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Ea5 output volumes randomly changing


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For the last few weeks my Ea5 has been acting strangely. At random times, the Ea5 output volumes (there are four outputs) change from 100 to 0 resulting in my family not being able to hear the music that is supposed to be playing. My dealer then has to go into composer and manually change the output volumes back to 100. I have had control4 for years and have never had this problem before. If anyone has an idea of why this issue happening and how to fix it please let me know!

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I've been on the dealer end of this issue on a few sites, and also with the EA-5 in particular. Apparently it's like a "known issue" that after updates and stuff the outputs can get dropped/set to 0 (unacceptable imo), however in most of the cases I've dealt with it wasn't after an update and was completely random. C4 just acted like it shouldn't be happening and didn't hear about it from anyone else. I feel like it's another one of those bugs that was just never addressed. As far as I can tell it seems to be a director bug rather than a controller issue. It has something to do with a desync between the UI and director in that one area.

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I used to have this problem occasionally on updates (HC800 and EA5).  It drove me nuts and we (my dealer with me hanging over his shoulder) eventually programmed around this at startup.  I can’t remember exactly how we did it, something like the following (from memory):

1. Put an audio end point in a room with no speakers (my garage, I think).

2. Connected (virtually) the offending audio stream from the controller to this room.

3. Set the room volume to 100%.

 Haven’t seen the problem in a good few years and assume this code still runs every time the Director restarts.

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43 minutes ago, chopedogg88 said:

I've seen this issue as well.  What version OS are you on?

I’m on the latest OS 3.2.1 

5 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I used to have this problem occasionally on updates (HC800 and EA5).  It drove me nuts and we (my dealer with me hanging over his shoulder) eventually programmed around this at startup.  I can’t remember exactly how we did it, something like the following (from memory):

1. Put an audio end point in a room with no speakers (my garage, I think).

2. Connected (virtually) the offending audio stream from the controller to this room.

3. Set the room volume to 100%.

 Haven’t seen the problem in a good few years and assume this code still runs every time the Director restarts.

Thanks for the tip I’ll run it by my dealer.

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This is really interesting as it describes an issue I used to randomly experience (I also have an EA5).  I haven't seen it in a while and it was before I had Composer HE so I didn't have the level of insight into the system but it sounds eerily familiar.  I think it was also before I moved to OS 2.10.6 (just finally moved to OS3 last week) but sometimes when I went to stream native audio in the Kitchen (or other rooms) my volume would just show 0 and I wouldn't get any sound. I could change sources but nothing would play with volume.  With blind luck I stumbled on something that worked for me and perhaps others could fill in with the reason but I always got it back working by doing the following.  I would turn on a source (satellite) connected to my family room through my AV processor and then push that source to join the kitchen (or other rooms). As soon as I did it I would have volume and it would go back to normal.  It wouldn't work the other way around but always worked from the family room to the kitchen maybe because of the Marantz pushing the audio back out to the C4 audio matrix and then changing something back in the EA5? Whatever it was, it would fix it. 

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1 hour ago, PorterTX said:

This is really interesting as it describes an issue I used to randomly experience (I also have an EA5).  I haven't seen it in a while and it was before I had Composer HE so I didn't have the level of insight into the system but it sounds eerily familiar.  I think it was also before I moved to OS 2.10.6 (just finally moved to OS3 last week) but sometimes when I went to stream native audio in the Kitchen (or other rooms) my volume would just show 0 and I wouldn't get any sound. I could change sources but nothing would play with volume.  With blind luck I stumbled on something that worked for me and perhaps others could fill in with the reason but I always got it back working by doing the following.  I would turn on a source (satellite) connected to my family room through my AV processor and then push that source to join the kitchen (or other rooms). As soon as I did it I would have volume and it would go back to normal.  It wouldn't work the other way around but always worked from the family room to the kitchen maybe because of the Marantz pushing the audio back out to the C4 audio matrix and then changing something back in the EA5? Whatever it was, it would fix it. 

Thanks for the tip. Did the problem just go away on its own?

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I haven't seen it in a while so it seems to be the case.  I wish I would have paid better attention to what version of OS it was happening under.  That said, I believe you stated you are on OS 3.2.1 so not sure if that would matter.  It is annoying when it happens for sure.  Hopefully there will be a permanent fix someday or at least you can find an easy temporary fix for when it happens. Now I will know what to look for in Composer HE if it pops back up. 

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On 2/1/2021 at 8:24 PM, PorterTX said:

This is really interesting as it describes an issue I used to randomly experience (I also have an EA5).  I haven't seen it in a while and it was before I had Composer HE so I didn't have the level of insight into the system but it sounds eerily familiar.  I think it was also before I moved to OS 2.10.6 (just finally moved to OS3 last week) but sometimes when I went to stream native audio in the Kitchen (or other rooms) my volume would just show 0 and I wouldn't get any sound. I could change sources but nothing would play with volume.  With blind luck I stumbled on something that worked for me and perhaps others could fill in with the reason but I always got it back working by doing the following.  I would turn on a source (satellite) connected to my family room through my AV processor and then push that source to join the kitchen (or other rooms). As soon as I did it I would have volume and it would go back to normal.  It wouldn't work the other way around but always worked from the family room to the kitchen maybe because of the Marantz pushing the audio back out to the C4 audio matrix and then changing something back in the EA5? Whatever it was, it would fix it. 

I suspect you were forcing the system to move to the second steam from the EA5 when only the first stream was impacted by the problem... but I may be wrong.

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1 minute ago, Rob21 said:

Did you just have your dealer fix it every time it happened?

I used to work for a dealer. I have credentials. Impractical for most, but I couldn’t afford c4 as college student (7 years ago) so I worked for a dealer for free until I had my home outfitted. 

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