TC Electronic Konnekt 24D - The Next Generation

[kevin.fr]

I'm sure I don't have to tell the experts on this forum about the importance of headphone efficiency. Most of you know a heck of a lot more than I do about audio, but this little stat often goes overlooked. These happen to be 107db/mW...not bad

 

 

It mainly depends on the impedance of the headphone. The higher it is, the less loud is the max volume (but the less there is distorsion)

 

 

[sonicE]

Awfully quiet here lately... all the Windows users happy and productive now with the new driver, so no need to post?

Mike, I'm still waiting for the new Mac driver - could you please find out from the team, and report back here, if the Panther release will coincide with the Tiger one, and how much longer we're (realistically) looking at? Thx!

[Anderton]

Awfully quiet here lately... all the Windows users happy and productive now with the new driver, so no need to post?

 

 

Well, I don't have much to say other than it works, aside from the things that are known issues, so it doesn't seem to make much sense to post about those.

 

Guess it's time to review the Assimilator!

[locojohn]

 

Well, I don't have much to say other than it works, aside from the things that are known issues, so it doesn't seem to make much sense to post about those.

 

 

no pun intended, but public beta drivers 1.20 work worse here than version 1.10.. more drop-outs than ever! impossible to listen to music with winamp (wdm mode). same story with ableton live (asio mode).

 

i just rolled back to version 1.10 but keep the latest firmware (from 1.20).. 1.10 worked fine for playback yesterday without any drop-outs.. guess it's only a temporary solution though. unfortunately, 1.10 features heavy use of the CPU in the system and abuse of the DPC area too...

 

here's a nice utility from sysinternals/microsoft to check processor/memory usage:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx

 

it can also be used as a replacement for windows default task manager.

 

good luck...

 

-andrejs

[10101]

Yes, I do. I like the one in the 1820m (don't have an ff800 for comparison) but to me the K24D sounds like it has a bit more clarity in the high end. I do agree you can't get really high volumes out of it, but that doesn't bother me as I don't believe in monitoring through headphones at high volumes - it's very dangerous for the ears. My ears are still in pretty good shape and I want to keep them that way For the record, I'm using Ultrasones so I can't say for certain it's not just that it's a good "fit" between the two products, but of all the interfaces I have here (and that's a lot), if I just wanted to listen to a CD for pleasure I'd choose the K24D or the E-Mu 0404 (I like its headphone amp very much as well).

That's good to hear. The quality of the headphone amp is important for me. I still haven't bought the Konnekt (I have an iBook 1.42 GHz). In fact I think I'll buy the Konnekt Live. Will it be covered in this thread, or in another one?

[Mike Martin]

LocoJohn,
At this point almost all of the PC users except the Toshiba M30 users are now working. I've tried to get in contact with everyone on this thread that has had an issue via PM and tried to personally help them. I sent you one on Sunday and have not had a response. I'm also waiting response from RobbieC as I'm 99% certain it is his 1394B card causing his issue. Based on the number of downloads and the number of reports back to konnektbeta@tcelectronic.com things seem to be working for the majority of customers.

I'd love to get my hands on a Toshiba M30 to personally check out the issues that you're having. I'll go back and re-read all of your posts on the forum but have you tried a PCMCIA Firewire card?

[Mike Martin]

A new driver has been posted this morning. This driver is now signed by Microsoft!

Other improvements:
Control Panel:
System settings: support for 48 and 32 samples buffer sizes
Fixed: crash when resetting to defaults
Fixed: crash when uploading firmware
Fixed: Nickname now works as one would expect
Fixed: device arrival/removal crash.

http://www.tcelectronic.com/Default.asp?Id=10709

[laxano]

great news mike!

any info regarding the mac beta drivers?

[Harry McBrowny]

Hello,

 

and any info regarding assimilator for Intel Mac users? Is the installer bug going to be solved?

[Mike Martin]

Sorry everyone, I can't say as to exactly or approximately when the drivers for the Mac will release.

Honestly, my posts on the other thread caused an overload of calls/emails to our support departments when we previously did not make the date that I had said on the forum. This is not fair to our tech support department or customer that might be trying to reach support for other reasons. Despite our best intentions, sometimes development hits a roadblock that was not expected.

