BR-800, Issues with the BR Series Wave Converter Issues - MAC

[64Guitars]

Another option is to run the Windows version of BR Wave Converter on your Macbook under Wine or a similar Windows compatibility layer. I use ubuntu linux and I run the Windows version of BR Wave Converter under Wine without any problems.

[kurrykid]

What's really strange is that everything's reporting v.1.00 with the song information it creates.  I have read that there were problems connecting to the computer with v.1.00.

I was going to upgrade to 1.06 after I bought it but when you go through the update process, it shows that the current version was already 1.06.  Because of the problems, I updated to 1.06 anyway.  It worked...I did a factory reset and reformatted the SD card.  Now if I create a new song on the BR-800 and then go look at the "Created with" version through the BR Explorer, it says that it was created with v.1.00.  I don't think it should be 1.00...it should be 1.06.

[64Guitars]

The BR-800 writes "1.00" into the files, regardless of the actual firmware version. Since BR Explorer merely reports the version number found in the files, it cannot be relied upon to provide the true firmware version number of the BR-800. It worked with previous BRs because they always wrote the current firmware version number to the file. But the BR-800 doesn't do that. I think it's an oversight by the Roland programmers. Maybe they'll fix it in a future firmware version. But until then, all BR-800 firmware versions write 1.00 to the file.

[MusicalCircuitry]

I also struggled with the "Not BR Series Memory Card" error, but in my case it had worked initially on my MacBook Pro. After a lot of troubleshooting, experimenting, support calls, etc, I did finally get to the bottom of the issue, and am able to use the BR Wave Converter on my MacBook Pro.

The first thing I would suggest that you try is to create a new user account on your Mac, and try the converter from the new account. This worked for me, and to some extent is a workaround, but I wanted to keep my main user account. At this point, I tried a lot of things, clearing out caches, .plist preference files, etc. In the end, it turned out to be a login item, somehow conflicting with the converter software. The culprit was a start up item from Native Instruments, presumably to authenticate software or hardware. I didn't like the NI stuff in the end, so I had uninstalled the software, but this start up item had remained. After deleting the login item and restarting, I was able to use the converter from my original account without issues.

If creating a new account fixes the problem for you, disabling login items you don't need might be worth a shot. One interesting quirk I noticed while troubleshooting this issue was that if I restarted my MBP with the SD card in the reader, I would be able to use the converter after logging in, but if I ejected the SD card, it wouldn't work after re-inserting.

To disable login items, go to System Preferences -> Accounts -> "Login Items" tab. You'll need to unlock your settings, then delete the login item ("Hide" leaves the login item running, just in the background).

Out of curiosity, did you contact Roland for help about this? When I finally did figure it out, I called them up and explained the issue and how I fixed it, because I found it incredibly frustrating and didn't want anyone else to have to go through as much hassle as I did to fix it. It would be disappointing if they didn't store this information in their support database to help in future cases.

Anyways, hope that helps!

[kurrykid]

Oh my gosh MC, thank you so much.  I have been working on this since Saturday (many, many hours).  I was experiencing the exact behavior you described.  I even noticed today that it would work on the restart and then quit working if the card was ejected and put it back in.

In fact, I was going to write to the Soncrafters forum tonight and talk about how disappointed I was in Roland's support (even before you posted the answer).  The guy at Roland was like "It should work".  He just blamed in on my computer (brand new Macbook Pro) and said I needed to call Apple because it wasn't their problem.

I called Apple and they spent quite a bit of time with me but couldn't figure it out either.  They had me reinstall the OS which of course didn't help but it didn't wipe my data either so it was worth a try.

I do have Kontakt 4 installed so that's where the NI startup file came from.  I started removing other programs to see if it would fix it but I stopped short of Kontakt because it takes such a long time to install and I didn't think that would cause the issue because it wasn't using USB or the SD card.  Who knows if it would have cleared that startup file anyway.

The bottom line is...THANK YOU!  Thank you for taking the time to post (and thank you to 64 Guitars for taking the time this weekend to try to help me).  It helps me and I'm certain it will help someone else.  It is very unfortunate that the guy at Roland won't even take the time to research to help their customers.  I mean, here this device costs just short of $500 and all they can do is say it's not us.  I bet I wasn't on the phone with him for more than 2 minutes.  Ultimately it wasn't them but if they had record of a previous issue, it sure would have been nice if they had passed it on.

Thanks again.

Dave