sonusman
Banned
I believe that I have well documented my really bad experiences in the last two years with trying to make the audio PCI card work in a system that more then exceeds the “minimum system requirements” that Alesis advertises on their web site, as well as is printed on the retail box of this card.
DON’T BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ IN “MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS”!!!
Basically, what I got from a top level tech support person at Alesis was that I would need LVD SCSI drives to be able to transfer 8 tracks at a time for more then 30 seconds with this card. I will not go into the details of the why of this, but that is what they claimed, and certainly, I tried every “other” way of making this card work with great IDE hard drives.
Anyway.
I recently scored an Adaptec Ultra 2 controller card and two Seagate Cheetah 10,000-rpm hard drives for my DAW in the hopes of actually making this stupid ADAT PCI card work for me.
Happy to report that I was successful in transferring 8 tracks at one time for over 10 minutes without even one hiccup in the transfer (except for the first time I ran this test, I made a phone call, and my modem was hooked up to the computer, and even though on my 98 install I hadn’t made the OS “internet ready” the OS crashed when I started dialing the phone. I disabled the modem driver in 98, as well as a few others that I wouldn’t need for audio production, and all was well).
So, while many guys who are very knowledgeable about computer recording found it incredible that the stupid Alesis ADAT PCI card couldn’t transfer a measly 8 tracks of 16 bit, 48kHz sampling rate at once for more then 30 seconds with very fast IDE drives, and that the card requires SCSI LVD technology, it is in fact true that it IS what is needed to make the card work.
I am relieved that I can finally start using the card to do sample accurate transfer to and from my ADAT’s now, but I am still very pissed that I had to invest another $1000 in upgrades to my computer, which totally exceeded the “minimum system requirements” Alesis states for their ADAT PCI card to work!!!
So, if you are having problems with doing 8 tracks at once transfers with this card, and you don’t have SCSI LVD drives, well, save yourself the frustration of a losing battle and just get the controller and drives and be done with it and remember that Alesis totally fucked up on the design of this card, and they already got your money, and there is little you can do about it, unless you want to join me in a class action suit because they totally misrepresented what you need to actually use this card and only AFTER you buy it, and call their tech support several times, AND, ask informed questions will they admit that you need SCSI LVD devices to make it work!
I received responses to a thread I started many months ago asking for Alesis PCI card stories from those that tried to make it work on their IDE hard drive systems, and all but 1 of the responses from people who tried to make this card work said that they COULDN’T and returned the card for a refund. It turns out that the ONE dude who responded who was “pleased” with his card had NEVER tried to transfer 8 tracks at once from an ADAT machine, and never did a transfer for more then 1 minute.
So, this thread is twofold. One, it is another warning from me about THINKING you can use this card on just any old computer. Second, it is a tip about WHAT you will ACTUALLY need to make the card work in the manner it is described in.
If any Alesis lawyers or executives are reading this, well, watch out suckers! I still may bring this class action suit against you for such a messed up release of a product that DID not even come close to working in ANY way as it was advertised.
Oh, if any of you STILL think that the Toslink Optical I/O’s on this card will support S/PDIF, yet another feature Alesis claimed for their ADAT PCI card in their initial product brochures, think again! It will NEVER support it, and they don’t even claim it will anymore. I think this fact alone would win ME a case against you, one of your tech support people ADMITTED that the device driver you shipped your early cards with would not work AT ALL! Nice……”Well sir, the device driver doesn’t work at all”, “Forget that, start manufacturing and ship it damnit. This card has been vaporware for long enough, and we are starting to lose too much money hyping it to the public. We will fix it later”. How many times have we seen this kind of scenario?
Also, don’t think their latest driver will run on Windows 95. I caught a short lived announcement on their website that their latest Connect software revision would only run on 98, and now I cannot find this announcement on their site. Alesis is up to funny things lately. I didn’t IMAGINE reading this, I DID, and it is NOT on their site anymore.
Oh, another thing that you will probably NEVER see on this card is a Windows 2000 driver. I can almost assure you that there will be no Windows XP driver either. Alesis’s high-level tech support guys (2 of them) claimed that they were working on an NT platform driver. Great! But it has been two years, and still not even a BETA!!! I suspect that their lousy hardware design in this card will NEVER produce an NT based driver. Hell, it has enough problems in 9X OS’s; I can’t possibly see it EVER having an NT driver.
So, there you have it. I say fuck Alesis for making a miserable two years of me NOT getting to use my card, even though my computer has ALWAYS exceeded what they advertise as what I need to use it, and warn anybody about thinking this card is their ADAT to PC solution.
