I was working yesterday, pressed a button (I think the flip between 1-2) and the whole dangerous got unresponsive. Audio was still going through fine, but I couldn't change anything. It froze completely.

Turned the thing off and back on and it was working fine...

Anyone had the same experience? Should I start to worry?

Cheers

My Liaison does this at least a couple of times each year and it has always come back to normal by power cycling the unit, so I think your unit will be fine and it isn't really something to worry about.

Either way the support from Dangerous is top notch!

First time it happened in 4 years... my heart stopped for a second....
Glad to hear I am not the only one

Thank you.

My eyes got pretty big when I saw the title of your post. I'm about to make the plunge and buy one for my mastering setup. With so few pieces of gear in the mastering chain the Liaison looks like it does some pretty incredible A/B'ing and patches.
From the demos I've seen on Ytube looks like it could in fact become indispensable to one's work. Just bought the DM ST monitor switcher for my new MM45's too. Can't wait to get this all set up! BTW, DM emailed me yesterday they are back ordered for about 6 to 8 weeks as they change over to their latest version with the new black panels. Maybe I can find a ver. 1 for a decent price?

I guess it comes down to individual requirements. Been mastering many years without it, but I would find very hard now to go back into using a full hardwired setup. It is a very simple piece of kit, but it does help my workflow so much that I don't know how I have managed without it before.

Highly recommended.

Good luck

I have questions for liaison users :

I'm using this unit for a couple of months now and I really like the flexibility of it.
The more I use it, the more I discover things.

For example, I thought that there was a buffer between each insert to "isolate" each piece of gear but I realize that my gear still had impedance interaction between them (especially insert 1 and 2, I don't have problematic gear on other insert).
What do you know about that ? Is there a synoptic somewhere I could look at without opening the box (or I might end up asking Dangerous) ?

Second thing, I had to work on project where I was asked to put some level lately and I discover that when adding gain closer to the end, cleaner the sound is (I'm using it DA -> Bus A -> Bus B -> AD) which kinda make sense since you go through quite some input/output stages.
But the manual says ok until +28dBu and I can ear change as far as being around +20/21dBu. (The usual loss of low end punch and image definition).
Do you guys heard the samething ? Is there a cleaner bus than the other ?

Thank you

I don’t have any preference between the busses. I almost always use the B buss because it allows parallel processing to be implemented very easily. I had the problem that caused the original post, but like others I found that power cycling reset the Liaison, and it didn’t seem to be more prone to that problem over time. I originally had that problem during an unusually obsessive moment of quick repetitive A/B switching between two presets. I try to be less obsessive, which may help (in so many ways).

I have noticed that the patched equipment does not seem to be buffered against impedance interaction. That led me to some decisions that were probably more level biased than I realized, but if that is the main compromise with a design that is very transparent and robust, I accept those design choices.

As to the Liaison’s sound changing with level, I haven’t tested that. I have a couple of boxes, most obviously a Manley Vari-Mu, that have a sweet spot level-wise (to my ear) that is close to an old-school +4. Because of that, I’m not running through the Liaison at a level that would test it’s sound at digital-zero levels.
In fairness to Manley, I do not mean that the Vari-Mu isn’t capable of much hotter levels than +4, I just think it gets a little more ordinary-sounding at those levels.

Yup, nothing to worry about.

Happens once per year or so here, no biggie. Just reset.

Other than that my Liaison's basically been powered up for about 6 (or 7?) years now, so it's a very stable machine.

Hi Lagerfeldt
Did you experience what I'm talking about in my post (n°6) ?

No, I haven't experienced that and I can't measure any such interaction. Not sure if what you're experiencing there is directly related to the Liaison (or is a fault in your unit), but I can't say.

My Liaison has crashed maybe ten times in 5-6 years, it happens.

More pissed off about the fact Bus A has some near-DC or similar on one channel, rendering it basically unuseable, and the preset 1 button stopped working a couple of years back. But I can live with those. I have to, as I'm pretty much out of action without the bloody thing.... Keep meaning to get it sorted out.

Anyway, I was always under the impression it's all relays, no buffers. Certainly different routings sound completely different. I have a lot of wacky transformer gear and run into this all the time, getting it all feeding right is critical.

I run my chain very cool and haven't experienced the other thing you mention though.

Ok, I'll ask dangerous if they could send me a kind of synoptic to figure out what's active in the signal path and what's passive.
Also, the level thing is really subtle but really there.

Otherwise the unit is totally fine.

Have you discussed repair with Dangerous?

Fwiw it didn't happen since

It's one of those things, 'I'll get i touch with them when it gets quiet and I can let the unit go'. And it never does.

I just moan about it instead

That may be your true gift and calling. If I need a moaning overdub on anything, I’ll keep you in mind. Post some samples!

I've had mine crash a handful of times as well. One thing you have to be careful of is also having a tighter fitting IEC socket lead as well as the first one I had came out slowly after time. as the PSU is internal in these. The only other time I've had weirdness is trying to select 2 different buttons simultaneously for A/B purposes. It doesn't seem to like that so you have to slightly offset the timing of the two. Apart from that, mine has been stable also for 6-7 years now.