Originally Posted By: DeaconBlues09

The connection for my USB port has gotten extremely loose, and unplugs itself at the most random times. I have become so wary of damaging the program irreparably through these crashes, that I've all but stopped using the program entirely over the last few weeks. Note that I love the speed of my laptop's SSD I have very little space on it to spare.


Hey DeaconBLues, this comment of yours concerned me. The reason is because a few years ago I bought a used Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 that was in mint appearing condition except its USB port was worn out. I had to constantly maneuver the cable into just the right position so contact would be maintained, but as time went by it became increasingly more difficult to maintain the connection. Well, I knew that the surface jack was a standard thing and cheap to procure, so I bought a replacement and set about replacing it. You'd think that desoldering 6 connections (2 to hold the jack in place and 4 for the signals) wouldn't be all that difficult, but it ended up being more time consuming than I thought, getting those last pesky bits of solder out of the openings. So anyway, I finally managed to get the new jack installed, using a low-wattage soldering iron, even. Checked afterward with my multimeter to make sure that each connection was good. And fired the repaired 2i4 up. Or so I thought. The dials flicked red once then died and that was it. The unit was totally unresponsive. I double checked to make sure that I didn't get careless with my soldering such that one of the connections might be touching another, but nope, everything was good. But it was as dead as oak leaves in the winter.

So I'm left with a pretty but useless interface and I don't know what I did wrong. As a result, my recommendation to you is, should you choose to get your USB port repaired, unless you're really good at this sort of thing, you might want to have it done by a professional.

Best,
Michael

My Music:
https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/albums