What about windows 7 64bit? Will this not work as well for the Multimix 8 USB 2.0?
My bad I meant USB 1.0 for windows 7 64bit- sorry
I e-mailed Alesis with no reply yet. Anyone who has the Win 7 64-bit drivers, can you share them please? frankshaw@entradastudios.com
Many thanks!
-Frank
"With multitrack recording its always a good idea to add RAM" -- which made me laugh - and reply to them asking HOW I could add more RAM than I have without a 64bit O/S.
The final response from Alesis with the Multimix Firewire series was to pull it all off the market starting last December, and they recently moved all of it into the legacy [things we no longer make] section on their web site. Clearly showing us that they have no intentions of ever writing new drivers for 64 bit machines, never mind it's the only kind of computer you can buy since last fall. I started looking last December, out of desperation, for a 32 bit XP computer so I could finally use my Multimix 8 firewire mixer and found that they are not being sold anywhere. I considering building one but Micro bucks still wants about 200 for the XP disc, and that's way too much for a discontinued version. The world has moved on up and Alesis is refusing to budge; their position seems to be screw the customer; we got your money so suck it up and live with the loss. Our only option now seems to be starting a class action law suit. For some reason they seem to think they can't afford to write new working drivers, and yet they are still bringing out new products. They must think they will never need any new customers that have new computers.
If you are one of the hundreds if not thousands stuck with things they sold you that you can't use you might be interested in fighting back.
Thought I would add to my last post, quoted at the bottom.
Alesis, out of the blue after months of hinting that it may never happen, finally released 64 bit drivers for Win 7, for the Firewire mixers. I was so excited, for a couple of hours.
But I couldn't get them to work even after weeks of trying. And that's when I found out that all Firewire circuits are not equal, do not deal with everything moving down the wire.
Seems the Alesis drivers require a specific TI chipset, and a lot of PC's as well as lots of the add-on PCI cards have something different. Manufacturers started buying cheaper chip sets which work for things like hard drives and cameras but not audio for some weird reason, and no one ever tells the consumer upfront; could you imagine the fiasco if the same thing applied to USB?
Their only solution is to buy an add on Firewire card, they list just three as being proven to work, of course that is from long ago and for 32 bits, and one card has long since been discontinued and the other two made by Belkin have no 64 bit drivers and when I called them I was told that they have no plans to be writing one, they called Firewire a dead thing. So I went back to Alesis for suggestions, they wrote back to me that one of their techs installed one, didn't say which one, and that it works just fine for them. I am still waiting to hear back what he used for a driver, been a week now which probably means there is no answer is coming anytime soon, if ever. I am not going to gamble on buying a PCI card unless I know it will actually install and work.
The only solution left may be to buy a used 32 bit computer and just live with the 3 gigs of RAM limitation. Or go back to USB and the old one stereo track at a time limit.
If anyone out there has gotten a PCI card to install and work in W7 64 bit please let me know which card and how you dealt with the driver issue.
I’m in the same boat. I own (for now) a Multimix 16 USB 2.0. Alesis is selling this as a current product, and in my opinion should support the major operating systems of the day which I would consider Windows to be one of them.
Adobe CS5 only runs on 64bit forcing me to upgrade.
I don’t really care how many bits it takes to get the product to function, just tell me how to install a working driver for this product on a 64 bit machine.
If this isn’t possible, then I’ll leave you (alesis) this advice. If you pick up a Sweetwater, BH Photo, etc. Catalog you will see the world is filled with pro audio products, each product has dozens of competitors in the same price range. Nobody I know is married to Alesis products, and if your best advise is to find a different OS because either you don’t have the desire or financial resources to support you current product line, then please direct me to your investor relations dept, because I want to short sell your common stock if you are a public company.
To me, your answer of Find another supported OS, translates to “Sell your Mulitmix on ebay and buy supported mixer from a large company with the resources to pay a programmer to write 64 bit drivers like Yamaha.”
I’ll leave you with the words of Clint Eastwood from Kelly’s Heroes. “We (the pro audio community) aren’t waiting around for you to catch up, now if you can’t keep up that’s your problem, now we are pulling out and we are pushing forward, OVER!”