UMC-1 software update available! 2/9/10

[mdanderson]

I installed the SW update with success. I have tested out various things such as SACD, DVD audio etc. and everything sounds fine except 2 channel music.

I am still getting very little sub output when using the 7.1 analog inputs. The bass sounds ok when I play the 2 channel music through the hdmi inputs but the 7.1 inputs just do not have any bass.

I have my oppo speaker config set to small as Lonnie suggested but it just does not seem to make any difference. Other than that, everything seems to be working ok.

[BONK]

Are you using only the L and R 7.1 inputs ?
Or do you have a sub out from the Oppo as well ?

[jahays32]

Got the software installed. That was easy. Had to Reload Default settings. Time to evaluate ........

[moe]

I tried input 2 and 3 after fm,and aux3,no issue with neo6 that I could find.

[majorloser]

Yes, I am an idiot.
(got that out of the way)

I could have waited till tomorrow to mess with this but after reading all the problems here I decided to give it a shot before going to bed.

BIG MISTAKE

Before I go any futher, let me just say that Bill Gates must die!!!

Oh, and I really hate computers. I like the "entertainment" available on the internet, just hate the stupid box I'm forced to use to get access to it. And for the record I am pretty good with computers. But that's like saying your good with women. Both are guaranteed to piss you off when you need them to do something for you.

But let's talk about the UMC=1 firmware...

I started off loading all the software suggested onto my laptop running Win7 Home. I also loaded WinRAR 64 bit. But for some reason I could never get the drivers to work right for the UMC-1. I kept getting driver errors, including one about the driver was not digitally signed. Removed and reloaded numerous time, different cables and all with no success. This is my new laptop, so throwing it across the room was "out". Thought about but "out".

Move on to laptop #2...

This is an older laptop running Win Vista (aka: crap). I got the software all loaded. All the drivers worked and so I started the firmware loading process. All was good for the first smaller file it loaded. Bujt then I started getting the same error codes mentioned before about the second file failing to communicate. I tried the old "shut off the UMC-1 back power switch and re-boot the computer" trick many times with no sucess.

So I start reading this thread some more. I notice there was some issues with USB hubs and extention cables. Well, I was using a USB 2.0 extention cable. So I go ahead and remove the extension cable and move the old laptop over next to my equipment rack. I do the ol' power switch reboot trick and start the process all over again...

AND LOW AND BEHOLD IT WORK

Let's not get too happy here. Did I mention this was my old laptop? Well of course once I moved it next to the rack I had to unplug the AC adapter cause it wouldn't reach.

So guess what...the power died in the middle of the upgrade.

(did I say i hate computers?)

Not giving up I plug in the laptop and try AGAIN.

SUCCESS

At this point it's too damn late to play with it and do any tests. All of my input names are screwed up. It's like the first and last couple letters in the names got moved to the input name above it. WEIRD.

Going to bed now, had enough fun for one night.

One day I might just run into Bill Gates. If it happens he better be wearing a cup if he's knows what's best for him.

[akbungle]

Feb 10, 2010 0:11:30 GMT -5 majorloser said:

. All of my input names are screwed up. It's like the first and last couple letters in the names got moved to the input name above it. WEIRD.

Do a system reset to fix that and then re set your personal settings.(Lonnie mentioned how to do that a couple pages back I believe its just an option in the menu.)

[brettjb]

Feb 9, 2010 23:17:50 GMT -5 teknoid said:

Kinda feels like there are timing tolerances that are cut just a bit fine...

This!

On the second firmware load, the timing between the Wait ISP Power On (or something to that effect - read on for why I ain't gonna confirm it! ) and it giving up and power cycling off is way less than 5 seconds on my setup. That seems like barely enough time...

With that said, I would like to offer a small ray of hope. Having yanked the UMC out of my rack to send it back, I plugged it in by itself and having been trying various configurations and hoops to get the firmware to load. No joy. But, in responding to this post, I wanted to get the wait ISP Power On terminology correct, so I ran it one more time. Did everything wrong: no reboot, didn't power cycle the UMC, had my browser open to the Lounge, etc. Should have been a failure... but it worked! Don't ask me why, but you can be certain I danced the dance of joy when that progress meter started to climb... You can be equally certain I immediately ceased the dance of joy, lest I inadvertently screw up the firmware flash somehow!

I don't think it had anything to do with the various things I was trying - I think it was, as teknoid speculates, a timeout issue, and I finally got lucky. I did load just the HDMI firmware, as I knew the MCU was already good, but had been trying that repeatedly as well. Again, I think I just got lucky.

