The mackie dl1608 white noise saga! (A new member, who has been a lurker)

[robbocurry]

My Chinese built MixWiz that I bought new in 2008 was flawless the entire time I owned it.  It has gone on to a Colorado Springs Country band and should serve them well.  (They have a video linked here that has gotten good reviews.)  I don't know how A&H is doing things today, but back then, they had a solid product.

I'm more than happy with the two recent purchases I made from A&H. Both flawless in build and operation, new firmware just released too adding some great new features.
Like my perfectly working DL, I'm getting more than what I (happily) paid for

[dpdan]

Hi Robbocurry,
I am absolutely loving my Qu24 too!
 

[iBloke]

Hi Robbocurry,
I am absolutely loving my Qu24 too!

I'm thinking I shoulda held out for a few months longer and gone with the A&H QU too..
At last that's what 2 of my collegues are doing now they are aware of the problem with my first mackie product.

On a more positive note, I picked up my replacement DL today and have had it running for about 30 mins.

So far so good...but I best not jinx myself before giving it a damn good shake down for at the very least a few hours...

The other glaring thing with the new replacement is there is hardly any "Hiss", well at least no more than you would expect from a decent bit of audio gear.
It's MUCH quieter than the first DL which was one of the hissiest pieces of audio gear I've ever owned!

And I've sent a 30 second recording of the white noise from the first DL to WK154 who is delving into it further than my limited technical talents allow.

I've very much appreciated his help via private messages and emails.

Down here in Australia we would refer to him as a Top Bloke!

Thanks mate

[WK154]

Waiting on a reply from Mackie on the results. Thanks again for the work on your part. Hope the new DL will behave better.
No worries mate. 

[Kevin]

There is a very good chance that the white noise problem is the same root cause as the 30 pin extension cable problems and docked iPad losing synch problem: noise in the DL's iPad charging circuit.

I believe that I saw the white noise problem about 18 months ago, when I was trying to get a 30pin extension cable to work. It sounded like the output from my RTA was on, which really threw me for a loop until I realized that it was coming from the iPad. I havent had the problem since, so I had pretty much forgot about it. Recent findings by WK154 and Roadrunner make me fairly sure that this problem is just another symptom of the same root cause, namely a noisy iPad fast charge circuit on the DL.

Luckily there are a couple of workarounds, which is probably why I never saw it again after 18 months ago:

a) if you have a newish iPad, fully charge it before each gig and dont dock it if the battery charge is below 90 percent. That keeps the DL's charge circuit in trickle charge mode. If the DL's charge circuit switches over to fast charge mode, it gets noisy and random bad things can happen

b) if you have an older iPad with a faded battery, you might need to get a cheap 30 pin extension cable and cut the 5v power line from the DL.  Use the cable to dock your iPad. That takes the DL's noisy circuit out of the picture completely as well as allows you to put a protective case on your iPad. Read posts from WK154 and Soundog in the 30pin extension thread for more info