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Be forewarned that the two fans present a serious hazard to fingers, tools, and meter probes. The fan blades
rotate at high speed and have very sharp edges. They can quickly and easily remove a fingertip (gee ... how do
we know this?) Coming into contact with a rotating fan blade will cause serious injury.
When reinstalling the top cover, make certain that all thirty screws are replaced, and that they are tightened to a
snug fit. Operating the unit with its cover removed or without all of the retaining screws will void your warranty
and may compromise the ability of the Omnia to operate in high RF environments.
Narrowing down problems
When actually troubleshooting your Omnia-3, try to ascertain some preliminary information first before
embarking on an in-depth problem-solving mission. Take time to carefully consider whether your unit falls into
any of the following states:
1. The unit is totally dead. Is the power on? Is the line cord plugged into an outlet that has AC power? Is there
an audio input level? Is there an audio output level? Is there a power indication? Are the LCD screens blank,
scrambled, or not illuminated? Symptoms like these might indicate a power supply problem. If you wish to
examine the power supply, be aware that it is switching type, and therefore requires a load in order to start up
and operate properly. Voltages measured when the power supply is not connected to the Omnia motherboard
may not be correct.
2. The unit has power, but there is no audio output although the processing bargraphs are working. The
first thing to verify is whether the front panel jog-wheel is operational. Verification of front panel operation
helps narrow down where the problem is. Look at the levels display. If there is input audio but no output audio
indications, try cycling the unit’s power. If that doesn’t bring the operation back to normal, then a hardware
failure of some sort has occurred. If you get output levels but have no output audio, verify that the outputs are
connected correctly. An analog output connected to a digital device, or a digital output connected to an analog
device won’t pass audio! Connect the appropriate test generator to the output cables to verify analog/digital
audio is making it to the next device.
The next condition to check is to see if the failure has caused the processing to cease. Using program material,
check to see if the processing bargraphs are operating. If they are, then it’s a good indication that the basic DSP
structure is sound and the system's host processor is working. At this point, it would be a good idea to see if the
loss of audio is confined to only one output port, e.g. a composite output, the discrete left/right outputs or the
AES/EBU output. Check the signal at each of these locations. If the signal is dead at all three, then this points to
a digital audio problem after the dynamic processing DSP chips. If one of the output sections is not operating,
then it can be localized to that specific section.
Note: The composite outputs and the discrete left/right outputs are operated from their own specialized Digital
to Analog converters. Therefore, it's possible for one type of output to fail without affecting the other. Likewise,
a failure in the AES/EBU driver section could result in the digital output being dead, while the rest of the
system is operational.
4. Unit will not boot and “Downloading OS” is displayed over and over. This usually indicates a corrupt
rear-panel PC software card. Try a different PC card containing the same style of Omnia software (fm Turbo,
net, or am) if one is available. Contact Omnia Customer Support or your dealer to obtain a replacement card.
