Sonance iPort and iPod trouble

Darkside

Hi all,

We are currently installing a system that includes the iPort and an iPod. The installation of the device appears to be fine, however we are not getting any audio, just a ticking sound.

The cat5 cable between the iPort and the breakout box has been tested, and we have established coms to the device with AMX which is via the same cable.

The iPort is an FS4 and the iPod is a classic 80 and I wondered if perhaps there might be firmware conflicts etc that might give us this symptom

Any input greatfully accepted!

justnoah

Switch

I know on the IW model there is a switch that turns the internal volume control on and off. I am not sure about the table top model though.

ericmedley

Stephen Bolton wrote:

Hi all,

We are currently installing a system that includes the iPort and an iPod. The installation of the device appears to be fine, however we are not getting any audio, just a ticking sound.

The cat5 cable between the iPort and the breakout box has been tested, and we have established coms to the device with AMX which is via the same cable.

The iPort is an FS4 and the iPod is a classic 80 and I wondered if perhaps there might be firmware conflicts etc that might give us this symptom

Any input greatfully accepted!

We commonly find that the Cat5 cable is plugged into the video side instead of the audio side on the in-wall side of the chain. That could cause the problem. It's a simple enough and easy to make mistake.

gdemik

check the balanced / unbalanced switches

mpullin

We have an iPort in the office now where we hear ticking AND music. The cat5 is plugged into the Audio plug, not the Video plug. What the ticking is is data being transferred over the audio line. I hear a tick every time an RS232 string is being sent to the iPort, e.g. If I enable the play status polling, then I hear a tick every second during playback.

What's funny about this is that this exact iPort used to be installed in a client's place and I heard no reports of ticking while it was there...

Darkside

Thanks very much to everyone for their responses.

We are back on deck for 2008 now and I will get the site boys to check it out again.

Thanks again.

vining

I had a ticking problem about 2 years ago and just returned it to Sonance for a replacement and haven't had a problems with any since. Knock on wood!

Darkside

so, VAV, did they acknowledge it *was* an iPort problem?

I assume when you swapped it out, it was fixed and you didn't change any wiring or ipod settings?

Very interesting indeed.

vining

I really don't remember what the discussion was w/ Sonance TS. I think I may have had another one in stock that I swapped it out with first and that one worked so I just had my stock replaced but no wiring was changed and no firmware was updated. The firmware may have been current cuz I'm sure we would have updated otherwise.

Darkside

The guys on site report that there is indeed audio in both channels and the ticking is 'mixed' on one channel only (R).

The cabling is correct and the Cat5 connector is definitely plugged into the right socket (thanks for the thought ericmedley)

Think we'd better have a little talk to Sonance.

DHawthorne

Sonance is one of those companies where the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. I had a problem with a dock where I had to change the faceplate color, and the docking connector wouldn't fit through the hole in the new plate. They originally told me that they were all the same, and I basically had to be crazy. Being crazy and persistent, I drilled through tech support people (who all made me repeat my story each time) until I got an engineer who remembered that Apple changed the connector, and they needed to re-tool the docks; apparently, my faceplate was too old to reflect the change. So, armed with that information, I proceeded to try to get a replacement ... and was told I couldn't because there was only one model, and they "never changed."

I'm afraid at this point I had to get loud. They eventually sent me a new plate, and all was well, but the incident stuck in my mind of a perfect example of bad communications inside a company.

So ... now that I'm done venting ... even if someone over at Sonance has seen or heard this particular problem, it is my considered opinion that it's a roll of the dice that you can talk to someone over there who knows about it. And if the person you talk to doesn't, you will be starting over, just like no one ever had it before. So, in this case, a tech with no knowledge of the issue is no certain indication it hasn't come up before.

Darkside

DHawthorne wrote:

Sonance is one of those companies where the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. I had a problem with a dock where I had to change the faceplate color, and the docking connector wouldn't fit through the hole in the new plate. They originally told me that they were all the same, and I basically had to be crazy. Being crazy and persistent, I drilled through tech support people (who all made me repeat my story each time) until I got an engineer who remembered that Apple changed the connector, and they needed to re-tool the docks; apparently, my faceplate was too old to reflect the change. So, armed with that information, I proceeded to try to get a replacement ... and was told I couldn't because there was only one model, and they "never changed."

I'm afraid at this point I had to get loud. They eventually sent me a new plate, and all was well, but the incident stuck in my mind of a perfect example of bad communications inside a company.

So ... now that I'm done venting ... even if someone over at Sonance has seen or heard this particular problem, it is my considered opinion that it's a roll of the dice that you can talk to someone over there who knows about it. And if the person you talk to doesn't, you will be starting over, just like no one ever had it before. So, in this case, a tech with no knowledge of the issue is no certain indication it hasn't come up before.

I had something a little similar with PictureTel way back then. The iPower was the latest and greatest box on earth supposedly, and we reported that the home screen image background was 'breaking up' with ll sorts of digital looking blocks every now and then. Reboot would fix it.

Tech support advised that "This simply cannot be so. The box can't do that. Your projector is faulty. Your wiring's faulty. Your power is faulty. The weather is too hot, The room is too small..."

After repeated and somewhat heated 'discussion', I finally photographed the screen with a digital camera and emailed it to them. I'll tell you, that shut them up and it was immediately logged as a 'significant video driver firmware bug' and was resolved within days!

Thanks for the heads up Dave...we'll push the issue a little harder with the left and right handed experts!

:-)