The TC Saga
Comments (0) So after working with TC Electronics’ tech support for over three months, they finally asked me to send my Konnekt Live to them for repair. How’d we arrive at this point?
Some time ago, I decided I’d be happier if I upgraded my audio interface. Ever the gear slut, I convinced myself that my lowly old Tascam US-122 was a limiting factor on my performances. The limitations that I perceive include:
- large latency – prevents monitoring of ‘in the box’ effects
- limited to two channels in, two channels out
- sound quality is — eh — OK
Accordingly, I decided to procure a TC Electronics Konnekt Live. The benefits that I was expecting included:
- lowered latency – enough to monitor from DAW
- double the analog channel IO count (4 in, 4 out)
- addition of SPDIF IO and adat IO
- better preamps
- hardware DSP – both reverb and compression
Better gear, better sound, better performance, right?
Unfortunately, it refuses to work with not only my main DAW, but pretty much with any of my other computers.
At TC TS’ troubleshooting suggestions, I have been through service packs, Microsoft hotfixes, OS reinstalls, multiple driver and application versions, multiple FireWire cards, multiple FireWire cables, ad nauseum. The end result has always been BSOD on the computer (Blue Screen Of Death – windows crashing entirely, and self-rebooting).
‘Tis truly a shame – in the couple minutes before BSOD, the unit does indeed sound absolutely glorious. Like, to the point that a casual listener would notice a distinct improvement. (as much as I obsess over gear, new acquisitions usually lead to gains barely discernible to the average listener).
In all fairness, the unit *seemed* to work on my Hackintosh, but that was just a quick check. It may have failed with a longer test.
It’s now at TC’s US service depot. I’ll update when I get it back.
Themocracy