AP-16 status LED flashing red

[ConceptShed]

Hi
I have an AP-16 board that I am trying to get working using the Auxillary inputs. Whenever I put an SD card in and switch it on though, I just get a constantly flashing red LED. I have tried naming the tracks "aux01.WAV", "AUX01.WAV" & "SFX01.WAV" and have tried a 4GB SDHC card and a 2GB SD standard card in both FAT and FAT32 formats. I have followed the instructions on the forum sticky about how exactly to edit WAV files with audacity.
I have a single speaker plugged into the left channel through which I don't seem to be able to hear anything apart from a surprisingly large amount of noise. I don't seem to be able to get the AMBIENT.WAV to play at all.
Have you got any ideas why I can't get it to play?
Laurence

[ConceptShed]

Update:
Well I installed the latest firmware from the website and it seems to have made a difference to the status LED colour. It is now green and constantly on, but I still don't seem to be able to get it to work. I have been trying to make a connection between 3V3 and the various INx terminals. Is this what I should be doing? Also am I right in thinking that making a connection between 3V3 and the arrow pointing down causes a reset.
Cheers

[bsnut]

First let me welcome you to the forums.

I have one question for you. Do you have the 6-position configuration switch set right. Why I say this it controls many aspects of the AP-16+ behavior.

Here let me point to the AP16+ Docs link. This should help you out.
http://www.efx-tek.com/php/smf/index.php?topic=1416.msg8119#msg8119 

[JonnyMac]

Connecting 3v3 to the terminal next to it (ground) shorts out the power supply -- please don't do that.  The ground terminal is there so that other devices can send signals to the AUX inputs.

We 100% test every AP-16+ (every product we build, for that matter) so it has worked for us.  Things to check that seem to be snagging people frequently:

-- WAV file only (no MP3)
-- must use DOS 8.3 naming conventions, for example: SFX00.WAV or AUX01.WAV

We had a customer send us an SD card that had funky names on it, where his audio program had put the extension on twice, resulting in SFX00.WAV.WAV -- the AP-16+ doesn't like this.

-- The files must be STEREO.  If you're only using one output, put the same thing on both tracks.
-- The WAV files must be 16-bit, PCM encoded (this is standard)
-- Use full-size SD cards only; micro SD cards in adapters are slower and will usually only play up to 22kHz
-- make sure your sample rate is 44.1kHz or lower

We have seen some SD cards just not work -- and we're not the only manufacturer.  A friend of mine bought a high-end recorder for filmmaking that uses SD cards and it comes with a paper that says, essentially, "All SD cards are not the same and some won't work."  I have had good luck with Patriot SD cards that I pick up at Fry's.

-- To play AMBIENT.WAV (assuming it's a good file) you have to set the ambient loop switch (configuration DIP switch) to ON.

[ConceptShed]

Hi
Thanks for the reply's Bsnet and JonnyMac. I found my mistake why the audio wasn't playing; The test tracks were recordedon my laptop and were in mono. I changed them into stereo in Audacity by going edit>duplicate then from the track drop down menu selecting ' make stereo track'.
that seemed to fix the problem with the audio files not playing properly but I have discovered another problem that has once again provided a sticking point.
When I connect any of the INx inputs to the 3V3 supply the tracks play but only for about 0.5 seconds. Also the green LED keeps flashing indefinately and the relay stays closed. I can stop the track with IN8 but there's no audio coming out of the speaker and the track length is only about 2 seconds long.
No matter if I lengthen the track in Audacity or change the pre and pst delay pots can I get it to play for longer. The track sample rate is 44 kHz and I have tried both 16 bit and 32 bit files.
Also regarding the DIP switch, I understand it as following: 1 to 3 are for serial communication and don't have an effect on manual operation. 4 toggles on and off whether connecting IN8 to 3V3 plays AUX08.WAV or just stops the currently playing track. 5 turns on or off whether the collection of tracks named SFXnn.WAV play in a random order when triggered by the switch input. This does not effect the tracks named AUXnn.WAV. 6 determines whether a track named AMBIENT.WAV plays inbetween the other tracks being triggered, for both the SFXnn.WAV and AUXnn.WAV tracks.
Is that correct in terms of the DIP switch effect?
Cheers

[bsnut]

I am glad that we are getting somewhere. I have some questions for you and they are

1. Are the WAV files 16-bit, PCM encoded?

2. Is your sample rate is 44.1kHz or lower?

3. What is the position of the "EN" dip switch in?  
When ON, the EN option switch converts IN8 from a manual control           input (for AUX08.WAV) to a "audiostop" input for any file (except AMBIENT.WAV when playing). When enabled the Audio Stop function will stop the file regardless of state: pre-play delay, playing, or post-play delay.

4. What is the position of the "?" dip switch in?
When ON, the ? switch activates random mode for SFX files. The file played will be from SFX00.WAV through the file indicated by the AUDIO SELECT switch.