I know that there are some issues that they have been working directly with Apple to resolve. As soon as I'm able to post any concrete information on the Apple driver I will.

[SBS99]

Mike I appreciate that you are in a tough spot, but 4-6 months to wait for Vista Drivers is unacceptable on every level. It's also pretty pathetic that it has taken this long for an updated XP Driver.

I am selling my 24D and mark my words I will never buy another TC Electronics Product EVER!!!

Thanks I know you are trying your best, but this is simply LAME on so many levels....

SBS

[locojohn]

 

LocoJohn, I've tried to get in contact with everyone on this thread that has had an issue via PM and tried to personally help them. I sent you one on Sunday and have not had a response. I'm also waiting response from RobbieC as I'm 99% certain it is his 1394B card causing his issue. Based on the number of downloads and the number of reports back to konnektbeta@tcelectronic.com things seem to be working for the majority of customers. I'd love to get my hands on a Toshiba M30 to personally check out the issues that you're having. I'll go back and re-read all of your posts on the forum but have you tried a PCMCIA Firewire card?

 

 

sorry Mike, i only saw your PM now! wish there would be an alert when i log in if i have new PM, or maybe i have missed it!

 

anyway, i have replied to your PM!

 

1. here's the list of IRQs on my system:

 

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=219677&d=1169765460

 

2. i confirm that i have 1394A controller in my laptop (400mbps). my laptop model has also a single centrino CPU (1.7Ghz). detailed specs can be found here.

 

3. yes, i have additionally tried 3 PCMCIA firewire interface cards with TI, VIA and NEC chipsets but i did not notice any improvements with drop-out issues. something i can say that the results i got with the PCMCIA card that had NEC chipset were even worse.

 

many thanks to you personally,

 

andrejs

[Mike Martin]

SBS99,
I'm sorry to see you go. If I recall correctly, you were using a pre-release of VISTA for quite some time. VISTA actually begain shipping January 30th. As you may also know, driver development on Vista is something that has to be coordinated directly with Microsoft which we are in the process of doing.

I agree that the latest XP release took a long time. However the existing version did work fine for most people except Sonar users, which could have used an earlier version without problems (except higher latency and plug-in support). The new version however brings the performance to a very high level.

Many other companies besides TC are still working on Vista support. This would include Mackie, Yamaha, Presonus (they have one interface working on Vista) and others. Again, I'm sorry to see you go. Good luck!

Sincerely,
Mike Martin

[KimTaekSoo]

I am a new konnekt 8 owner.Have been using it with Sonar for less than a week.
So far so good,no crashes or whatsoever at 128 sample (2.9ms latency) using the beta driver 1.20_1431.Haven't tried anything lower than that tho'.

Anyway,what concerns me right now is the light ring knob; I've noticed that the knob is slightly 'loose' compared to the other knobs.Is this normal or mine is a faulty unit?

[Mike Martin]

The Light Ring knob is also a push button. It can switch from level to pan control on the Konnekt 8. It should have a different feel than the other knobs.

[Anderton]

Mike I appreciate that you are in a tough spot, but 4-6 months to wait for Vista Drivers is unacceptable on every level.

 

 

I have to agree with Mike on this one. Most companies don't have Vista drivers yet, and the programs I've seen that are "Vista-compatible" usually are for the 32-bit version only. It's going to be a while before Vista is as good a platform for making music as XP currently is.

[Big Ted]

so what would be the best way to instal these drivers having already
instaled the Beta version?...anything we should be aware of? ..

[Mike Martin]

First - Power off or remove your Konnekt. Then just run the new installer. It detects the existing version and removes it first.

[kevin.fr]

 

And, Mike, where can I propose my idea of a traditionnal interface for the effects ? These effects would be perfect if they presented the possibility to look like a normal compressor and reverb, with the normal parameters we are accustomed to use as professionnals. Sorry for my bad english, I hope you even understand me but I doubt it because I asked these questions several times and they've never been answered. Thanks

 

 

Mike,

 

Am I the only one to find the "Meta Intuitive Navigation Technology" so unusable ??

 

what if I put words like "sonar" or "windows", will you read my post ??

 

I can understand you have a lot of work to do (so do I) but I can't understand why you don't take like 25 sec to tell me if my idea is shared by other people and if TC aldready thought about that ... and finally where can I propose this idea

[Mike Martin]

Kevin,
I've read your posts and passed your feedback along to our team. I'm sorry I did not respond directly.

