SOLVED: Studio 15b3: one step forward, two steps back

And here was I thinking that the R15b cycle was so much smoother than that for R14b ...
Tip: if you update, make sure to keep the 15b2 installer (is now gone from downloads).

My issues are primarily concerned with everything audio /DAW /Fairlight. There may well be other issues, but will leave that to others. For now, have immediately rolled back to 15b2. Some of the problems for me in Studio 15b3:

• Audio tracks in the edit page lose the sound all the time & require restart.
• Multiple time line view has differing results in playing back audio, some may, some may not.
• Changing the prefs /Audio settings from Custom to System has varying results /reboot. More often than not, either setting will lose sound.
• Custom Audio settings in 15B2 worked very well and required no intervention beyond setting the first time. This is clearly very broken/highly unreliable in 15b3.
• Edit page audio tracks (if working) can be very slow to start playback (some seconds after picture).
• Fairlight page almost always refuses to play audio; the video preview begins to scroll eventually, but never the audio.
• MCU control no longer works in the Fairlight page.

Other: the installer is still highly problematic, and after a deep uninstall of the prior version: Refuses to install (via run as administrator) indicating 'user account already exists'.
Can only be installed by logging out and logging back in as Administrator.
Even after complete deep removal of prior version, a 'clean' install wants to 'repair' rather than 'install'.

FYI, this particular project is all H264 /mixed GH5 footage: 50p 4k (long GOP), 25p 4k 10bit (All Intra), plus some iPhone material. Eight or so 1080p timelines, some CCs etc. I tend to use User Cache, but in general, H264 has been running fine & without the need to wait around transcoding for hours, about 700GB of footage total in this project. All audio is stereo 48k Wav, some is binaural (Sennheiser AMBEO).

Back now in Studio R15b2 and none of the above audio problems apply. Runs fine all day long.

did you try any of this in a new project, or at least a new timeline? I've sometimes found things to break in projects/timelines created in Beta versions while features were still being refined

I can confirm I lost all audio, no meters firing either so problem is pre hardware. New project, new timeline, source verified to have audio via WMP. Waveforms show upon the timeline. This particular source is cineform YUV 10 bit. WMP plays audio on this file just no video which is expected.

I also can not drag and drop an MXF DNxHQX rendered by AME. Importing manually also fails. Source file will play in VLC.

The MXF from the P2 will still drag and drop

did you try any of this in a new project, or at least a new timeline? I've sometimes found things to break in projects/timelines created in Beta versions while features were still being refined

Thanks, yes. Same results with new project, new timelines.
No meters firing here either.

Update:
[yes I understand the risks on installing and playing with betas, however the significant audio upgrades /potential I found worthwhile]

The short end of the story is that somehow this Studio 15b3 install went awry and seriously messed with my system. Hard to say exactly what the sequence of events were, but now after a couple of days of doing a new Windows 10 install /roll backs (bad), re-image (good), the system works vey well & now 15b3 is installed and working as it should.

None of the fist posted errors apply & the timeline audio works properly, as does MCU control, Fairlight and the rest. I might add, whatever the audio problems were, they effected nothing else on the system, including Nuendo, ProTools, Premier etc. The other mentioned 'administrator account only' install problem also went away. Now verions can be installed 'normally' from my user account (but still require 'clean' install, eg, 15b3 doesn't like being installed over the top of 15b2 etc - won't launch problems).

One possibility of the cause and the reason for posting here:
It 'may' have been that Windows snuck in an 1803 update here somewhere in this, perhaps bad timing. In the re-image process I rolled back to v1709 and am holding it there with no updates for the moment.

Perhaps worth checking out? v1803 may well have some issues here & I do know for example that AC3 has become problematic in this update. Hope this might help.