Beat Buddy. No Sound

BeatBuddy Help, Questions and Bugs
1

I have a Beat Buddy that developed a problem today, and am just throwing this out there for discussion.

The Beat Buddy is old, outside of warranty.
Has been used extensively, eg: many hours per day, every single work day, for years. Has never missed a beat.
It did develop a problem with only one side of the headphone jack working, that has been an issue for a long time now but only a minor annoyance since mostly the main output jacks are used and they were both fine.

New problem today: no audio, from any outputs. No headphone out, no main out (L or R). No sound.

The unit seems to work perfectly. It boots up ok. It responds ok. All of the controls work as expected. It responds to incoming MIDI as expected. It plays, fills, transitions etc. Just no sound.

I have dismantled it this evening down to individual boards and a thorough inspection reveals nothing. Solder joints all look good, ribbon cables and connectors all look good, there no browns or any obvious signs of electronic problems. After re-assembly it continues the same behaviour, appearing to work perfectly but no sound.

Now, the kind folks at SingularSound did offer a discount on a new unit, and I have purchased one. But this old one is rotting my socks. Does anyone have any similar experience or perspective on what the problem might be?

Cheers
Reuben

2

UPDATE:
It’s not a physical audio signal problem. I have just discovered that the Accent sound will play when triggered by MIDI, and can be heard. That’s they only thing though.

So the question now is: why would fills, transitions and beats not be heard when playing?
I have rebuilt the SD card and Restored Default Settings to no avail.

3

Can you trigger the accent sound using any of the pedal buttons? You may have tried these steps but in case you haven’t:

  • Power the pedal down and leave it disconnected for a while (5 minutes) and then powering up again to see if that changes anything.
  • Try a different SD card.
  • Check that you have the latest firmware installed and active.
1 Like
4

Yes, the Accent sound can be triggered with a foot switch and is audible.

  • Power the pedal down and leave it disconnected for a while (5 minutes) and then powering up again to see if that changes anything.

The unit was powered down for about an hour while it was completely disassembled and reassembled :sweat_smile:

  • Try a different SD card.

I will buy a new one tomorrow morning and try this.

  • Check that you have the latest firmware installed and active.

Yes, I have tested with 4.0.1 and 4.1.3

5

UPDATE: Resolved.

I used the same SD Card but did a health check with Disk Utility, then deleted everything on it and restored from a backup. Now the unit is working as expected.

In summary: No issues with the Beat Buddy (hardware or otherwise). Issue was the SD Card. Solution was to delete everything on the card and restore from backup.

Thank you so much for your help. I owe you a beer.

6

Glad you got it working again. Thanks for letting us know how you got it working again.

7

I too am having no sound but the accent works, but I am using just the software on my mac with no SD card ( yet) I usually copy to it when I am finished and it has worked fine… now I have no sound when I try to play one of my saved songs or one of the standard beats… I have checked sound volumes etc on the mac but nothing…any ideas?

8

Check that you have your project open. In the BeatBuddy Manager (BBM),
File - Open Project
Navigate to your bbworkspace folder (should be in your ~user/documents/bbworkspace/user_lib/projects/ and select Open