My company has been having problems with The Audio Request breaking down. The main problems have been not booting up and locking up, 6 months to 6 days after installation.

Most all are hooked into Crestron systems, controlled RS232. Almost every one has given us some sort of problem where we had to go to the house, try numerous troubleshooting tests, contact tech support , and waste our valuable time only to RA back to request for a fix.

It's got to the point where the boss is probably going to give up on it. Our programmers have spent many hours to get the interface with Crestron to finaly work where the customers can use it, and to have to re-engineer another server would take too much time.

My question is , Is anyone having to service or send back any Request piece's on a regular basis?

Anyone using it with Crestron without a hitch?

As I mentioned a tremendous amount of time has gone into developing our module for it. We would like to keep it around but the reliability isn,'t there

Thanks in advance for your reply.

This message was edited by Grego on 12/14/04 21:53 ET.

1. Request has had a history of QC issues --which supposedly have been delt with in the current release and forthcoming models. We shall see. They have been very good about repairing the units but service calls are out of pocket. I do not understand why it takes so long to touble shoot as the units either work or do not.

2. I do not understand why you are having any issues at all interfacing into Crestron. The protocol is about as robost as could be desired and the modules work like a charm. It takes a bit of modification to get the screens to one's liking but this is hardly unusual in a unit so powerful and feature packed.

However, your general point that given its price point it should be more reliable is valid. The folks who founded Request were software engineers and shall we say the hardware design suffered as a result. They have made serious modifications to their off the shelf design and we shall see if it bares fruit. I would make some suggestions but you have no email in your profile.......

Alan

It's more fitting into the schedule, travel time etc.

Do you have any in the field working reliably for more than 6 months?

Are you using the Crestron module or Your own?

The reason I singled out Crestron is we have three out there not conected to a crestron that haven't had any problems. One is going on 18 months.

I have many working for longer than 6 months including the unit in my lab system. All are connected to Crestron as either Crestron or AMX is required in my opinion for this product if it is to be used to its fullest and I sell Crestron.

I use a slightly modified version of the ARQ Crestron module.

Alan

We've had the same luck with ARQ and have been told the same regarding improvements to the hardware platform. I believe we sold the first unit in the state (WI) and have had it hooked up to Crestron since '00. It's had a ton of COM problems and through a ton of updates both to it and our module things have been better. EVERY unit since has not run trouble free. We've been satisfied with their customer service; they're really nice people. That said, now that we've confirmed it's hardware, we're going to be much tougher on them for RMA's. It's time they got their sh*t together. Love the GUI and feature-set but there's no excuse for bad QC.

I have had a Fusion 250 in my showroom for over 10 months now and it has rarely hiccuped. I am controlling it with a HomeLogic touchscreen system but also occasionally use the on screen video interface with the IR remote or the ARQ/Java remote with PCs on my network. I also have installed this same setup in a customer's home and it has been running fine for almost 6 months now.

My complaints about the product are:
1. The Pro - Zone architecture is horribly outdated and and too expensive. The Meda Bravo hardware concept/approach makes so much more sense - with the ability to do mutiple zone outputs from one hard drive and also install a back up hard drive - all in the same chasis. One hard drive can easily handle 5-8 MP3 streams (at the same time) and it is utterly ridiculous to have to have a hard drive for every stream desired. They will have to completely revamp their current approach or they will die a slow death. (perhaps even a speedy death)

2. Their Network I/O is painfully slow. To drag albums to or from their hardware over the network is ridiculously slow. I don't know where the bottle neck is (network card or elsewhere) but for the kind of money they charge, it should be state of the art fast. I have seen 10mbps NICs that are faster - no kidding!

Good people though and their tech support is first rate!

In reverse order:

Perhaps the problem has nothing to do with Request but everything to do with your Network and its bandwidth limitations. Suffing the Internet requires no bandwith to speak of as folks with 28.4bps and lower connection speeds can do it. Sending many gigs of data on a network does create bottlenecks.
Since you do not mention certifying the network I am curious how you reached the conclusion that the Request or NIC are the problems as opposed to the pipe?

2. We could argue the merits of your belief system that multiple streams from one hard drive is a superior archetecture to multiple hard drives. It is certainly less expenisve to have one chassis and multiple outputs but not necessarily better --as you may discover if you have a unit whose hard drive fails and there is not back up.

There are a bunch of competitors who have taken the one chassis/mulitiple output approach including but not limiting to your Media Bravo, IMERGE, Arrakis, and Escient ; in short the rest of the industry. If it is streams you want I suspect you could manage more than just 5-8 MP3 streams from a hard drive. But you give up something. Whether it is back up copies of the data base, or video outputs may or may not be of interest to you. But you do give up something with a single chassis design.

It might be nice if they had different solutions at different price points but given their decision to market their product as the best and price it accordingly it behooves them to imporve build quality to reflect its superior software.

