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Author: Zanf on September 01 2007 Viewed 2810 times. 17 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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Not a happy blog, Im sorry to report.
I purchased a Liquid Mix back in April and it developed troubles in July. When I booted one weekend to write music, it failed to connect to the PC. I tried changing the FW ports, a different cable and eventually reinstalled XP but nothing worked. After contacting Focusrites tech support and trying a other few things, I took the unit back to teh shop and exchanged it.
All worked well until last weekend when the second unit did exactly the same thing as the first.
I spent about 4 hours on saturday trying to get it working again but to no avail. I emailed the shop and asked if I brought it back and it didnt work, could I exchange it for a Universal Audio UAD-1, which they were happy to do.
So I went in on wednesday afternoon [took an early day from work] and returned the device. they didnt have a UAD in stock so said they would send it out to me and it arrived Friday morning.
I had a few issues with the guy in the shop [he charged me full price for the card even though they have a price match policy and I felt I was pretty much dealt with in an overly swift manner. Not really good CS considering I had taken the afternoon off work to sort it out], but I got a call from one of the directors to resolve these issues.
Now, I have tried to spend another saturday making music but for some reason my PC decides to play up. After looking at a few things, I also notice that XP displays that I only have 2.5GB of RAM installed even though I have 4GB in the box.
The PC seems to have lost all the external hardware drivers [sound, GFX, UAD, FW, network, wireless, etc etc etc] so I go through reinstalling them all.
Then the PC decides that it doesnt want to recognise the UAD anymore even though I have re-installed the drivers [it showed a hardware error code of 37 "XP cannot start this device"] so I remove the card & drivers and try again.
Now when I boot the machine the GFX dont fire up. My monitors dont kick in and show all the usual boot info.
I feel pretty much at my wits end with it all now. I feel like just giving it up, selling everything then pissing off on a very very long holiday. I'd just got everything running and was playing around with some old stuff to get back into the flow and its all gone to shit.
In other news, I got my passport back the other week but it was fucked so had to send it back. I got a letter today asking me to reapply for a new one including another fee. So they want another £66 out of me.
I have started proceedings to get the necessary documents to apply for an Irish one as my grandmother was Irish so I have ancestral rights to get one. Its a bit involved as I need my mums and grandmothers birth, marriage and death certificates then register my own birth in Ireland [as a foreign birth] before I can actually get it. The upside is that I wont have to register for an ID card when that shit comes into effect [one of the reasons Im doing it as well as its safer to travel under Irish citizenship in some places in the world rather than a UK one].
I was thinking of getting a Vermona DRM1 MK2 drum machine soon [anyone have any experience of them?] as well but everyhitng is going to be put on hold until I can sort all this shit out, if it gets sorted.
Well, my weekend has been shit so far but how is yours?
[the other photos are ones I found of me 10 years ago when I used to have dreads!]
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09/01/07
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astroid
ugh
my pc is acting up, too. im just praying that it makes it through the next two weeks
09/01/07
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astroid
but unlike you i dont have the consolation of being 1/4 irish
09/01/07
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bla
thats not a bad idea with the passport to avoid the id
ive got a belgian grandmother....
youve got enough hardware to do stuff without the computer havent you? or do you need a sequencer?
09/01/07
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bla
in fact, looking at your list, youve got fuckloads of hardware- get an mmt8 or something (you know the pc problems will happen again)
edited: Sep 01 2007
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Ochre
About the UAD-1 and memory issue, with more than 2GB I think it's best practice to add the /3GB switch at the end of your boot.ini (if you haven't already), and each UAD-1 in your system will need exclusive access to about 100MB of system memory, otherwise it won't start properly or something. For some reason with more than 2GB in a machine you have to explicitly ask XP to reserve the memory by putting /userva=2800 or whatever (accessible system mem minus about 100MB for each UAD-1 card you have). So in short, try adding /3GB /userva=2800 (or 2900) to you boot.ini and see if that helps. A while back I had 3GB in my machine but since got rid of 1GB as I didn't really use it.
It's worth persevering with the UAD-1s, even if they do sometimes feel like ancient PCI dongles. The plugins are superb. 
Also, link is a great UAD-1-specific forum.
09/01/07
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dpmtl
That sucks man.I bought a laptop with Live and Reason with the intention of mixing and playing live and setting up a project to teach music tech but the laptop had other ideas.In 18 months the laptop went back 5 times but the supplier couldn't find a fault with it.Eventually i got things sorted but the whole thing really put me off making music on pcs so i switched to hardware for production and i haven't looked back.No problems apart from some midi sync issues with live.Apart from that no headaches.I don't know about the vermona but i'd recommend investing in something like that,at least if things go wrong with your daw you've got a back up.Can the liquid mix be used with hardware?
09/01/07
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Zanf
Joel: I have a kurzweil K2500 that has a 16 track onboard sequencer that is now about to get some heavy usage! Only thing is, I have all the hardare connected via a midisport 8x8 so Im a bit fucked unless I unplug it all and go through chaining it but really - fuck that shit.
Chris: I was reading up earlier about the 3gb switch and PME & physical addressing tables. I am going to keep at it with the UAD - Im just pissed that another saturday [after about 2 months of soldering 300+metres cable, tweaking software, hardware & furniture] has left me nowhere near getting any music done.
Im relatively happy now: Ive got a bottle of Leffe and Bruce Parry ison BBC2 with teh 3rd series of Tribes: link
09/01/07
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Zanf
]dpmtl: the liquid mix has gone back and no, its a firewire DSP device. Also, the PC was a self build so [morrisey singing voice] "youve noone but yourself to blame...oh.oh oh oh"
09/01/07
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bla
bottle o' leffe! sorted!
i found another good one (tesco got some new beers in) : kwak- good name and its 8.1%!!!!!
09/02/07
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chkachak
computers suck, just go acoustic
09/02/07
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bla
inspired by my own post im drinking a bottle of kwak right now! (yes i know its a bit early...)
its not quite as tasty as i remember from last time i had one but its still pretty good- i think last time it tasted better in contrast to the bottle of orval i drank first- which tasted...ummm...orval!
ive got tx81z programming to do...
09/02/07
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Zanf
I've just spent about 90 minutes taking apart my PC down to removing the MoBo from the chassis and put it all back together again [all the cables are a lot tidier this time though!] and its booted! Ive flushed the CMOS so Ill have to reconfigure all my BIOS settings but thats no problem at all. At least its booting!
09/02/07
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dpmtl
And your not booting it eh?!Result
09/02/07
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jdg
who's that hot skinny girl in the fotos?
oh.. nm.. just read the blog
09/02/07
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Zanf
yeah, whatever fatty.
UAD card still wont initialize. Im doing a clean reinstall and seeing if that does it.
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