[Andreas Friedrich]

Hi, Peter,

aside from the website/support issues, it’s pretty easy to deactivate or activate your license by using the “Avid License Control” tool found under AVID Utilities. I had to use it several times for upgrading hardware.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Andreas

[Andreas Friedrich]

Hello again,

thanks again for your patience. As to your question on the exchange of the box: yes, they sent me a (hopefully) new one. At least it was sealed and packed like my first one. The AJA KL-cable was exchanged as well.

[Bob Zelin] “I ASSUME that you are plugging into the 1/4″ tip ring sleeve stereo phone plug input of your mixer – am I correct ?”

I dit that at first, using adaptors from RCA to 1/4″ jack, all perfectly silent, then tried the RCA in on the mixer (yes, there’s a pair of those) – which gave me the same fine result.
I also tried leaving the mixer out of that line, connecting the speakers directly: fine with RCA, fine with 1/4″ jack adaptors from RCA, hum as soon as I came from the XLR output.
Just to have left nothing out, I tried adapting a mono 1/4″ jack from the XLR output (bridge between pin 1, ground, and pin 3, sig-), and the hum became definitely less, but didn’t disappear entirely. I think this makes sense in a way, but still doesn’t give me a clue.
Again: The octopus cable behaves as I expected, no humming, all perfectly silent. It’s just the XLR outs from the box.
As I mentioned before, I don’t have to rely on the box, the octopus cable is a near-perfect workaround. But interesting, nonetheless.
Thanks again, best regards,

Andreas

[Andreas Friedrich]

Thanks Bob for your quick response.
I don’t want to seem stubborn about ist, but I still don’t get it. Using only one outlet is easily done here, since there’s only one in the editing room.
I disconnected everything else – even the lamp, just to make sure – and left only my Mac, monitors, mixer, and speakers.
Still the hum persists, at least on the XLR outputs. The RCA outputs are perfectly silent. In addition to that, the hum on the XLR outputs becomes louder whenever I touch the surface of the breakout box or connect the multipin cable between the box and my Mac, yes, even when I connect the second speaker to the second XLR outlet.
Connecting the same setup via the octopus cable produces the silence we all enjoy to hear. And, yes, it’s the same set of cables from there. I exchanged the cables as well to make sure, the result is the same.
As far as I know, the breakout box is just a passive connector, no active components inside. Still it doesn’t behave the way the octopus cable does. So I tried to find anything unusual without having to open the box: There’s a connection between pin no. 1 in the analogue XLR input and the chassis of the box (and, by that way, to all other signal grounds). I’m not sure, but this doesn’t seem to fit, since XLR ground and common ground shouldn’t be the same, should they? They aren’t connected in the octopus cable.
Forgive my possibly stupid questions, I just don’t understand how this phenomenon comes to happen.

Thanks again,

Andreas