Carbon won’t work in PT/won’t update firmware

[nunasentus]

hello all!

I just bought a used carbon, Protools studio was working great with my mbox studio and apollos, but i purchased the carbon and then upgraded to ultimate.

Sessions still work great with ultimate using my other interfaces but carbon, although seen by AVB and outputting clean core audio, will not show up in playback engine apart from saying "you have one carbon device that needs a newer version of pro tools", even opening the playback engine window PT will stall and spin the wheel for a good 2 minutes before showing this.

I tried downgrading from 2023.12 to 2023.09 as well as updating to Mac Ventura from Monterey.
I did a factory reset on the carbon and tried multiple cat cables with my sonnet adapter but I don’t receive any firmware update messages from PT and when i try with carbon central it says i need to update but the updates fail every time reading error 1205.
The same issue happens on both my m2 macbook pro as well as my m1 ultra mac studio.

Anyone have any advice or same situations, thanks!

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by nunasentus

hello all!

I just bought a used carbon, Protools studio was working great with my mbox studio and apollos, but i purchased the carbon and then upgraded to ultimate.

Sessions still work great with ultimate using my other interfaces but carbon, although seen by AVB and outputting clean core audio, will not show up in playback engine apart from saying "you have one carbon device that needs a newer version of pro tools", even opening the playback engine window PT will stall and spin the wheel for a good 2 minutes before showing this.

I tried downgrading from 2023.12 to 2023.09 as well as updating to Mac Ventura from Monterey.
I did a factory reset on the carbon and tried multiple cat cables with my sonnet adapter but I don’t receive any firmware update messages from PT and when i try with carbon central it says i need to update but the updates fail every time reading error 1205.
The same issue happens on both my m2 macbook pro as well as my m1 ultra mac studio.

Anyone have any advice or same situations, thanks!

First if you have only the one carbon no need to use Carbon Central

Also PT 2023.12 should run fine
If by AVB can see Carbon is what you actually mean is,, in Audio Midi Set Up and Mac Sounds you can select Pro Tools Carbon IO ? if Yes then

Sounds like the problem is with the firmware, or lack of, or mismatch, ?

So did you get this "you have one carbon device that needs a newer version of pro tools" after you downgraded to 2023.9 ? If so then you need to revert to the firmware back to default

So you said you did a "factory reset" BUT did you revert to Default Firmware Image ?

If not on Page 15 of the Carbon user manual below "Reset "
is Default Firmware Image instructions

[nunasentus]

Hey Roche,

thanks for the reply/help, to answer ur questions:

First if you have only the one carbon no need to use Carbon Central
-I know this, but if pro tools won’t update the firmware i wanted to see if this would help.

Also PT 2023.12 should run fine
If by AVB can see Carbon is what you actually mean is,, in Audio Midi Set Up and Mac Sounds you can select Pro Tools Carbon IO ? if Yes then
Sounds like the problem is with the firmware, or lack of, or mismatch, ?
-I agree, yes carbon can be selected in AVB and even be used in other Daws and programs just is not selectable in Pro Tools Ultimate


So did you get this "you have one carbon device that needs a newer version of pro tools" after you downgraded to 2023.9? If so then you need to revert to the firmware back to default
So you said you did a "factory reset" BUT did you revert to Default Firmware Image ?
If not on Page 15 of the Carbon user manual below
"Reset "
is Default Firmware Image instructions

-I got this with 2023.9 and 2023.12 after factory reset was done both times, I’ve done a normal reset and factory resets both times to no avail. I only downgraded because it didn’t make sense to me that i would need a newer Protools version with literally the newest version. Both are not working, i’m just wondering why Protools wouldn’t ask me to update firmware when i boot with AVB.


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[K Roche]

Sorry it's been so long things have been hectic around here for a month

Did you ever get this sorted out ?

[nunasentus]

Hey Roche,

thanks for following up, i really did appreciate the tips, unfortunately it still is the same. I tried to see if it was some kind of audio bridge issue but i’m thinking it’s really coming down to something fugazi with the original seller.

the serial number was to my dismay scratched out, i didn’t think this would be an issue not registering it but, the interface is working with everything apart from Protools, and definitely not with any hybrid processing options.

I think I may just need to get an avid phone session in to explore options for repair or activation unless you had any other tips or troubleshoot ideas?

Thanks so much for all ur help so far!


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