Audio cutting out in one channel, then both

S2400 Bug Reports
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I’ve installed the DSP card and updated the firmware (Feb 21 2025; DSP Card version 3.0.35). The machine booted up after I installed the card and seemed to work as expected. Yesterday I noticed the audio (both from pads and patterns) cutting out in one channel of the headphones before cutting out completely. The pattern keeps running with no audio. After rebooting (including removing the plug between power down/power up) it worked fine for several hours.

Today I’ve had the same problem, and no amount of rebooting seems to be solving it. The audio works fine through headphones and main outs for about 10 seconds after DSP Card has initialized, then the audio drops out in one channel, then the other. I can hear a very faint sound if I cycle in and out of Sample Mode, and a “click” when the machine powers off and on.

I’m concerned that I damaged some of the pins when I removed the ribbon cable connecting the two PCBs - one side of the connector on the left came off more suddenly and the outermost 3-4 pairs of pins bent slightly outwards. I very gently realigned them before reattaching the ribbon cable after installing the card. I checked that all pins were correctly aligned in all connectors.

Is there a chance this is a bug? I’m hoping it’s not an outright hardware failure because of my mistake. Let me know if there are troubleshooting steps and/or if I should open a support ticket.

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Update: I rebooted the machine with the SD card removed. I made a one bar pattern with the internal sounds and left it running for a few minutes - the audio worked fine. I put the SD card in, made a new project, loaded a kick drum, and made a one bar loop; it ran for less than a minute before the audio cut out as before. I rebooted without the SD card and ran a pattern from internal flash and it’s been running without issue for about 5 minutes.

I’m guessing there’s an issue with the SD card. I remember seeing another post in the past week about an SD card issue; I haven’t been able to find it again but I’ll have another look. If anyone reading this knows the post I’m talking about and can link it here, I’d be very grateful :folded_hands:

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Is it a super old SD card?

tell us more about what samples you are using, are they huge samples? 44.1khz or 48khz? 16 or 24bit?

Let us know how you get on with a different SD card.

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It was a fairly old SD card - I bought it when I got my S2400 in April 2021. It had worked without issue since then. The projects I was having difficulties with are a mix of small (<1mb) and large (>20mb) samples, and a mix of 44.1/16, 48/16, 48/24.

I bought a new SD (SanDisk Extreme Pro 256gb), formatted it in the machine, and then re-downloaded and reinstalled the firmware and DSP firmware via MSC mode. The default Project worked fine. I then put some post-DSP card projects onto the card (via MSC) and loaded one (Project229). No audio. I power cycled the machine, went back to MSC mode, deleted the .DSP file from Project229, unmounted the disk and then exited MSC mode before loading Project229 again. I had audio for about a second before it cut out. I reloaded the default Project, which I had saved to the SD as Project0, and it had extreme aliasing on the toms and kick sounds.

I power cycled the machine and loaded a different (post-DSP) project, Project228. It ran for about 1 minute before the audio suddenly cut out. The pattern kept running, pads blinking etc.

I power cycled the machine and loaded Project228. It’s a 4 bar loop at 120bpm. There are some plugins on the busses. Every 2-3 loops there’s a barely noticeable glitch sound. After about 10 loops the audio cuts out.

I power cycled the machine and loaded another older project from before the DSP installation. Everything works fine. I then enter MSC mode again, go to the folder for Project229, and deleted the .LFX file. I unmount and exit, load the project, and it seems to be working fine.

Is there a chance the .DSP/.LFX files just got corrupted? I’m not really clear on how configs are saved - when I hit Shift-Save on the DSP Buss page the message says something like “DSP config saved” which is different to saving the pattern from the main banks (something like “Project saved”). Does saving the Project from the main banks save the DSP and LFX config to the Project?

Anyway, apologies for the long reply - things seems to be working fine on those post-DSP Projects now that I’ve changed the SD and removed those .DSP and .LFX files. I’ve been using plugins again and haven’t had any issues. I haven’t tried LiveFX again yet, or checked whether there are .DSP/.LFX files saved in the project folders (although I’ve been able to add plugins and they remain the same when I reopen the projects after switching off the machine).

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You Shift+save the project from the main page as usual. This does not save the project-specific DSP settings.

In order to also save the DSP settings for the specific project you must furthermore Shift+save from the DSP page.

This is why you get these two different messages, when saving from each different page.

I recently did a post touching on the subject:

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Thanks for linking that, interesting to read. I wondered if that was the case when I saw the save message on the DSP page. Seems like a convenient and versatile approach, as I’d expect from the Isla team!

Still, I’m curious why I was having those audio issues on DSP projects until I deleted the .DSP and .LFX files… Hopefully it won’t be an issue moving forward. I’ll report back here if I notice the issue coming up again.