone!
I also had problem with recording and playing to QU-Drive, and this is now also perfect!
Now, I will check all my computers!
Cheers,
Damijan

[FrankParticipant]

I did the same, Firmware V1.93, but no difference with the electrical noise while playing a playback, I am sorry….

[GigaParticipant]

@frank : how are you getting along with your new old laptop ?

Giga

[FrankParticipant]

Just installed a clean Win 7 on a 500GB SSD and some necessarry drivers until now. The app Latency Monitor shows problems with NVIDIA-Kernel things… but at first I have to try under real conditions. But unfortunally the A&H is in the band-room now, and I only can do experiments, when I am there and this will be earliest at the end of next week… I will report, when I have results!

[FrankParticipant]

Allright… first test perfect! I played a playback with the VLC-Player to the A&H Qu 16 running the Lenovo Thinkpad T410, i7, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, clean Win 7 Pro 64 bit and it works! Nor distorsions until now! I did bus it used on eBay for 350.-€ + 150€ for the 500GB Crucial SSD. With my former Lenovo Ideapad i5, 16GB Ram, 250 GB SSD for 1000.-€ I always had distorsions, also with VLC-Player… The difference: Old Thinkpad has only USB 2.0 ports, Ideapad has only USB 3.0 ports. And as we know until now, this is the reason for this problems, the wrong programmed USB 3.0 from INTEL (the Isochronous Transfer Mode does not work correct with time-critical processes in the new INTEL USB 3.0 mode, it is not completely down-compatible to USB 2.0!!!).
Next step will be testing with Cubase and 16 channel recording and playback… But it will need some time, because the mixer is in the session-room now, and I can test it only, when I am there… so perhaps in 1 or 2 weeks again…

I will report again!

[Crosan007Participant]

It’s been a while since I’ve followed up on my USB / RaspberryPi project, so here’s a quick update:

* USB -> RaspberryPi -> 3.5mm headphones via GStreamer works flawlessly, there are no weird noises.
* USB -> RaspberryPi -> TCP/IP -> Intel i7 video mixing computer -> This still exhibits the strange noises.

It seems like there’s still some degree of timing error with how the buffers are timestamped / played back. It’s very weird IMO that the noise would not occur when monitored directly via the Pi’s 3.5mm jack, but the noise does occur when I stream two tracks
of audio over the network to my Intel computer (streaming format is raw inside an MKV container).

Here’s a link of the noise that occurs when using the network-stream approach (thereby using the Pi’s USB port instead of the desktop’s)
https://owncloud.ccrossan.com/index.php/s/kLQnRu2zPEDPPnj

[[XAP]BobParticipant]

Compromising the pi USB capabilities by streaming as well though (nic shares the usb channel).

Does it falter over the 3.5mm Pi connection if it is streaming as well?

[nottooloudParticipant]

What do you expect A&H to do? Intel USB3 chips can’t support proper USB2 behaviour.

It’s like demanding that shell makes your Saab fly because Saab made some jets in the past and shell petrol is what you’ve used…

Intel messed up their chipset… A&H software can’t do magic. An ECU mapping change won’t get 1000 horsepower from a three cylinder 400cc engine.

My Soundcraft Impact doesn’t have this problem.
My Behringer XR18 doesn’t have this problem.
My Focusrite 18i20 doesn’t have this problem.
My MOTU 8Pre doesn’t have this problem.
My Sound Devices USBPre 2 doesn’t have this problem.
The Behringer X32s I’ve recorded from don’t have this problem.
I’ve never heard of any device but this one having this problem.

Perhaps it’s not Intel’s problem?

[jakethepegParticipant]

Thanks @nottooloud, that’s what I mentioned earlier in this thread – seems some specific incompatibility between Intel and A&H, rather than an issue that Intel is solely responsible for. Hopefully A&H remedy this with QU v2 (they’ll have to fix for SQ so I hope the fix can be applied to Qu as well).

[nottooloudParticipant]

I wish I thought they knew they have to fix it for either. Evidently the SQ still has the ridiculous issues with USB stick compatibility. I’ve heard that it relates to their choice of Linux OSes, but that seems unlikely. We shall see.

[FrankParticipant]

Allright… end of testing now… I found a working solution for me!!!

EBay-purchase: Lenovo Thinkpad T410 (from 2012), i7 core, 8 GB RAM, 500GB SSD, Win 7 Pro 64 bit, clean installation without any useless garbage on it.

I testet 5 track band-recording and stereo playback (to ST3 of the A&H Qu 16, firmware 1.93) with Cubase Elements 9.5 and sole playback with VLC-Player on ST3 of A&H with the A&H Windows-driver 3.34…

NO DISTORSIONS!!! And I think no latency-problems, as I believe (never had to do with this)…

So for me it is solved for the moment and I hope my “old used” Thinkpad T410 will live as long as the A&H Qu 16… but perhaps INTEL and A&H still will find a solution for this problem with USB 3.0 ports…

[Crosan007Participant]

Has anyone tried the new 1.95 firmware yet?

The release notes seem to indicate a possible fix for this issue:

Changes to USB – B streaming to improve stability with some computers/USB hosts

https://www.allen-heath.com/media/Release-Notes-Qu-firmware-V1.95.pdf

Qu Series

I’m planning on trying it out sometime in the next two weeks…

[Ermep01Participant]

Hello,

See Digital noise when streaming audio via USB-B

[Author]

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