Now I just have to put the darn thing back in the rack and get all those darn connections right again... Not tonight - been a long, rough day, and I just had to drop nearly $4k on a new furnace (as my old one decided to die with the temps in the low single digits last night!)... But my system boots now, and shows a firmware version of W5.46.00.07. Yay no RMA! I too experienced the scrambled input names, and have since loaded the factory default (as long as I'm hooking up all those cables, why not set up all my inputs again, right? )

I do hope we manage to narrow down why this happens, and how to correct it. I believe the issue to be with the loader itself, but am basing this on anecdotal evidence, conjecture, and gut feeling. I hope to not need any more firmware loads, but if I do, I'd rather not dread that the next one will almost certainly brick my system! If I can provide Emotiva with any information about my laptop's configuration to help troubleshoot this, I'd be happy to do so. Just throwing these out there:

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40 GHz
Memory: 4.00 GB
System type: 32-bit OS - Windows Vista SP1 (yeah, yeah, not my choice of OS - blame the employer! )

--Brett

[majorloser]

Feb 10, 2010 0:17:00 GMT -5 akbungle said:

Feb 10, 2010 0:11:30 GMT -5 majorloser said:

. All of my input names are screwed up. It's like the first and last couple letters in the names got moved to the input name above it. WEIRD.

Do a system reset to fix that and then re set your personal settings.(Lonnie mentioned how to do that a couple pages back I believe its just an option in the menu.)

Me need sleepy. Go bed now. night, night ;D

[Woodpecker]

Even after logging in as administrator on vista 64b, no dice. This time while downloading the driver info, there wasn't any pop up timing out the computer asking me to ok the download. Still it just sat there pretending to download! This is obviously another 64bit driver issue.

I've despised the 64 bit since I bought it. Always a driver problem if not something else silly. I never had a problem with my old XP system. This might be the straw to have me up/down grade to XP again. I guess it is possible to do so?

[somedude]

For any of you that are having problems with windows 7-64/vista 64, the problem is that the silabs usbexpress driver that came with the updater is too old (version 3.1). I went to silabs and downloaded the newest SDK (3.2.1), which came with the newest, signed drivers, and PRESTO! Here's the link:

www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/Software/USBXpress_Install.zip

Hope it helps.

--Dima

[jahays32]

Feb 10, 2010 0:09:54 GMT -5 moe said:

I tried input 2 and 3 after fm,and aux3,no issue with neo6 that I could find.

yea mine shows right, now, but if you don't back out and just change to another source and then scroll through them one will be wrong. But if you go all the way back out and then come back in then it will be right again. So I guess there is no issue.

[dkjohn]

Feb 9, 2010 22:09:55 GMT -5 Woodpecker said:

I got the winrar 64 bit to extract the files perfectly. I just cannot get my computer to recognize the UMC. It keeps showing up as device unknown. I have the red "X" when the emo software is running. ?

Had to read this whole tread to find someone with the exact same problem as me thought I was crazy.

[emoforme]

Hi folks. Well like a few others, I'm just not "feelin the love" here tonight.

To the point: I did in fact update and confirmed that it is now W5.46.00.07. I certainly flipped out when I saw how the xover - speaker setup settings were screwed (not to mention inputs garbled, etc). But as was stated a while back, I followed Lonnie's advice to do a factory default reset and was relieved to be able to reenter everything manually (whew).

Nevertheless, what IS the deal with the video resolution settings not staying locked into place?!? (also occasional audio drops when switching source). I need to *at least* have this thing maintain the video res setting at pass through for my two HDMI video sources (PS3 and HD & SD cable via Moto DCH3416) which are being fed to my display (Epson 1080UB projector). But that just isn't the case.....if I set it to "pass through" and then change to an SD channel, it gets "stuck" at 480p video res. I have to manually re-enter the video res. each and every time I change between these channels and\or sources.

Am I mistaken or was this not a known issue that was supposed to be addressed in this FW update? Am I the only one here who is having this problem? Perhaps I have a defective unit?

On a positive note I can confirm that at least my PLIIx 7.1 movie mode now maintains the matrix feed to the 6th & 7th rear speaker (thank goodness for that at least.)

I haven't bothered checking other things yet, so maybe there's stuff I don't even know about. (And I'm taking a pass on EmoQ - I'll stick with the good ol SPL meter and tape measurer any day. So thanks, but no thanks.)

[roadrunner]

After reading thru all the threads I think a couple of things may need to be added to Lonnie's step-by-step instructions. I am surprised a lot of the PC gurus we have on the Lounge have not chimed in and pointed these out.

The first thing is that the USB standard says not to exceed 15 feet total between the two devices. Any time you get close to that limit you are gambling on whether it will work properly. If you are not using premium quality cables, you are not likely to even succeed with slightly shorter USB cables. Try to keep your total distance as short as possible.

Second, it is always a game of craps to try installing software without first disabling the firewall, virus scanners, etc. Nearly every software package will advise you to disable all of these software packages BEFORE attempting to install new software.