5. What is the position of the "U" dip switch in?
When ON, the ambient Loop switch causes AMBIENT.WAV (if on the SD card) to be played while the
AP-16+ is idle.

The first 3 dip switches "BR", "A1" and "A0" are for serial control only.

You stated this

Also the green LED keeps flashing indefinately and the relay stays closed.

What is happening, the AP-16 is playing your sound file and this normal. The "Status LED" section in the AP-16 tells what is happening under various operational conditions.

[JonnyMac]

I suspect there is a problem with the SD card, seems like its logic is crashing as its not able to keep up with the data rate.  One way to test this is to resample your files to 22kHz; if that works, you know it's the SD card.

You can use Audacity to do the resampling.  At the bottom/left of the screen is the project sample rate.  Set that to 22kHz and then export the file (File menu).

[ConceptShed]

Thanks for the reply.

The files are recorded at 16-bit PCM, with a sample rate of 44.1kHz. I have tried it at 22.05kHz but it doesn't seem to make too much difference.

It seems to effect the amount each track plays depending on how many tracks there are on the SD card. AUX01.WAV doesn't make any sound when there's no other track on the SD card, but it plays a fraction of a second of white noise when there is also AUX02.WAV on the card.

I have tried various combinations of the DIP switches 4, 5 & 6. At the moment I have 5 & 6 set to off and 4 set to on so I can manually stop the tracks as the LED continuously flashing as though they carry on playing, despite no sound and the track lengths only being about 2 seconds.

I have tried doing a full format without any changes. and have tried using 2 different cards with slightly different but still imperfect results.

Many thanks
Laurence

[JonnyMac]

I'm attaching a beta firmware release of 1.04 -- please give this a try.  I did do a little work in the reset section to ensure the status LED is off when manually stopped.  Mind you, I didn't find any problems, per se, I just added some insurance code. This version also prevents the playing of metadata which can be inserted into WAV files (we've only seen this once).

Unzip the file and rename it AP16.PGM, then copy it to your SD card.  Put the SD card in the player and then power up.

If that fails then we'll exchange the board for you.  So far, the only one returned for not playing correctly was a file naming issue as I described above.

[JackMan]

ConceptShed,
       Just curious, what power supply are you using and are you sure it's working properly? EFX-TEK is one of THE best when it comes to testing every item they ship. Your AP-16+ most likely doesn't like something with your setup, the SD card brand, the files, power supply etc. There have been a few other posts with similar problems and it almost always came down to the SD card being the culprit.

[bsnut]

ConceptShed,
       Just curious, what power supply are you using and are you sure it's working properly? EFX-TEK is one of THE best when it comes to testing every item they ship. Your AP-16+ most likely doesn't like something with your setup, the SD card brand, the files, power supply etc. There have been a few other posts with similar problems and it almost always came down to the SD card being the culprit.

I agree with Jack on this and I should have spotted this. The goal is help you and everyone else out.

[ConceptShed]

Hi
Thanks a lot for getting back again.

Thanks especially jonnie for the firmware. I installed it and it all worked OK with just one track on there. I then added some more and for some reason it stopped working, so I deleted the ones I added but it was back to it's old tricks of not working at all.

From this I thought it might be something to do with the FAT table so I searched google for formatting tools and found the SD Association's formatting tool that they recommend over the native OS formatter http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter_3/. I had tried all different option with the Windows 7 formatter that I have. Anyway I used it and selected the full format with erase on. It took quite a while for the 2GB SanDisk card, but when I tried it it worked! I tried it with my cheap 4GB card too and that didn't work though, but as long as the 2GB one is fine, that's OK

So far I've tried it with lot's of track at different sample rates and they all seem to work.

So it seems to be an SD card issue. If anyone else is having issues like this I would definately recommend trying that formatter. Both the cards I tried weren't brand new and had been used before but maybe it's worth it on a new card as well. I thought the Windows formatter would be pretty adequate but it turned out not to be. I'd also reccomend getting a good quality card as well.

BTW I've been using a switch mode bench power supply with adjustable voltage and current limiting (I haven't been using the current limiting). I tried the voltage at various voltages between 12V and 17V. These don't seem to make much difference.

I'm glad it's sort of working well enough now and I don't have to send it back because I'm in the UK and it would have been a lengthy and pricey process.

Thanks a lot

[JackMan]

It sounds like you're on the right path with this now. Just for the record, I use cheap ULTRA brand 1GB cards in my AP-16+ that have been previously used in several different devices and have never been formatted or reformatted. I use MAGIX Music software and have had absolutely no problems with my files playing perfectly on the AP-16+.

[JonnyMac]

So it seems to be an SD card issue.

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon with audio recorders/players that use native WAV files -- the bandwidth is pretty severe. 

but as long as the 2GB one is fine, that's OK

We've found that smaller cards tend to work better, probably due to internal logic not having to deal with a large memory space.

[gadget-evilusions]

SD cards with an actual data transfer rate work much better than the cheap ones with no rating.