[Anonymous]

So the Ti Polar arrived on Friday and the nightmare began...

I got it out of the box: "Hmmm, is this a new unit?" There are a couple of small scratches on the front panel that have been rather inexpertly painted over, a couple of chips in the left hand edge of the panel and the paint has flaked off round the screws on the back panel and base plate.

Plug in headphones and power it up. The display lights up, some of the LEDs come on and it just sits there. Hit the Transpose/OnOff buttons and some of the LEDs go out; at this point it's totally unresponsive. Pull the plug and try again: this time it starts up OK. Power it on and off a couple of times: about one time in three it hangs during startup.

Find the software is version 1.0Beta; download 1.08 from the Access site. Try to install it: it gets past the point where it askes for the VST directory then says "There is a problem with this windows installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor". Search the web for possible causes: no, it's not a corrupt "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VST\VSTPluginsPath" key because that doesn't exist on my machine (I'm using Sonar 3.1.1, I do have a \Program Files\VSTPlugins directory and the VSTs run fine) and I get the same behaviour if I create that key.

Download 1.07 and try that: exactly the same problem.

Request support from Access via the web site. I've not yet had any response; hardly surprising since this was done around 4pm on Friday.

Leave the installation stopped part way so I can see what's been installed before it goes into reverse and deletes everything: I've got the firmware update and drivers. Copy them and install them manually. Update the hardware to 1.08 successfully but still get the power on problem. Try using the USB MIDI: no sound from the hardware and after about two minutes the PC BSODs.

Give up on the software and try driving it over normal MIDI: it runs OK. Try multi mode while flipping through the programs and tweaking some of them: everything is OK for perhaps 10 minutes then there's an almighty screech that just about takes the top of my head off. Throw the headphones half way across the room in a panic trying to get them off before my eardrums rupture. Can't stop the ghastly noise because the hardware is completely unresponsive; pull the power lead to shut it up. Try the same sequence again, very cautiously: it runs OK.

Play with it some more, routing the outputs through an old minidisk player with an auto volume limiting system that limits the maximum volume. The crashing seems in some way associated with patches that use the arpeggiator, but it's completely unpredictable.

So:

I've got what looks like a reconditioned unit.
It's unreliable to the point where I wouldn't dare use it live.
It's going to be no fun to work with if it keeps crashing with those painfully loud screeches.
The fact I can't get the software to install limits things rather severely.

Since I ordered it from Turnkey through their web site I have the option of getting a refund if I return it within a week, and I'm seriously wondering if that's the best option....

Questions:

Has anyone got the software to install on a Windows 2000 SP4 system? (The installer does list this as a valid OS.)

Has anyone got the plugins working in any version of Sonar?

Just how bad is the DSP crashing issue? I've had it a couple of times now and it seems it may be tied to the arpeggiator: if I avoid using this will I still be risking my ears?

Other Polar owners: has your keyboard lost paint round the casing screws?