Any of you all remember the exchanges I had with that Alesis rep who was pushing that stupid Masterlink on here?
Ed
DON’T BELIEVE WHAT YOU READ IN “MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS”!!!
Basically, what I got from a top level tech support person at Alesis was that I would need LVD SCSI drives to be able to transfer 8 tracks at a time for more then 30 seconds with this card. I will not go into the details of the why of this, but that is what they claimed, and certainly, I tried every “other” way of making this card work with great IDE hard drives.
Anyway.
I recently scored an Adaptec Ultra 2 controller card and two Seagate Cheetah 10,000-rpm hard drives for my DAW in the hopes of actually making this stupid ADAT PCI card work for me.
Happy to report that I was successful in transferring 8 tracks at one time for over 10 minutes without even one hiccup in the transfer (except for the first time I ran this test, I made a phone call, and my modem was hooked up to the computer, and even though on my 98 install I hadn’t made the OS “internet ready” the OS crashed when I started dialing the phone. I disabled the modem driver in 98, as well as a few others that I wouldn’t need for audio production, and all was well).
So, while many guys who are very knowledgeable about computer recording found it incredible that the stupid Alesis ADAT PCI card couldn’t transfer a measly 8 tracks of 16 bit, 48kHz sampling rate at once for more then 30 seconds with very fast IDE drives, and that the card requires SCSI LVD technology, it is in fact true that it IS what is needed to make the card work.
I am relieved that I can finally start using the card to do sample accurate transfer to and from my ADAT’s now, but I am still very pissed that I had to invest another $1000 in upgrades to my computer, which totally exceeded the “minimum system requirements” Alesis states for their ADAT PCI card to work!!!
So, if you are having problems with doing 8 tracks at once transfers with this card, and you don’t have SCSI LVD drives, well, save yourself the frustration of a losing battle and just get the controller and drives and be done with it and remember that Alesis totally fucked up on the design of this card, and they already got your money, and there is little you can do about it, unless you want to join me in a class action suit because they totally misrepresented what you need to actually use this card and only AFTER you buy it, and call their tech support several times, AND, ask informed questions will they admit that you need SCSI LVD devices to make it work!
I received responses to a thread I started many months ago asking for Alesis PCI card stories from those that tried to make it work on their IDE hard drive systems, and all but 1 of the responses from people who tried to make this card work said that they COULDN’T and returned the card for a refund. It turns out that the ONE dude who responded who was “pleased” with his card had NEVER tried to transfer 8 tracks at once from an ADAT machine, and never did a transfer for more then 1 minute.
So, this thread is twofold. One, it is another warning from me about THINKING you can use this card on just any old computer. Second, it is a tip about WHAT you will ACTUALLY need to make the card work in the manner it is described in.
If any Alesis lawyers or executives are reading this, well, watch out suckers! I still may bring this class action suit against you for such a messed up release of a product that DID not even come close to working in ANY way as it was advertised.
Oh, if any of you STILL think that the Toslink Optical I/O’s on this card will support S/PDIF, yet another feature Alesis claimed for their ADAT PCI card in their initial product brochures, think again! It will NEVER support it, and they don’t even claim it will anymore. I think this fact alone would win ME a case against you, one of your tech support people ADMITTED that the device driver you shipped your early cards with would not work AT ALL! Nice……”Well sir, the device driver doesn’t work at all”, “Forget that, start manufacturing and ship it damnit. This card has been vaporware for long enough, and we are starting to lose too much money hyping it to the public. We will fix it later”. How many times have we seen this kind of scenario?
Also, don’t think their latest driver will run on Windows 95. I caught a short lived announcement on their website that their latest Connect software revision would only run on 98, and now I cannot find this announcement on their site. Alesis is up to funny things lately. I didn’t IMAGINE reading this, I DID, and it is NOT on their site anymore.
Oh, another thing that you will probably NEVER see on this card is a Windows 2000 driver. I can almost assure you that there will be no Windows XP driver either. Alesis’s high-level tech support guys (2 of them) claimed that they were working on an NT platform driver. Great! But it has been two years, and still not even a BETA!!! I suspect that their lousy hardware design in this card will NEVER produce an NT based driver. Hell, it has enough problems in 9X OS’s; I can’t possibly see it EVER having an NT driver.
So, there you have it. I say fuck Alesis for making a miserable two years of me NOT getting to use my card, even though my computer has ALWAYS exceeded what they advertise as what I need to use it, and warn anybody about thinking this card is their ADAT to PC solution.
Any of you all remember the exchanges I had with that Alesis rep who was pushing that stupid Masterlink on here?
Ed