Honestly the MINT interface has been very well received by most customers that I speak to. The fact is that once you get used to the controls its much faster to navigate than a traditional interface because you're often controlling three or four parameters at once. The point of the MINT interface is to prevent you from getting lost in tweaking parameters and instead focus on the music. Grab an icon, close your eyes and move it around until it sounds right.

[kevin.fr]

thanks a lot for your answer! I'll try it your way... too bad for me

 

I hope you (and others memebrs) did not see me as a paranoiac

[c4logic]

I have to agree with Mike on this one. Most companies don't have Vista drivers yet, and the programs I've seen that are "Vista-compatible" usually are for the 32-bit version only. It's going to be a while before Vista is as good a platform for making music as XP currently is.

 

 

Well, yeah, Vista is far from being a mature platform, but you bring up an interesting point--that I think is being missed, throughout the industry.

 

The fact is, the opportunity to organize communities of users by leveraging newslist type venues around beta testing puts beta testing into a whole new situation. Yeah--I have been seriously pissed off that it took TCE so long to start writing new drivers--and I realize they were trying to get their Live product to market. But I can't help but think that our complaining loudly in a public forum put pressure on them to expedite the work necessary to make this a functional platform. So now, over the past several weeks, we finally have a build process with frequent updates that is fine tuning and tweaking the drivers to where they need to be.

 

But this whole process could have been organized from day one, using this venue of pro reviews to manage a wide scale beta test. They could have identified issues in the field much sooner, and gotten the fixes out much sooner--had they done so. All they had to do was say, at the outset--we have tested the platform with the following hardware and software configurations--so we are going to have a period of post release beta feedback from the field for the next 60 days to tweak and fix bugs.

 

If they had done that, set expectations appropriately, from the start, they could have tuned this product a whole lot sooner. But it is almost as if they got blindsided by the public response of this forum. Ultimately, I think this review thread has yielded some very positive outcomes--although their are clearly still some issues--I am now convinced that TCE is making a good faith effort to produce a functional platform--it just did not have to be so painful for everyone involved.

 

This could have been hosted right from their website--how many k24D users bought the product, never found this forum, had problems and then simply returned it. Or did what I did, which was to set it aside till they had time to deal with it. I jumped through a lot of hoops for technical support on several occasions and got NOTHING from them. In the end they sent me a link to the first of the new beta drivers. I'm saying there are lessons to be learned here for anybody that produces shrink wrapped software. It would be a shame to not harvest those lessons and repeat this debacle a second time.

[henry flower]

It seems that the current driver for macs is less compatible with my Core Duo MBP than the earlier versions. With the current version I'm constantly getting pops and clicks, even when I'm merely playing audio on itunes. Really disappointing. Anyone else with an intel mac machine experiencing this?

[SBS99]

SBS99, I'm sorry to see you go. If I recall correctly, you were using a pre-release of VISTA for quite some time. VISTA actually begain shipping January 30th. As you may also know, driver development on Vista is something that has to be coordinated directly with Microsoft which we are in the process of doing. I agree that the latest XP release took a long time. However the existing version did work fine for most people except Sonar users, which could have used an earlier version without problems (except higher latency and plug-in support). The new version however brings the performance to a very high level. Many other companies besides TC are still working on Vista support. This would include Mackie, Yamaha, Presonus (they have one interface working on Vista) and others. Again, I'm sorry to see you go. Good luck! Sincerely, Mike Martin

 

 

Actually it was a full GOLD Release from MSDN that was available since December. It is what it is, Vista or not TC is not gaining fans with the long waits between drivers/fixes..... When I first considered TC I wrote support who told me Vista Drivers would not be far behind. After they got my $$$ though everything changed. It doesn't take that long, every other piece of HW I own has a Vista driver but the 24D.....

 

I will find something else...Anyone want a 24 D CHEAP?

 

SBS

[Fredthered]

It seems that the current driver for macs is less compatible with my Core Duo MBP than the earlier versions. With the current version I'm constantly getting pops and clicks, even when I'm merely playing audio on itunes. Really disappointing. Anyone else with an intel mac machine experiencing this?

 

 

Yup, the current Mac driver is pretty much useless.