Third, it is always a good idea to shut down all software apps before attempting to install the new software. I have even seen installs fail because you still have an active connection to the INTERNET. Try logging off the INTERNET before proceeding. Basically, log off and shut down all background processes that can interfere with the foreground processing... especially one like this third party driver used to load the upgrade to the UMC-1.

These steps used to be "standard operating procedure" years ago, but if you are experiencing any problems at all take the time and follow these precautions. It just may be the difference between success and throwing your PC across the room. Over the years, before becoming disabled, I made a nice living from people and companies that did not follow these precautions when installing new hardware and software. Good luck. ;D

[pwrchrd]

It took 4 tries, but I got the update applied with an old XP SP3 notebook (current notebook is a Mac). I probably could have done it the first time if I had moved my Win 7 desktop, but I'm lazy.

Emo Q worked pretty well. It had the surrounds crossed pretty high, but I just tweaked them a little. It nailed the mains/center and sub though. It will take a little more listening to see if I need to touch the EQ settings it made, but I thought it sounded great for the hour or so I listened this evening. Overall, better than my manual calibration with no EQ applied.

[roshi]

EUREKA! It worked!
After playing with it and trying different things literally all day long, it finally worked. So here is what I did:
I ran Windows 7 in Parallels 5 on my Macbook Pro. The original driver that Emotiva provided doesn't work under 7, you have to download it from the address that dima gave us above. I actually had to manually change the driver to the new one (GO Microsoft keep making our lives easier... my gosh!).
I turned off the network connection between Windows and MacOS in Parallels.
Then it is very important to have a well !!! functioning USB cable. I tried 3 different ones until I got one that finally worked (happens also to be the shortest one).
Also important as mentioned before don't do anything else, in fact don't let Windows do anything else. The last trial that failed actually failed at the same moment when Windows wanted to start installing updates. (Coincidence? I think not!). So I went and literally turned absolutely everything off. (Firewall, Updates, Suggestion thingies, EVERYTHING!!) After that it worked fine. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to get to 70% percent and then it fails...

Anyways, I hope this helps a lost Mac user. I knew it was possible, just got to play long enough. The only thing that sucks, now it's 3:30am and I can't try anything since everybody is asleep. But at least I don't have to send it in.

Cheers!

[hikinokie]

I've decided to pass on this pre/pro & use analog outs from my new Oppo 83 to my MMC-1. So one of y'all happy campers can have my pre order spot.

[pglover19]

wow.. Finally able to load the new code for the system. I confirmed that my new firmware version is 5.46.07.. Had to load each file individually in the updater. So, my question is how do I confirm that the front panel micro-controller (UMC1_V102_001) code updated correctly?

[azemotiuser]

In my particular instance, Windows 7 x86, no problems installing, no problems connecting to UMC-1, no problems updating UMC-1.

At the risk of being slammed, a lot of these posts, I'm viewing seem to have the lack of general computing common sense being used.

1. x64 OS'es, why?, you'all already, or should know that you are driver sensitive.

2. Mac with VM instances, why?, same as x64, drivers

3. Performing firmware updates with questionable power sources and long cables, why?

There was a statement that most businesses are still running XP, that would be correct. Healthcare and manufacturing industries are the big examples.

I would think most on this forum are techies, do you really not have an old computer in the closet with XP? A cheap Celeron notebook? Or for the venturous, multiple boot disks for those HackinTosh's?

I understand the problem of having 1 computer and it's on the other side of the house. I'm currently on my 2008 Server x64 (workstation mode), which is my primary computer. Yes I did have the thought of cr@p, how am I going to connect to the UMC-1's USB port on the other side of house. For me, it was duh!!!, I have an HTPC with Windows 7 x86 sitting right next to the UMC-1. And I have a 3 year old notebook with XP in the garage that's used for OBDII auto diagnostics. And if I didn't have those, there's the XP laptop from work I could use.

Sorry, but I had to post this. Lonnie, Dan and group seem to be have taken a beating for giving you a hammer to use and you'all hit your thumb with it.

[Nemesis.ie]

Feb 9, 2010 16:52:21 GMT -5 venaka said:

XP is sill far and away the most common operating system on the planet, and 64 bit is gaining, but hardly the norm.
+++1

I used Vista for my 5 Minute Upgrade...

Thanks!!! Seriously guys, this update has made my sound just 10X better!!

EMO-q is working like a Charm ;D

For those with 64-bit 7, you can try running the virtual XP box if you have it. For others, try running the application in "XP compatibility mode".

Right-click the program and select properties, then go to "compatibility", turn on run in compatibility mode and select XP, you can try SP2 as well if SP 3 does not work.

Might be worth a go.