Qu24 USB B Noise

[I am]

Don’t believe anything I posted was vitriolic . Just responding to people’s posts . The fact of the matter is based on the instability of this interface I can no longer specify it to any of my clients . I think that’s a sad state of affairs for Allen and Heath . I thought they were better than that . As you see I have moved on .

[Andreas]

Just to clear things from a technical view:
USB audio streaming is a time-critical operation, defined by the USB standard and not Allen&Heath.
Other standards exist for other device classes.
No standard exists how companies implement their drivers with respect to any other driver, and exactly this is the problem.
The Audio driver provided by A&H can only handle requests issued by the underlying USB hardware, and thats what they successfully do on many different systems (at least I have three, including a plain old DualCore notebook).
A&H can not be made responsible for implementation flaws done by other companies or slow/full speed devices blocking high speed communication on the same port.
If there is someone to blame in this particular situation, its for sure HP not A&H.

[I am]

I understand all of this now completely. What I don’t understand is why we were made to find all of this out and Allen and Heath issued no directives or guidance with respect to computers until after the fact . Basically what I read on some of the blogs was why don’t a of bunch you guys get together and see what you can find out. After-the-fact . If I knew that I had to buy a special computer I would’ve bought it . It’s like me buying a car and someone saying you have to wear a special type of gloves to hold the steering wheel with or the car will not remain running we’re not going to tell you what type of glove it is find it out amongst yourself. And now that I know how finicky the interfaces there’s no possible way I can specify it. My clients will come screaming at me that the thing never works when they plug anything into their computer that USB be doesn’t like . But I think you for all your help .

[mk]

I have registered just to add my piece of experience when reading this discussion — I have the same issue with QU-16 using HP laptop (and I have also created A&H support ticket, still pending, unresolved) and also I have flawlessly working Focusrite 18i20 and 2i2. Focusrite had very similar difficulties and they updated their drivers many times, but they managed to resolve USB transfers (18 channels out, 20 in over USB) completely. Year ago my Focusrite produced glitches (not so bad as QU 16 produces), now the streaming works as a charm. So, there definitely is a way how to cope with distortions, or at least how to mitigate them. The number of channels may play role, but, still, from my point of view, it cannot give reasons for general saying “A&H is OK because it adheres to USB standard and HP is not OK because is has only single controller”. Until A&H closes opened support tickets and explains the cause (hope they will do so) the issue’s root can be on both sides/at any place. And yes, it is a difficult issue.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I’m sure they’ll take it back because it has one USB controller . And what’s the guarantee that the next one you buy will work with this finicky interface. And what store will open one up and show you devices by connection so that you can identify whether or not it has multiple controllers ? This is disgusting . Well there’s one company out there that knows what they’re doing and that’s Dante .

Yes they should – it’s not fit for purpose.
That’s why we have consumer protection laws.

USB isn’t ideal for audio, it’s not the bandwidth, it’s the jitter that’s the issue.

I’d suggest that it is your laptop which is incompatible, not the QU. Personally I’ve not had an issue – but then I have a Mac at my fingertips.
If you have other interfaces (PCexpress exposes a raw PCI lane or 4 IIRC) then you could probably stick a USB controller on the end of that for the QU, but which ‘standard’ do you think would be a better choice for A&H to use?

The QU isn’t a mega production company desk – it’s not a GLD, a dLive or a Midas etc…
The USB interface works really well – IF your computer can give it enough attention.

[I am]

https://forumsarchive.presonus.com/posts/list/33427.page

[Andreas]

…so uninstalling the Extensible USB controller or disabling xHCI in bios potentially could fix it. Did you already tried that?

[I am]

No I just received this this morning and I was wondering what you thought . I’m not going to uninstall it as some people have said that that didn’t work but that going into bios and disabling it did . I will do that when I get home .

[Andreas]

Well, uninstalling/disabling in device manage would be fatal, since all your input devices are connected to that controller. Uninstalling the Extensible USB support in Applications would be the way to go.
Of course, if you have access to the BIOS, disabling USB3 there is much safer. Not sure how that affects the webcam/WiFi/BlueTooth, but since its BIOS it should be reversible.

[I am]

Well I’m in set up utility and for USB 3.0 configuration in pre-OS I have either in Enabled or Auto no disabled. It says when this option is set to enabled bios will configure USB ports to USB 3.0 controller. When the item is set to auto , bios Will configure USB ports to USB 2.0 controller in pre-boot . After booting to OS the USB ports will be switched to USB 3.0 controller. It is recommended to set to auto when installing OS which does not have native USB 3.0 driver such as windows 7 via USB optical device. I don’t see any other settings unless I’m in the wrong place .

[JoshC]

I have had this issue today and solved it. Did a hard reset which didn’t work but then I reinstalled the latest firmware (it was already on 1.95) and this fixed the issue.

[volounteer]

@Andreas

I read that AH said they ‘followed’ the standard.
Does anybody know if they CONFORMED to the standard.

I have no noise issues with usb on any of my home gear.
Could AH have tried to do too much and fell short??

[MarkPAman]

I’ve heard that it was Intel that didn’t fully conform to the standard, leaving USB3 not quite 100% backwards compatible with USB2 devices, as it is meant to be. Though it’s obviously close enough for most things, so they’ve got away with it.

A quick search of the internet appears to back this up.

[volounteer]

@MarkPAman

Thanks.
Hopefully AH wont use any more intel chips.

I thought the honchos at USB sued people using their funny symbol or claiming to be usb if they were not 100% conformant.
How did intel pull this off?

[MarkPAman]

AFAIK A&H have never used any Intel chips as they design their own, but most computers use them (at the moment).

I guess that if a company dominates so much of a particular market, they can either make a change to a standard (and there may well be perfectly good reasons for wanting to do that), or choose to invent one of their own if that were not allowed.

[Author]

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