please help - firewire and presonus firepod

[sgtpeppers472]

Kind of long but PLEASE read if you know anything about computers/firepod/firewire, Thanks.



OMG i got my presonus firepod today, and my new mics, but the mic cables didn't come yet =/, well that's okay i guess i'll just install the firepod and get

everything ready for when they do come which will probaly be today or tommorow. Well first of all I put in my install drivers disk for the firepod, but the light on the firepod is red and the found new hardware thing isn't popping up....hmm call up tech support and waited on hold for about an hour and finally got someone saying to email them the computer specs etc, and to call or email back. Well did that, no email back, so i call wait on hold for ANOTHER hour and a half and the guy says my firewire port is a "generic brand" or something and emails me a list of compatible ones. I go to the local Milwaukee PC and pick up a Bytecc Firewire IEEE 1394A card or VIA 1394 OHCI. Get that installed and finally go home to check it out (yay!..right?) No! the guy said when i turn the computer on the driver thing for the firewire would pop up and install blah blah blah well it did, and i installed it, but then i insert the presonus driver install disk and the thing is still fucking red and no new hardware found! WTFWTFWTF angry face


WTF is wrong i am so angry i have spent almost all day on this fucking thing i don't know what to do next?!!!!!!?! Sorry for my launguage and rant i'm a noob to this stuff and i just want to fucking record some shit. God damn it's like fucking rocket science why can't things be easy? PLEASE HELP!

[buckkillr8]

Do you have the pod off until it prompts you to turn it on? When it does turn it on and if it doesn't recognize it turn it back off and reinsert the cable and turn it back on to see if it will grab it then.

[sgtpeppers472]

Tryed that...with both ends of the cables to both inputs, still see that fuckin red light every time....>(

this is the screen i'm stuck on.. (copy and paste link)
http://i42.tinypic.com/34jeh4x.jpg

red light red light red light

[Everybody]

damn dude, same shit happened to me a few months back with my firestudio..I forget exactly how me and my friend fixed it, but it had something to do with reinstalling the drivers for the computer a few times, then for the presonus, then i THINK it worked fine because of that...but it did it again a month later and did taht again but still nothin so we sent it back, and when we got it back the second time its been workin great since

If youve done all that do it one more time, If problems are still there your prob gonna have to send it to presonus to fix it...=/

Im sorry to hear your having to go through all that I know its the biggest pain in the ass =//

[sgtpeppers472]

omg fuck this shit

[buckkillr8]

on a different note that's a good background you got. Is the firewire card you got working? Do you have something else firewire that you can plug up to make sure it's working fine?

[sgtpeppers472]

No i don't. Nor do i feel like spending any more money on this worthless project.

[Everybody]

I feel your pain dude I really do, but dont give up, as much shit as you have to go through now, once you get up and running its pretty smooth sailing from then on for a good while and its so much funnnn deffinatly worth all the bullshit in the beginning.

[mjdx88]

Well I see part of your problem....your running windows.

Ah well im only kidding. Im assuming you have had the pod turned off and plugged in to your computer before turning it on right?

[gecko zzed]

I've been running a Firepod in XP for sometime now, and it installed fine. That's no comfort to you, of course, but it does demonstrate that it can be done.

The manual is explicit in making sure you install the drivers before connecting the Firepod. I'm guessing you did this. I'm guessing also that you checked the system requirements and that they are all fine.

What I would do in your circumstances is uninstall everything and start again.

When I installed my Firepod I followed the instructions very carefully, and it loaded up fine. It has not faltered since. A friend of mine was interested in the Firepod as well. He wanted to see whether it would work on his system first, so I pulled it out of mine, took it up to his place, and installed it there. Again, it went it fine first time.

However, I've not always been so lucky, and I remember having enormous difficulties getting my original ISIS sound card installed and running. In fact I thnik it was maybe a month before I could get things working enough to record anything. Persistance pays off.

[witzendoz]

You have to install the drivers with the firepod disconnected. If it was plugged in that is likely the problem. It tells you this in the instructions.

Try this,

Uninstall anything to do with presonus, drivers, mixer, etc etc.

Do a windows system restore to a point before starting any installation.

Restart computer.

