So, progress report; but first, here's how I figured to handle the US-800 power cycle issue; I took advantage of one of (in my opinion) the US-800's minor weaknesses; the power cord is a two-part affair - an AC power cord that connects to a AC/DC adapter box and cord, which is better than a wall wart, but the AC power cord is both short and loose-fitting. So, instead of plugging in to the power strip on the floor, I plugged it in to the power conditioner in my compressor rack, and made sure that the AC/DC adapter box was near at hand. I could then power cycle using the loose connection of AC cord, instead of trying to mess around with the back of the US-800 box, and risking damaging the internal solder connections to the US-800 chip board, or any other part of the power input on the US-800.
Now, that sounded like a great idea; however, I never really got the chance to test it, because I never needed to reset it! Great news! It seems the problems I was having were all particular to the US-800's control panel. I never even opened that control panel application last night, and was rewarded with flawless operation. I think I can recommend this for everyone; use your DAW to manage the US-800, and avoid interaction with its control panel as much as possible. (Note this may be particular to the Mac version of its driver.)
I also managed to run my mixer much quieter. I was used to running it at about +3db overall. Last night I was able to run it at about -6db. This resulted in very little activity from the clip indicators, and gave me very high hopes for a good recording.
But, high hopes were not reality. Alas, the entire recording was again staticky crap. Another 3 hours of wasted audio. So, it's not the gain or clipping. The waveforms were looking good enough that I didn't bother trying other input device configurations, and now I'm regretting that. I really need to isolate the different input devices and confirm I can get a clean recording from each of them, and if that is the case, then dig into Mac's aggregate audio device a little deeper and see if something in there is causing this. I'm still hoping it's not the US-800; however, if I won't be able to run the aggregate device, then I'll need to step up to the US-1800 anyway, because 6 channels just isn't enough to capture what I want to capture.
So, a very mixed progress report. Valuable lessons learned, though.
Now, that sounded like a great idea; however, I never really got the chance to test it, because I never needed to reset it! Great news! It seems the problems I was having were all particular to the US-800's control panel. I never even opened that control panel application last night, and was rewarded with flawless operation. I think I can recommend this for everyone; use your DAW to manage the US-800, and avoid interaction with its control panel as much as possible. (Note this may be particular to the Mac version of its driver.)
I also managed to run my mixer much quieter. I was used to running it at about +3db overall. Last night I was able to run it at about -6db. This resulted in very little activity from the clip indicators, and gave me very high hopes for a good recording.
But, high hopes were not reality. Alas, the entire recording was again staticky crap. Another 3 hours of wasted audio. So, it's not the gain or clipping. The waveforms were looking good enough that I didn't bother trying other input device configurations, and now I'm regretting that. I really need to isolate the different input devices and confirm I can get a clean recording from each of them, and if that is the case, then dig into Mac's aggregate audio device a little deeper and see if something in there is causing this. I'm still hoping it's not the US-800; however, if I won't be able to run the aggregate device, then I'll need to step up to the US-1800 anyway, because 6 channels just isn't enough to capture what I want to capture.
So, a very mixed progress report. Valuable lessons learned, though.