Any Ideas on what could cause this problem with motorised faders?

[kenny saunders]

Concerning the SSL UF8 & UF1:

SSL have been pretty much useless in offing a solution, they just told me to rma and get a replacement which I did and I get the exact same problem.

The faders are acting completely normally as you would expect them to at all times apart from they get stuck in place. Its entirely intermittent. sometimes they are stuck for hours or days, sometimes they are working as they should. Even when they are stuck, they still jump to whatever the Cubase/Reaper mixer faders are set to if I scroll along the channels, and even when they are stuck they can still be moved by moving the mixer fader in Cubase/Reaper. If I try to move them, I feel a strong resistance in both the up and down directions, both for the UF8 and the UF1.

If I open a blank project in cubase they are all in the bottom most fader position as expected, if I add a channel it will jump to the default fader position as expected. The only problem is very often they - well maybe getting stuck is not the right phrase, the problem is that they resist movement, other than that they work completely as expected.

The units (UF1 & UF8), along with the PC they're attached to, get powered off at the wall every night for at least 8 hours.

What could it be?

[lfm]

Cubase has a lot of settings for automation, if that might be a cause.
- #1 disengage automation read, unless used of course
- #2 was it called orphan territory or something, where allowed automation in just some places
- and a lot more, it was a full panel of options

I never took the masters degree in automation in Cubase. But one way that could cause issues as I see it, automation is a straight line just finding it's way in there.
- if active it would restrict movement fader
- most daws allow movement in gui, and then change next node only
- but with these protocols for surfaces one never knows what bugs there are

Pure guesses....

I looked at getting a EUCON based control surface from Avid at some time. And it had restrictions and must update Cubase and things like that after a firmware update.
- seems to be a can of worms interfacing with external hardware
- I abandoned the idea

Possibly ask Steinberg support about the issue.

[kenny saunders]

Cubase has a lot of settings for automation, if that might be a cause.
- #1 disengage automation read, unless used of course
- #2 was it called orphan territory or something, where allowed automation in just some places
- and a lot more, it was a full panel of options

I never took the masters degree in automation in Cubase. But one way that could cause issues as I see it, automation is a straight line just finding it's way in there.
- if active it would restrict movement fader
- most daws allow movement in gui, and then change next node only
- but with these protocols for surfaces one never knows what bugs there are

Pure guesses....

I looked at getting a EUCON based control surface from Avid at some time. And it had restrictions and must update Cubase and things like that after a firmware update.
- seems to be a can of worms interfacing with external hardware
- I abandoned the idea

Possibly ask Steinberg support about the issue.

Thanks, but it appears to be the fact that sometimes I was using gloves lol! I mean I had no idea that by 'touch-sensitive' they mean bio-electrically touch sensitive! So the gloves were stopping the connection. I don't even know why you would make a physical fader respond specifically to human skin contact as opposed to purely physical touch.

[whyterabbyt]

I don't even know why you would make a physical fader respond specifically to human skin contact as opposed to purely physical touch.

Because the method used (detecting capacitance change as a result of that skin contact) is the way to detect a human physically touching the control.

You should be able to find gloves that will work, though, because capacitance sensing is common to touchscreens as well.

[kenny saunders]

I don't even know why you would make a physical fader respond specifically to human skin contact as opposed to purely physical touch.

Because the method used (detecting capacitance change as a result of that skin contact) is the way to detect a human physically touching the control.

You should be able to find gloves that will work, though, because capacitance sensing is common to touchscreens as well.

The same gloves work on my phone screen. But yeah I'll just have to have cold hands in winter when I'm mixing