Strange playback issue with ER-301 after being left on all night?

[Richard Devine]

Hi Brian, I am having a strange issue that I can repeat almost every night. If I leave my ER-301 running for more then 24 hours nonstop, I notice that play back from all outputs gets this strange low bit modulated sound, hard to describe but it sounds like if you ran the signals through a ring modulator, in combination with a digital buzzing sound cutting through, but at a super low sampling rate, very odd. It only happens if I leave it for a long time, and I tried resetting the ER-301, clearing the sample pool memory, and even did a test last night where I loaded just one unit with a sample player, running a short 16 bar loop, then letting it play all night to find the issue returned even using just on unit.  I also tried everything but it seems to happen no matter what settings or combinations I have tried. I have to power cycle down to make it go away. I am not sure why this happens, this is similar to an issue I had with my Radio Music Thing samplers, where the audio would play back degraded after being left on over night. I usually leave my system on for weeks and even months as I record with it every night, would love to figure this out. 

Thanks

Richard

[Guy Taylor]

I can confirm I get the same behaviour too...

[Brian@O|D]

I'll take a look at this.  I have some ideas why it might be happening (of the overflowing counter type).  However, it might take a little while because fixing a bug that takes 24 hours to appear will greatly slow down the normal debug-and-test cycle. ;-)

Is the sample being triggered?  Does it have slices?  Is there any external modulation of speed or tune?

[Richard Devine]

Hi Brian, yes I tested both sample player units in which some have slices (bring triggered externally) and have external modulation to the speed and tune inputs, and then other units where its just a single sample (no slices) playing a drone with no modulation or tuning via CV. It seems to happen with either situation, wondering if it has something to do with heat build up over time? Not sure, still puzzled by this. Thanks for looking into this, using the 301 live this weekend at NAMM :-)

[Brian@O|D]

I doubt its a hardware issue or heat-related.  When developing the hardware I had my prototypes running continuously for days and days, playing audio the whole time, and it was in the middle of the Tokyo summer with air conditioning turned off at night.  My guess is that as the software grew more complicated, somewhere I introduced an overflow bug.

Good luck with the NAMM performance and please wear a go-pro camera on your head!

[no_camo]

Sounds like the "disintegration tape" insert 😂🤓🏄🏼❤️.

[Neil Parfitt]

What does your CPU load look like after 24 hours? 

Does it sort-of sound like when a digital connection is assigned to the wrong clock, but still works... with some grit to the sound?

[Richard Devine]

Did anyone find out what is causing this? I am still experiencing this issue even after loading up the latest firmware.  I was able to get it to happen again only loading in a 43MB wave file 16-bit 48khz into on Sampler Player unit on channel 1,  and just letting it play on loop all night long until the next day. The problem came back. Let me know thanks Richard

[Brian@O|D]

I'm still investigating this bug, Richard.  In the meantime, I've placed a "restart" button (S3) in the Channel Setup screen of the admin view.  This will restart just the audio engine without affecting any other state.

[no_camo]

I think I just encountered this bug. Unit was on for 9hrs today. Mix started to sound muddy and distorted.

[Brian Clarkson]

Thank you for reporting. I'm still investigating this one but in the
meantime did you get a chance to try restarting the audio engine
(admin->channel setup, press S3) to see if the problem went away?