firepod/sonar newb tracking troubles

T

thewanderer24

New member
I have recently gotten setup with a firepod, a new PC and Sonar 5 Studio.

Seems like every track I try to record through the firepod is all choppy, broken, etc. This is regardless of whether I am using an instrument through pre in the linein, a passive instrument into one of the mic/instrument jacks, or just talking/singing through a mic.

I've played with Latency settings on the firepod, rebooted my PC (and firepod) several times, set the PC (on the firepod control panel) to Low, medium and high, all with the same ugly results.

I am only trying to record one track at a time, I don't understand how I could be having processor/memory/PC resource issues. So I must be missing something.

I tried tracking the same stuff with the Cubase LE software that comes with the firepod, and none of the choppy popping stuff is there. This makes me think it is something to do with the way Sonar is setup, rather than with the Firepod.

My PC is made to be a DAW, with AMD X2 processor and 1G of Ram.

Any ideas?? I'm getting very frustrated and not sure where to start or what to do next.
 
Which drivers are you using? Asio? WDM? MME? I'm not familiar with the firepod but when I was setting up my PCI Audiophile 192 I discovered that which drivers I used made a difference when setting latency and buffers.
 
For those that might benefit later...

Seems that the problem was somehow that the drivers weren't set on the ASIO ones in Sonar. Not sure why or how, but changing to the ASIO drivers cleared up the problem, and left me to all my other Newby problems...

Thanks
 
I just went through a major saga with Firepods and Sonar 4 that, when all was said & done, resulted in both Firepods being sent back.

I decided to pick up a Firepod based on the good reviews I'd seen, and I liked the simplicity of the firewire interface (compared to my old Delta1010LT). I did a couple demo tracks with the Firepod, noticed a few crackles & pops but nothing that couldn't be fixed, so I placed an order for a second Firepod. That's when everything went downhill...

As soon as I connected the second Firepod, the tonal quality completely tanked... pops, clicks, distortion, dropouts, etc. I talked with Presonus tech support, and they gave me a lot of suggestions for tuning Cakewalk/Windows XP performance, none of which made any difference. I tried both WDM and ASIO with no luck. I tried different firewire controllers with no luck. In a last ditch effort, I completely reformatted my system and reinstalled Sonar. While the distortion got somewhat better, recordings were still ridden with pops and clicks. I packed 'em up and returned them for refund, tired of messing with them and not confident that Presonus tech support would be able to provide any real solution.

I'm now using a Frontier Design Dakota/Montana card set with several preamps/converters (a Focusrite OctoPre LE, a Presonus DigiMax LT, and a Behringer ADA8000). While I haven't done a big recording project yet, the performance and tone seem far better than the Firepods (couldn't be much worse).

Seriously, good luck with the Firepods and Sonar... I gave it the ol' college try, but gave up. Regardless of whether it's Microsoft's, Cakewalk's, or Presonus' fault, it really didn't make any difference at the time.

--B
 
bduersch said:
I just went through a major saga with Firepods and Sonar 4 that, when all was said & done, resulted in both Firepods being sent back.

I decided to pick up a Firepod based on the good reviews I'd seen, and I liked the simplicity of the firewire interface (compared to my old Delta1010LT). I did a couple demo tracks with the Firepod, noticed a few crackles & pops but nothing that couldn't be fixed, so I placed an order for a second Firepod. That's when everything went downhill...

As soon as I connected the second Firepod, the tonal quality completely tanked... pops, clicks, distortion, dropouts, etc. I talked with Presonus tech support, and they gave me a lot of suggestions for tuning Cakewalk/Windows XP performance, none of which made any difference. I tried both WDM and ASIO with no luck. I tried different firewire controllers with no luck. In a last ditch effort, I completely reformatted my system and reinstalled Sonar. While the distortion got somewhat better, recordings were still ridden with pops and clicks. I packed 'em up and returned them for refund, tired of messing with them and not confident that Presonus tech support would be able to provide any real solution.

I'm now using a Frontier Design Dakota/Montana card set with several preamps/converters (a Focusrite OctoPre LE, a Presonus DigiMax LT, and a Behringer ADA8000). While I haven't done a big recording project yet, the performance and tone seem far better than the Firepods (couldn't be much worse).

Seriously, good luck with the Firepods and Sonar... I gave it the ol' college try, but gave up. Regardless of whether it's Microsoft's, Cakewalk's, or Presonus' fault, it really didn't make any difference at the time.

--B
Click to expand...

I actually have been having very good results, so far. I've played around a lot over the last week or so since I posted the original message in this thread, including recording 4 or 5 tracks at a time, and mixing 8 to 10 with effects. I'm definitely still a newb with this stuff, but since I cleared up my initial issues, I've been thrilled. And I have my latency set at 2ms. For me, I don't see any present or future need to hook up two pods at once (I shouldn't need more than 8 simultaneous ins at any point in the forseeable future), so hopefully I won't ever encounter the problems you mention (knocking on wood).

Good luck with your new setup.
 
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