Go to control panel, network connections, and check that the firewire port (1394) is enabled (not disabled).

Do an install of the presonus drivers without the fire box plugged in. As per the instructions in the manual (I am not trying to be smart I just want to get this running for you).

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Alan.

[sgtpeppers472]

Originally Posted by witzendoz

You have to install the drivers with the firepod disconnected. If it was plugged in that is likely the problem. It tells you this in the instructions.

Try this,

Uninstall anything to do with presonus, drivers, mixer, etc etc.

Do a windows system restore to a point before starting any installation.

Restart computer.

Go to control panel, network connections, and check that the firewire port (1394) is enabled (not disabled).

Do an install of the presonus drivers without the fire box plugged in. As per the instructions in the manual (I am not trying to be smart I just want to get this running for you).

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Alan.

i'd rather not do a complete system restore and lose all my music on itunes and other files....


also at one point in the install it SAYS to plug it in and says windows should find a new hardware or whatever but it does not, (see the pic i linked up there^^^^) and the light is red. I never turned the firepod on without that part coming up. I guess I will try to uninstall EVERYTHING to do with fucking music/presonus on my computer and get a new firewire cable....sigh

Also i was reading on some forum about xp service pack 2 firewire inputs being wierd? could that be it?

[buckkillr8]

Originally Posted by sgtpeppers472

i'd rather not do a complete system restore and lose all my music on itunes and other files....


also at one point in the install it SAYS to plug it in and says windows should find a new hardware or whatever but it does not, (see the pic i linked up there^^^^) and the light is red. I never turned the firepod on without that part coming up. I guess I will try to uninstall EVERYTHING to do with fucking music/presonus on my computer and get a new firewire cable....sigh

Also i was reading on some forum about xp service pack 2 firewire inputs being wierd? could that be it?

No he's saying to create a system restore point before installing everything again. That only takes a second to do.

I'm running the firepod on XP2 so that wouldn't be a problem either. Another thing to do is make sure you're not running anything else or even some things in the background during install. Like your antivirus, screensaver etc. Anything that could possibly interfere with installation. I also noticed you had windows updates ready for your PC in that pic? Make sure your windows is completely updated. When you turn the PC off conect the pod up to the PC with the cable but leave it turned off, THEN turn the PC on and do the install of everything.

[gecko zzed]

Originally Posted by sgtpeppers472

i'd rather not do a complete system restore and lose all my music on itunes and other files....


also at one point in the install it SAYS to plug it in and says windows should find a new hardware or whatever but it does not, (see the pic i linked up there^^^^) and the light is red. I never turned the firepod on without that part coming up. I guess I will try to uninstall EVERYTHING to do with fucking music/presonus on my computer and get a new firewire cable....sigh

Also i was reading on some forum about xp service pack 2 firewire inputs being wierd? could that be it?

The idea of doing a system restore is to get the system back to the way it was before you start trying to install the firepod. The system restore will do this, and your PC will not have any residual files associated with the firepod sitting in there somewhere messing things up when you try again. Although the system restore goes back to an earlier point in time, you won't lose any data saved during that time, so you your itunes and other music is safe.

However, to be on the safe side, you can back up any stuff that you've created beyond the restore point onto CD or a USB stick or something.

As you have only very recently tried to install the firepod, you can pick a restore point that is the day before you tried. Doing a restore is not a particularly difficult task, and you should get through it okay . . . it's not like doing a Windows Installation.

Like Buckiller8, I installed over XP SP2 with no problems, so I don't think that is the cause of your troubles. His advice about turning off everything that is running is sound, although I didn't.


However, what you would need to do is to make sure your machine is free of viruses and other related nasties.

It could be the firewire cable, but that is a long shot.

[sgtpeppers472]

if i system restore it how will i make sure the new firewire port/card will work?

[Bristol Posse]

Originally Posted by sgtpeppers472

if i system restore it how will i make sure the new firewire port/card will work?

Click
Start ->
Right Click My computer and select properties
Click on the hardware tab
Cick on the Device manager tab

This will bring up a list of devices running on your machine
You should see a line item called IEEE 1394 Bus Host controlers
Click on the plus sign next to this line an you should see the FW card you installed there.

