Phonic Helix Board sound problems

Yo, Ron

We are FIXYA dot com, we are not Phonic and neither is Catherine. We are just folks like you trying to help folks like you because we can. Yes, there is a Phonic category, but that is just good housekeeping here on the site.

Contact Phonic direct

https://www.phonic.com/index.php/en/contact-us

..

You can get the service manual here-
PHONIC POWERPOD 820 SM Service Manual free download schematics eeprom...

same issue for me (DSP1 error download ) Have you fix it?
BR Julien

Here is a link to your manual, hope it helps.
http://www.phonic.com/en/helix-board-18-firewire-mkii.html

Usually it's the electrolytic caps that go in those, they basically "cook" and dry out, a power spike just pushes them over the edge. I've also had this problem with mine & 2 12 volt switchers for my HD and for the satellite had the same fix. I added a fan which helps. Another solution is to go to a second hand store, find 3 power suplies (15v,15v, 5V) and put them in place of the existing one. I am considering that myself as the firewire packed it in again last month and I had to jump over to the other 5v regulator to get it going again, even tho it was only 0.2 v short! Cheers, Sandrine

Hallo landgenoot ;)

It seems it is a power supply problem; distorted sound, no meters, solo buttons not working, headphones low level and distorted. One of the power supply voltages might be too low or even missing. The Helix series mixers use mainly 4 supply voltages: + 15 V and - 15 V for the analog part (audio), + 5 V for the DSP and logic and +48 V only for the phantom power. If for example the + or - 15 V is too low, clipping of the positive or negative parts of the waveform (dependng on which voltage is too low) will occur. If possible, first measure the voltages coming out of the power supply. You could use a metal part of a jack as ground reference.
For the FireWire board an extra voltage supplied by the switched PSU is used. It is specified as +12,2 V, but I measured 14 V. This voltage is lowered to + 5 V by a resistor on the FW board and a 7805 regulator. (Not very efficient!) But as far as I can see, the FW voltage is not the problem here. I have some service documentation of the Helix series mixers (12, 17 and 24, so if you need more you can conatct me: frankdevries [at] versatel.nl.

Groeten, Frank.

The power supply uses three, 3 terminal regulator chips. You should find +/- 15 volts and +5 volts DC from those. There are two fuses, one for each polarity. If one of those is blown, that would cause the problem and one would need to find WHY it blew before replacing it.
You need to find a competent electronics repair person.

It may be your old computer was running XP operating system and your new one Win7... There is a lot of incompatibility with different operating systems. You can try searching for a compatibile driver. If you cannot find one, the best thing might be to back-step to your old compatible OS and driver.

install drivers with device disconected

I have a Yamaha AW1600 and I had to go into my firewall settings and add it to my exceptions to allow the program access to my computer through the firewall. This may help. Thanks!