S61 MK3 USB Cable Issues

reffahcs

A lot of people have been reporting issues with KK not recognizing MK3 keyboards, having firmware updates. I've had a few of these and I feel pretty confident that the source of these issues for some people is the factory supplied USB cable. As it seems to cause all of the above issues. For me it doesn't happen every single time, so the cable isn't completely faulty, rather possibly lose or poorly soldered connections?

Steps to reproduce:

Connect MK3 keyboard to front panel M2 Studio tbolt port using factory supplied cable and power on keyboard.

Launch KK3.0.2.

The following is what appears on my keyboard

I can't use any of the knobs or buttons to load a plugin. If I manually load an instrument using the mouse on my Mac. the above screen changes to "No Instrument/Effect Loaded - Use the Browser to load an Instrument/Effect" What's really strange is that the actual piano keys (black and white keys) work.

Now if I place the keyboard into recovery mode and try to run the firmware update, it fails and continues to display the recovery mode screen

Solution: The USB-C cable that was supplied with the Ableton Live Push 3 works reliably. There may be other construction differences, but one thing I do know is that both ends of the Push 3 USB-C cable have molded in RF chokes. I'm not saying this is the only cable that will work reliably, it's just one I happened to have handy. With the Push 3 cable, the firmware update works fine and there or no issues using any of the keyboard controls in KK.

I'm wondering if a lot of these connectivity issues, KK not detecting the keyboard, updates failing etc.... are actually related to the USB cable and not software/driver issues.

PoorFellow

Quote : "I feel pretty confident that the source of all of these issues is the factory supplied USB cable. It doesn't happen every single time, so the cable isn't completely faulty, rather possibly lose or poorly soldered connections?"

Sorry to have to bother you @Tim_NI (just found out that Martin is not here until the 20th) , but this appear to be an issue for you to take note of you didn't already !

reffahcs

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/105085#Comment_105085

After I posted, I thought it might be power related since the Push 3 cable is fairly short compared to the MK3 cable, so I was thinking voltage drop might be an issue? But even with the factory cable in the data port and another USB-C cable providing power the results are still the same. Also the issue is fairly repeatable, not 100% but it's easy enough to recreate the issue.

Edit: After additional testing it may be a power issue? If I plug the factory cable in the USB-C data port, and the into my Mac, and another USB-C cable in the power only port and also into my Mac then the Mk3 appears to work fine, no issues with buttons not working or screens not showing up. Then to confirm my theory, I unplugged the additional power cable while the device was on and then there is weird behavior where the knobs don't work but the piano keys. This makes sense since they're controlled by different microcontrollers.

Here's what's interesting though is, and why I'm not entirely sure what's going on. If you turn on the keyboard with only the factory USB-C cable connected and the keyboard is having issues like those shown in my original post, and then plug in an extra USB-C cable for power AFTER the keyboard is already on and connected to KK, then it doesn't fix anything, nothing changes. So I'm not sure if it's really a low power issue, or the act of removing the extra USB power cable is causing some sort of voltage spike or something.

fLaX

will they send a new cable if it works or do i have to refund the whole setup (didn't bought it from NI directly)

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/105100#Comment_105100

Only support can answer questions about what support will do and also in the end then only support can tell you if what you need is another cable or if you need to return your keyboard or help you doing so if that is what you prefer.

Hardware support is here : https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/articles/360009441878 , General support interface is here : https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us