Also if you hav the FW card installed and no drivers the system will prompt you to load them through the found hardware wizard

[sgtpeppers472]

Originally Posted by Bristol Posse

Click
Start ->
Right Click My computer and select properties
Click on the hardware tab
Cick on the Device manager tab

This will bring up a list of devices running on your machine
You should see a line item called IEEE 1394 Bus Host controlers
Click on the plus sign next to this line an you should see the FW card you installed there.

Also if you hav the FW card installed and no drivers the system will prompt you to load them through the found hardware wizard

I did that and my card shows up so i don't know what the fuck is wrong....cord? fucked up firepod?

[Bristol Posse]

Originally Posted by sgtpeppers472

I did that and my card shows up so i don't know what the fuck is wrong....cord? fucked up firepod?

last thing I would try is download drivers from pre sonus (Personally I never use the instalation disk because you never know how long it was sitting on the shelf and how many driver updates have happened in the mean time)

It could be that you have an older driver that doesn't play nicely with SP2 or something so make sure you have the latest version from the website

Failing that all things being equal in terms of everything else being operational and all compnents are properly functioning it could just be a bad box from Presonus

[sgtpeppers472]

i don't think it is the install disk, i tryed the one from the website....

the problem is my computer won't find the damn thing... i don't know why

[sgtpeppers472]

hey i got a blue light! i put a mic in input 1 and i saw the lines go up and down when i talked, but when i stopped it and went to the start of the recording i didn't hear my voice....i'm guessing i didn't do something right, but at least my voice showed up! kinda....help?

[gecko zzed]

Originally Posted by sgtpeppers472

hey i got a blue light! i put a mic in input 1 and i saw the lines go up and down when i talked, but when i stopped it and went to the start of the recording i didn't hear my voice....i'm guessing i didn't do something right, but at least my voice showed up! kinda....help?

Congratulations! You must be relieved! I've just come back to this forum after searching the web for FP10 installation tips. It seems that while most users have installed it without problems there are some who have experienced difficulties. However, I couldn't find any solutions, apart from downloading the latest drivers and doing clean installs.

Which lines did you see go up and down? What program are you using to record with?

Now that you have the firewire connection established, it will be a matter of sorting out the recording process, i.e. maing sure tracks are armed, making sure that the right inputs are selected, making sure that the FP10 is selected as the input and output device and so on. For example, you may have to go to the control panel, find 'Sound and Audio Devices' and select the firepod (which may not be readily apparent).

However, it is possible that this has already happened, and that your recording is playing back ok through the FP10, but you have no monitors connected to it. Try the headphone socket on the FP10 and see if there is anythnig there.

[witzendoz]

Hi,

If you can see a signel and the light is blue, the presonus is working, you need to now open the presonus mixer and check channels are turned on and that monitoring is to the main outs. Somethimes even opening the mixer window turns on the monitoring.

Cheers

Alan

[sgtpeppers472]

Yay i got sound! every time i record i have to go to devices then device setup and change it to the firepod, then when i want to hear it i have to go to "speakers" or something i don't remember the name...also if i record on "firepod" option i can listen on my headphones, but when i listen to what i recorded I can ONLY listen on my headphones not the monitors... some odd things i could use help with. Also i got the "mixer" working but how do i access some other effects like reverb and stuff? thanks!

(this is all in cubase le4 it came with)

[Everybody]

yea you gotta change device setup to the presonus, this makes the presonus your audio card...if you want to hear music from myspace through the presonus go to control panel, sounds, and change everything to presonus firepod.

idk why the monitors arent playing anything, make sure the volume is up on the computer, on the back/front of the monitors, and on the presonus if it has a seperate knob for monitors.

make sure when your recording your doing 24bit and 44.1 (device setup)

to add effects go to inserts, vst dynamics is a gate/limiter/compressor, roomworks is reverb, and just mess around with that stuff!

congrats for finally gettin somewhere, your almost home free!

[gecko zzed]

Are your monitors plugged into the back of the FP10?

Have you got "main level" on the FP10 turned up?

Have you got the "mixer" level on the FP10 set to about half-way?

Have you selected the FP10 as your audio recording and playback device through the control panel?