Alesis Firewire issues (AGAIN! SORRY!)

[mansh]

I am having trouble with my Alesis Multimix 12 Firewire. I use Cubase E4 & Vista 32.

Occasionally it just doesn't work - I can see midi being triggered and levels on audio tracks jigging up and down , but no sound comes out. Sometimes it waits until I'm halfway through a project before it tells me that the Alesis has 'been removed'. Sometimes if I switch the Alesis on and off again it will resume working - other times it won't.

I use a Sony NR11Z Notebook and plug my Alesis into the mini firewire port. Alesis suggest that 'all firewires are not the same'... if I were to get an Expresscard 32 Firewire adapter would I get better performance from this? Or do I just need to use my Alesis as a mixer and buy a different interface? If I moan at Alesis and they agree to replace, is USB 2.0 fast enough?

Thanks in advance...

[oretez]

USB 2 has band width that can support potential input tracks available from the Alesis multimix

issues tend to have more to do with how the computer supports and splits available bandwidth and some potential housekeeping overhead that can make latency more problematic then you might want If you are executing a lot of overdubs

as a straight tracking engine USB can work fine (and for the novice can be less fussy then firewire)

as to 'why' your system is experiencing the reported symptoms there are way to too possibilities to cover effectively

without wanting to sound snobbish I have yet to see a Sony laptop that makes an effective audio production tool. Your firewire issues might well relate to chipset sony selected or, at least as propable, fact that you use a 'bridged' usb/firewire combo sharing an IRQ between the USB & firewire bus tends to be an insurmountable hurdle for streaming media, that is audio.

As important an issue can be media where your audio ends up recording to system drives also tends to be contra indicated (for audio production) (but it is unlikely that that impacts your issues directly except if you are trying to track to external drive then the shared IRQ issue shows up again)

Over the past two years I found Vista (certainly OEM installations) to be pretty useless for audio production (doesn't mean you can do audio on a Vista machine, merely that I have had to trouble shoot a pretty steady succession of issues, for clients that Vista either exacerbated or was source) As mulitmix 12 is legacy product it might not have robust driver support for Vista. With is type of interface (firewire added on to other hardware) I have found the order in which devices are connected to be a significant variable. And Have not found an consistency among suppliers or systems as to what works) But you might try conecting in reverse order, that is if you power up computer with firewire powered and attached, trying booting OS prior to attaching f/w device

Not sure how Vista implements sounds but it is possible that if you have not turned off all system sounds that the OS grapping some 8 bit squeak is causing a conflict in your recording software that crashes the A/D device (you lose connection to mixer) . . . first guess is shared IRQ's but throught I bring up a chestnut just to illustrate how frustrating trouble shooting this stuff can be

everything I've mentioned is derived from some form of hands on experience, but what that experience has demonstrated is that other then some general suggestions remote troubleshooting is at best a hit or miss situation (which means that I would expect there to be someone out there with a Sony, a multimix 12 running entry level Vista with no OS sweeteners turned off having no trouble trying to accomplish the same general task you are . . . )

in any case good luck

[TelePaul]

Disable your stock sound-card in the bios. That helped me with my Alesis.

[EmptyFox]

I run an alesis io-26 on two different Windows XP systems, i've found having a dedicated pci firewire card is the best way to go. Often a four pin firewire jack on a laptop will not perform well. You can try disabling anything on your system that isn't in use during recording such as USB, ethernet card and/or modem. Disabling the factory sound card is also a good idea as you will probably not need it. This will make less work for your computers motherboard and CPU. Also having alot of free space on your hard drive & defragmenting a lot will help.