You may want to get a cup of tee and get comfortable...is a long post..
This may help you get the best of your instrument...especially for the professionals that want to void being embarrassed in front of audiences, just like me a few times.
First of all I like to mention that the support I received up to now, from AJ, FrankieV and Ted has been very good and helped me quite a bit.
Second I like to mention that I worked with electronics a little, I use the Audya in average 10 times a month in front of audiences (from small venues 120 to large 400 people); I play all, styles, midi, mp3 and I have know computers for a long time...I formally studied their architecture, hardware and software back since the first Apple Lisa or PDP11, or RadioShack TRS80...
With this in mind lets see if we can come the real issues here. I will address 2 problems that have frustrated me since I got the Audya 5 (OS2 and newer):
1- Audya outputs: currently my 3rd one. The original one fried by making this screaming noise at the end of the night, I remember I was singing BumBum by Gigi D'Alessio. Well I had to pack and go home. The support give me another board that Frank at Audioworks put in. After a while I noted that one channel was not giving me any output especially in the studio and I realize that the problem was mechanical or hardware in nature. The board seems was very low in the keyboard enclosure that pushing the bottom of the keyboard, right under the sound module could generate noise and click the channel on or off. When this happened a few times during live performances AJ, give me another board the was really tested… in fact, thank you AJ, was his old one. Since then, until a few weeks ago i did not have many problems, a part from a few booting issues (if you reboot they go away...). Well just a few weeks ago, I saw the writing on the wall...one of the channels had a lower volume than the other...reboot did not help...repositioning either. I made sure that the problem was not limited to the style balance and in fact, solo instruments, MP3, wave files along with the Ketron demos had the same un-balance. I know the keyboard really well and know that something was not right. Out of desperation, after I communicated the issue with support and they were trying to pinpoint the problem, I have remembered and old trick that AJ and Frank told me when I had a similar issue on the Ketron SD1...spray...I thought the board was too new to have developed spurious charge accumulation due to oxidation...by I tried anyhow, I had a feeling.
And it worked! At least I want to believe so.
I waited for the spray to dry, rebooted and here the volumes right where they were supposed to be. By the way, the spray is and electronic cleaner that you can get at RadioShack. However, I don’t want to be responsible for other issues that may arise due to spraying…Please refer to the technical support to tell you if to try this solution. Your problem may be different.
2- Disk fetches delay, perhaps.
This is the bomb…I had like a few of you problems in timing when using some of the more disk demanding live styles. I believe that, correct me if I am wrong, some live styles are continuously fetching (reading) drums, guitars and bass parts from the hard drive. This problem I have observed and communicated earlier with the older OS version, where the most embarrassing for my live (human drummer, guitar) rhythm section. In the middle of style (Terzinato, I remember) the keyboard drums, bass and guitar are delayed….while my guys are playing at a steady beat…of course the singer and the audience gave them dirty looks…boy, my real musicians wanted to kill me…
Well that happen never when I played by myself at a lower volume. After having to switch to non live styles for a while, I believe that Ketron had addressed the problem via software. In fact it did not happen for a long time…until 2 week ago. Actually I have a good witness…Frank AudioWorks. At times we play together and this time we rehearsed “Brown eyes girl” for a wedding, large wedding. Finally we found a, Audya style (live) that was adequate for the song an played the song a few times with a drummer, guitar player etc. is was wonderful. So far, so good. Finally at the day of the wedding, were volumes were louder and we had a full bass output, I was on the stage and in the mid of the Brown eyes girl, it happened…timing from the Audya was off. I had to use the re-start/count button, the break button and the good nature of our drummer to finish that song without any damage from the dancing crowds…by the way using a lower A or B variation did not help…again the killing looks from drummer, guitar player and singer, while Frank was looking at me in dis-believe..
We still got paid that night. I got less. I was reprimanded.
Last week end: same situation; Big speakers, big sound….and TERZINATO, which did not give me a problem since a long time…here we go off time…the singer could not believe saying: “ The problem is still there, a 5000$ keyboard with that issue? Even my Kork I5 15 years old, never missed a bit…”
I cried inside me, because I used that TERZINATO at least 100 times before, smaller, less louder places, without any problem…what is going on?
The day after, again with the same singer from the night before, when the overall volume was lower, I tried the TERZINATO again, same song… and it worked perfect….
Then a crazy idea…this is just a theory my frends…
What if the physical vibration of the keyboard, due to some low frequencies (in fact when I touched the keyboard enclosure it was vibrating) could cause the disk to ‘miss’ some readings and have to re-fetch data at a higher rate to keep up with the CPU demand?
As we all know 1+1 is always 2. The CPU and software is constant. The only mobile mechanical parts, a part from the keys, are the disk drive spindle and reading arms. Could it be possible that some frequencies approach the on-off, up-down frequency of the motion and cause the reading arms to go out of synch and miss the target read area?
Can that be? How can we correct it?
How can we prove it? Perhaps put a laptop on the top of a speaker and use an utility to read the drive performance? Crazy ? Perhaps, but what if…
Please give the group some feedback to sustain or discard this hypothesis…
Claudio

Boy this is worrying??? Ketron get the hard drives out, replace them with non moving parts drives, tghat would be a good start, I'm still waiting on a proceedure to be posted as to how to correct the channel out and crackling problem, after Ketron advised me to solder the wires where the connector connects to the sound card from the volume control???? I mean come on,,,,,what do we do, I love this board and I'm not walking away from it, but that will not absolve Ketron from getting it right

Robbo, perhaps you should try to spray the inside the outputs holes, like i did. it worked.

Spray?With what?With hair spray?New kayboard?
Whay?Haw?Haw much spray?What spray?
Come one dude.....

Dusan,

it must be an elecronic anti oxi spray available at electronic stores, I imagine, or if someone could post the name of the spray maybe we could all get it?

Spray with LOCTITE stop the screws from coming loose, god what is going on with all this, solding iron, flux, yellow wires forgotten in the manufacture left for the customer to do, is this real or is someone taking the peeeee! Robbo start digging the hole, not too deep!