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Russound MCA series Wake-On-Lan???


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We had a customer the own a Russound MCA-C3 that we integrated into C4 using the free EV driver. Worked fine, this Russound is great unit that sound better than C4 own audio gear but there is an weird issue... The unit fall in "Sleep" every five minutes or so when it is not in use... Though of a power management feature but there is nothing about power management into the Russound configuration software... Strangely, we can still use the unit using RS-232 and the CAV6.6 driver (MCA drivers are all IP), and the unit wakes up and start working again...

Lastly I took a guess and sent a WOL packed to the unit while it sleeps, and it worked, it is now online... for 5 minutes and sleeps again...

I don't have so much experience with Russound but I never heard something about Wake on Lan needed to make the unit controllable via IP? If it is the case, why the EV driver does not feature a WOL option to wake the unit before sending a command?

Is someone already experienced something similar with an IP Russound product?

For now, the only solution I have is to send repeatedly a WOL packet to the unit using repeating timer to make sure it stays on...

Any idea?

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I am using the Russound MCA-C5 and it works perfectly with the EV driver. Never had a problem with it. I also used Simple Control (Roomie Remote) with it and it worked great with it as well. I am guessing there is a problem with that unit. You can use Putty and open a Raw connection to it using port 9621. If you want more info search for "Russound RIO Protocol" or go to the russound website.

The Russound system is one of my favorite pieces of AV equipment. Combined with a Sonos Connect it is perfect for me. The Sonos feeds the Russound via analog line-in, Great Room Denon AVR via optical, and Den via digital coax. Only gives one source of audio but it's just the wife and I and we listen to the same thing.

 

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I have A TON of experience with this. And to be honest there is no good solution.

MCA-C3 will go to sleep

MCA-C5 will not go to sleep.

I have tried everything... Literally everything. From using a relay to 12v trigger into the russound to keep it awake - still goes to sleep

I have also got a driver from russound I was using and it DOES keep the russound unit awake, unfortunately the driver is seriously bugged and it will backlog the system and a month later the processer will be at 100% usage and it will require a reboot. So this solution is not practical as it keeps the russound awake (yay) but it will slowly cripple the system over time. I can share this driver with you if you want but it WILL cripple the system slowly over time.

Only thing I could think of is to try and leave a zone running in the background all the time.

I had 3 drivers with this. EV Russound - EV Tuner Driver and then I have the Corrupted Russound Driver. Thought I got it all figured out until my system needed to be power cycled all the time.

Best of luck... I have spent atleast 10 hours trying to get this correct. The solution is get a C4 amp or a MCA-C5. I was talking to russound yesterday and they said there might be a way to keep it awake. I was dealer with Kari Boucher at russound and she was familiar with the going to sleep issue, she might be able to help but I doubt it.

And yes when I was talking to Russound yesterday I told them to get their sh!t together and get some working drivers. They are in the works Russound said.... so that means sometime in 2017 im guessing lol.

Best of luck.... Feel free to contact me if you have any questions like I say I been through this a lot.

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I'm SOOO happy to see I'm not the only one with that problem!! I bought this MCA on eBay for (very) cheap, but stated as "untested", so a risky transaction but it arrived as a brand new unit with plastic still on it, lucky me!

But you can always use the CAV5.5 EV driver with RS-232 connection with the MCA-C3 and it work perfect, without sleeping... Only draw back is no discrete volume control.

Right now, my repeating timer that send a WOL packet each 4 min keeps the MCA awake, it's easy to do using the free WOL driver at Houselogix.

It is very easy to add a WOL feature into the IP driver, I can do that in a minute if ONLY the driver were OPEN SOURCE!!! It's very frustrating to see more and more driver distributed BY Control4 and NOT third party and those driver are encrypted... Many developer would benefit being able to modifying C4 driver to make them better or fix minor issue but this is not possible for no reason... As EV now part of C4, EV driver should be also distributed open source to encourage driver development on those bases.

 

BTW can you post the driver you got from Russound? chance it is not encrypted...

 

 

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2 hours ago, BraydonH said:

I have A TON of experience with this. And to be honest there is no good solution.

MCA-C3 will go to sleep

MCA-C5 will not go to sleep.

I have tried everything... Literally everything. From using a relay to 12v trigger into the russound to keep it awake - still goes to sleep

I have also got a driver from russound I was using and it DOES keep the russound unit awake, unfortunately the driver is seriously bugged and it will backlog the system and a month later the processer will be at 100% usage and it will require a reboot. So this solution is not practical as it keeps the russound awake (yay) but it will slowly cripple the system over time. I can share this driver with you if you want but it WILL cripple the system slowly over time.

Only thing I could think of is to try and leave a zone running in the background all the time.

I had 3 drivers with this. EV Russound - EV Tuner Driver and then I have the Corrupted Russound Driver. Thought I got it all figured out until my system needed to be power cycled all the time.

Best of luck... I have spent atleast 10 hours trying to get this correct. The solution is get a C4 amp or a MCA-C5. I was talking to russound yesterday and they said there might be a way to keep it awake. I was dealer with Kari Boucher at russound and she was familiar with the going to sleep issue, she might be able to help but I doubt it.

And yes when I was talking to Russound yesterday I told them to get their sh!t together and get some working drivers. They are in the works Russound said.... so that means sometime in 2017 im guessing lol.

Best of luck.... Feel free to contact me if you have any questions like I say I been through this a lot.

Dang. Glad I got the C5. 

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The C5 is a digital amplifier, the C3 is analog, I do prefer Analog Russound's as they produce richer and clearer sound (this is my own preference, after tried both units side by side)

Anyway, I will leave my repeating WOL setup on that project since it solved it all, no issue reported then so hope this thread will help other user with the same issue and will motivate C4/EV to release a new driver or distribute open source drivers...

 

 

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My mistake, the repeating WOL timer does not keep the unit awake, it just wake it up constantly, so it still sleep, timer expire, and got wake up... Not good when you're using a Sub on the line out of a zone (big Pop to expect at each wake up)

 

Can you post the corrupted driver you got from Russound?

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When there is no solution to your problem, what to do is to build your own stuff to solve the problem.

Here is an home made driver I've done to fix the MCA-C3 sleeping issue forever (or until C4/EV decides to release a new driver that will prevent sleeping).

It's call MCA Poller, you just need to enter the IP Address of your MCA, the MAC is optional but it'll will allow to send WOL packet when the MCA is offline. The driver will then poll the MCA with a custom RIO command. The command can be modified but the default is VERSION and I found it work pretty well. My MCA-C3 does not go to sleep anymore even with all zone off,  and work perfect each time I start music! You will still use the EV driver for controlling the MCA. Both driver runs in parallel.

I am giving away this driver (attached) to all people that own an MCA-C3 integrated with Control4. Really hoping EV/C4 will add a polling feature into a future release of the MCA-C3 driver...

other_ip_russound_poller.c4i

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  • 1 year later...

I have a c3 also and after speaking with c4 tech support, and russound, we set up a fake audio server in the russound settings  on zone 6,  that helped keep the russound from going dead. I haven't had the unit turn off in 6 months

the other option was to hook up a russound keypad and those would wake it up, for me, I didn't want that option

ok one more option is to get a resettable outlet, I use wattbox, but you could always use a wemo or something to reset the outlet that will reboot the unit, when it powers down.

 

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