Sound guy at church here - just to warn anyone doing the 1.6 update to have a backup plan of rolling back to a 1.5.11 firmware if needed. We had an issue where we were forced to update our desk due to musicians mobile SQ4U apps on IOS all updated meaning they lost the ability to adjust their levels. We upgraded the desk on Thursday and fully checked all features were working having taken full show and scene backups. Update installed successfully with no problems. Powered all down and booted everything Sunday morning for a service only to be presented with an SQ 7 desk that looked like a Christmas tree with all inputs clipping with horrific distortion that would rival the heaviest djent bands- even without anything being played through them.
Reapplying the firmware didn’t help- same problem. Tried restoring the show and scenes from backup usb - nothing. Desk configuration seemed fully in order, just massive distortion- glad I hadn’t turned the amps on yet! In the end had to emergency downgrade the desk by downloading the 1.5.11 firmware and installing that instead.
We had upgraded from firmware 1.5.3r3957
Can anyone in A&H comment as to what the cause may have been, and if there is a known bug/ issue where this may be caused under certain conditions?
It is important (if people are using their own devices) to ensure auto updates are switched OFF for these Apps.
Make sure you are happy at the desk end first before telling everyone to update their Apps.
However, give them advanced warning that you are going to start trialling a firmware update and that they will get an announcement in due course (a ‘no’ to upgrade or a ‘yes’ to upgrade).
Dave
I believe the best solution here would be for any update breaking backwards compatibility to this degree should be a separate app - this would maintain people’s ability to wade the initial storm of inevitable bugs as we’re seeing being posted in the forum recently. I’d suggest A&H release a 1.5 version of the app so that users of their product can get back to business as usual as soon as possible.
Suggesting that users should turn off auto updating isn’t a solution to those who have already received the update. Nor is it an industry standard- don’t know anywhere else that has to do this ?
We have all tried this with A&H and they are not budging. By all means say something, but don’t be surprised if nothing happens on this front.
I know it isn’t a post-event solution. The recommendation is to manage the update issue before it happens.
We have just updated our Church A/V computer. The first Windows setting to be changed is related to the auto update ‘feature’ - so that we don’t turn the machine ON on a Sunday morning only to be presented with an update. Or, worse, halfway through the service!
In A&H’s defence, it is very clear that updates to the firmware/App will break compatability if they are mismatched - so it needs to be managed.
Not a happy situation, but where we find ourselves I am afraid.
On the positive side, it is possible there will not be a 1.7 update…
Dave
Appreciate the response, and understood re:windows updates- although this comes with its own security risks, and automatic updates are standard. The exception to this is only when significant changes or functionality alterations are introduced, at which point user consent is normally required- think service pack updates or windows 10 > 11. This requires an opt in situation, with plenty of warnings. This is different though for mobile app updates which are automated by default.
No in-app update notifications were sent warning of the impending changes, so anyone wishing to opt out in advance had no chance to do so. Any OS or firewall vendor would be under significant scrutiny for pushing updates that broke functionality. I’d suggest A&H adopt an update model that more aligns with this paradigm in future, and update users on what is being done to fix this issue presently.
Hi there @Churchsounddude
This isn’t a fault we’ve seen before and we’d be very interested to investigate it further.
Please submit a support ticket to https://www.allen-heath.com/support/ - and we’ll investigate.
I’m very sorry to see this happen - and like I say - we’ve not seen this in any of our testing.
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Many thanks @max_ah - ticket submitted
@Churchsounddude - what was the resolution for the SQ7 (inputs clipping issue)?
No solution yet. Going to try 1.6.1 soon - hopefully that will fix. If I find a solution I’ll post it here- if no message assume no solution yet….
So just tried the 1.6.1 update - haven’t been able to recently due to so many events etc running.
Same behaviour still - no fixes. At this point is there no chance A&H can release the old 1.5 based IEM monitoring app to the app stores as a dedicated version to overcome this for users that are affected by this problem? @max_ah i’ve updated the ticket with this.
I guess the app store rules make this impossible. Some other apps have similar difficulties.
Mixing Station will run with whatever firmware. You can’t run as many instances of it, though.
Experience something like this on our SQ7 during March too [we were still using firmware v1.5.11 and updated afterwards to v1.6 after it happened and it lessened but not reliable] and popping distorted noises were happening we tried isolating the problem until the mixer was the culprit, it would randomly happen and when it triggers all local outputs will output distorted noises w/o any inputs plugged on the console, tried using an AB168 to output to mains but it outputted robotic distorted noise. [note: only after resetting the console is when it showed that the Main Outs (also showing on the PFL meter) were outputting noise even though nothing is plugged in.]
Sent it out for repairs a month ago and told us we’ll get it after a month max (we’re at SEA so that ain’t bad at all) after opening a ticket 2 months ago. Just got the papers and getting it by next week, they replaced 2 capacitors but I still want to know what happened for those capacitors to go bad.
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