Eleven Rack Is Now Only Putting Out a Clean Tone

[Sharkhaywood]

I am new to this forum. I have been using an Avid Eleven Rack through a HP laptop running Windows 7. It has worked great but when I went to use it a couple of nights ago it was suddenly only producing a clean tone with no effects on them whatsoever. This is true of the signal going to the laptop as well as the headphone output as well. None of the settings had been changed. I tried uninstalling/re-installing the Eleven Rack Editor and that didn't solve the issue either.

Anyone else ever run into an issue like this?

[jeffro]

Welcome to the community.

Are you selecting Eleven Rig (not Guitar Input) on your track?

[Darryl Ramm]

What Jeffro is suggesting is the most likely issue. Once your Eleven Rack is connected to Pro Tools, the monitor outputs and headphone (which just mirrors the main monitors) are playing back the output of Pro Tools not the internal Eleven Rack rig. So you can easily mess things up in Pro Tools, like select the Guitar In as input and that affects all you hear.... or accidentally select Line In and hear nothing and spend forever trying to work out why the guitar seems to be dead.

A good approach when you have any problems like this can be to just disconnect the Eleven Rack from your computer and get things working stand-alone. In this case if the rig setup in the Eleven Rack indeed has not changed you would hear what you expect as the Eleven Rack switches from external monitoring back to monitoring the internal rig signal path when you disconnect it. It's also easy to accidentally mess up a rig setting, (like take an amp block out, or bump a gain knob way down) so that quick test helps sanity test stuff. And it's a good idea to start with learning how to use the front-panel not over-relying on the Eleven Rack editor.

[Sharkhaywood]

Originally Posted by jeffro

Welcome to the community.

Are you selecting Eleven Rig (not Guitar Input) on your track?

I am having this issue even when just using the Eleven Rack on its own, not connected to the computer. Even tried doing a factory reset to try and fix it. It was recording fine one day and the next day, with no changes made, had this issue.

[jeffro]

Sounds like the Tuner is on, though I'll bet you would have noticed that. Anything else connected besides guitar and headphones? What rev firmware? Sorry, not seeing any other posts like this but will look through support cases as well...

[Sharkhaywood]

Originally Posted by jeffro

Sounds like the Tuner is on, though I'll bet you would have noticed that. Anything else connected besides guitar and headphones? What rev firmware? Sorry, not seeing any other posts like this but will look through support cases as well...

It isn’t on but I will turn it on and then off to see if it helps.

[Darryl Ramm]

With the USB cable completely disconnected (and leave it disconnected). Power cycle the Eleven Rack. Does that work? If not delete everything from the rig and just add back one item, like a very obvious dirty amp with the gain turned All the way up. Esp. Make sure FX loop is not used. Now if you toggle on/off that amp in the rig do you hear any change at all?

If not it may be a broken Eleven Rack. I think I have heard of this once in a ~decade.. I do not recall if there was any resolution.

If you hear any change, but not what you expect. The next thing to look at is levels. The meters in the Eleven Rack front display as you scroll to the right can be very handy clueing in if there is a problem.

[Sharkhaywood]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

With the USB cable completely disconnected (and leave it disconnected). Power cycle the Eleven Rack. Does that work? If not delete everything from the rig and just add back one item, like a very obvious dirty amp with the gain turned All the way up. Esp. Make sure FX loop is not used. Now if you toggle on/off that amp in the rig do you hear any change at all?

If not it may be a broken Eleven Rack. I think I have heard of this once in a ~decade.. I do not recall if there was any resolution.

If you hear any change, but not what you expect. The next thing to look at is levels. The meters in the Eleven Rack front display as you scroll to the right can be very handy clueing in if there is a problem.

Followed what you suggested. Didn’t seem to help so I did another reset not connected to the pc and uploaded my go to setting. Same issue then I noticed somehow even on the newly reloaded preset the distortion was turned off? I turn it on and have distortion again but it doesn’t sound like it did. So the gremlins turned off the distortion?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Sharkhaywood

Followed what you suggested. Didn’t seem to help so I did another reset not connected to the pc and uploaded my go to setting. Same issue then I noticed somehow even on the newly reloaded preset the distortion was turned off? I turn it on and have distortion again but it doesn’t sound like it did. So the gremlins turned off the distortion?

Sorry I am not sure what is going on. It's a bit hard to follow what exactly you mean. Is the amp block starting up disabled (and shows that in the Eleven Rack front panel display?). It might pay to do some more experimenting. e.g. a rig with just one effects pedal and nothing else. Does that work? Does it save/restore correctly? I'd do all those tests without the USB cable connected.

I think there have been occasional issues where the Eleven Rack gets confused and disables the internal rig monitoring, (so you hear nothing unless connected to a DAW). And there is a well know clock issue with old hardware that can stops all sound at some clock rates etc. Some folks using MIDI controllers run into problems with setup, misconfiguration or sometimes electrical signal problems switching stuff... make sure you are testing with any MIDI controllers removed.

Many other issues have been caused by just the complexity of all the rig settings, especially the multiple adjustable signal levels in a rig. One thing that can cause is "clean tones" if a level is pulled down, which is why I pointed that out before.

As jeffro asked... what rev firmware are you on? (esp. curious if you have been trying to operate the Eleven Rack editor with a pre-expansion pack unit... that won't work, but not sure of the problems it might cause).

[jeffro]

Have you also checked the Factory/Preset Rigs?