Alan

I am a brand new Request dealer and the reason I drank the cool aid is because they integrate so well with the new Netstreams Digilinx whole house audio system. Totally IP based - plug the ARQ into the Netstreams network using only the ARQs ethernet jack and you get multiple streams and full GUI/metadata info on all touchscreen controllers. Its really slick. I haven't received my initial ARQ order yet, but I have sat through many sessions with Netstreams where I have seen/played with it. Netstreams says the number of streams available from the ARQ depends on the model. Plan on two from the Nitro, 5 or 6 from the fusion and who knows how many from the Tera? They say the difference is in the processors the different ARQ servers use.

Good luck.

E. J.

They should make a music server that is a little smaller, but still has all of the info (track, title artist, etc.), an easy to use interface, a way to use it from both its own front panel or PC software, very durable, different storage capacities, crash proof, portable, and a lower price...like, say, around $400, instead of $3000....................oh, sorry, I was thinking of the iPOD.............................

And the last system in which you installed the IPOD was.....

What a wonderful control protocol. Both serial and IP protocols available to any and all and no issues copying .aac files from IPOD to larger IPOD. Got to love that locked in feeling. Hardware sold as a loss leader to hook you on endless software down load fees. I cannot wait to integrate that 500 meg unit into my next system.

Alan

Alan,

Sorry, the slow speed is definetely in the hardware of the ReQuest, not my "pipe". If I copy songs form the ReQuest to any other machine on my network (so that maybe I can dump them onto my IPAQ or for whatever reason), it is painfully slow. If/when I drag songs onto the ReQuest from other PC's on the network, it is painfully slow. If I drag same songs from one PC to another PC on the same network, it is blazing fast, so the bottle neck is definitley somewhere in the ReQuest. Copying data in or out of the ReQuest is slow - period.

And I never said that a single chassis w/o a back up solution should be condoned. The Meda Bravo (it is not "MY" Meda Bravo, BTW) has a redundant back drive solution/option, all in the same chassis as well as the ability to do mutiple streams of of one drive in the chassis. We are currently doing mutiple streams from one Request hard drive using multiple Turtle Beach Audiotrons (I know - discontinued) or now, Roku as streamer clients. Full ID3 meta tags complete.

My opinion (and it is just that, my opinion) is that the ReQuest model of selling these single chassis units is outdated and overly expensive. My opinion is, if they don't change, they will perish. I'm betting they realize this and they will revamp their hardware solutions to accmodate multiple streams out of one chassis.

BTW, I have a Fusion 250 Pro brand new in the box (Never been opened) that I'd like to move. I would be willing to sell it for slightly below cost to move it - if anyone is interested, email me [email protected]

I, too, am experiencing a problem with a ReQuest (a Nitro 60). We installed it about a year ago, and it recently started locking up and/or dropping off the client's LAN. It worked fine up until now. Control interfaces are a Sonance K2 Navigator touchpad, PocketPC, and JavaRemote.

I've installed 2 others with no quality issues at this point.

A note on the Meda Bravo - be careful. Even though they're at rev 2 of their application (it runs on top of Windows XP), I've had some fairly intense problems. Their infrared interface and discrete library is very immature, and we've seen some real issues with a client with a moderately sized library (4,000) songs. One bright spot: the support I've received from Meda to resolve these problems is absolutely second to none. They're going the extra mile in a big way. I believe in the end theirs will be the best product out there - but they might need some more time to get there.

I like the I-pod post.

Alan, I thought you can rip cd's onto an Ipod?

My point was that the iPOD is not that far from doing everything the ARQ does. (I'm talking MP3's, not .aac, since that's what the ARQ uses. Let's talk oranges to oranges. Remember, you rip the client's CD's to the ARQ. You can rip the clients CD's to the iPOD...no purchase neccessary in either case). And if someone doesn't develop the iPOD for integration, I'm sure that someone will develop one of the other portable MP3 players (Rio, etc.) that also retail for much, much less than a 60GB ARQ. In fact, this might be likely, given Apple's history.
Last time I checked, iPOD had a 40 GB drive ("500 meg"??).
All of our ARQ failures have been hardware related (hard drive, power supply, cd-rom drive, etc.). My PC has been on 24/7 for 5 years, with no hardware failure. Same goes for my Tivo, which is constantly playing and recording.
These are the same observations our clients make, they're not just mine.
And all the "support" in the world doesn't matter when the ARQ goes down Friday at 3PM before a 7PM party (yes, it has happened). It might be acceptable for a $400 product, but for a $3000 product? On a regular basis?

Thanks to all that posted thus far. It's good to hear that we are not alone dealing with this products failures.

Personaly I like the ARQ and would love to own one myself. Although I prefer CD quality over MP3, the ease of use and organation is invaluable.

Anyone else that can contribute?