Frustrated! Firewire Mixer Problem

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shane_sow

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Hey guys,

I'm utterly stumped on this one, and you've pulled through for me in the past. So here's the situation:

This week I took a large section of my gear to my old high-school's recording studio. I didn't favor their mixer/monitors, so I took my own. We recorded a bunch of songs and the raw sound was awesome.

So anyway, I packed up all my gear, being very careful not to drop/bash anything on my way. I load it all up into the car, stack it carefully, and drive home. I didn't take any sharp corners, nothing got bashed around.

I setup all my gear again when I got home.

Now, to my sheer horror, I can't get the mixer (Phonic Helix Board 18) to work. It turns on, all the correct settings are selected (none were changed) and the Firewire cable is plugged into the back of the PC. However, Windows doesn't throw up that "hardware plugged in" noise, and the Phonic control panel still says "0 devices connected". If I bypass the Firewire and go straight to the monitors, the mixer works. It's simply an issue of the Firewire outputs not working. I opened it up and checked all the cabling inside and everything was securely plugged in and no physical damage was observed.

This is very frustrating, seeing as I need my mixer to mix.

If it hasn't suffered any physical damage... what am I doing wrong?

Shane.
PS. Other Firewire devices are working on the PC.
 
shane_sow said:
If it hasn't suffered any physical damage... what am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...
Unplug the firewire connection to the PC, then go into your device manager in windows and check to see if the driver is loaded... or if there are any problems with it (yellow exclamation point). If you see the driver, remove it... even if it says it's running fine. Now reboot, then plug the mixer firewire to the PC and let it auto detect for the first time again...

This will probably take care of it, if it's not a hardware issue... Windows can be real finicky about what it recognizes on different ports...
 
Be sure to try all combinations of ports, reinstalling the vendor software. If you've never connected to this specific machine before it might not work without a firewire card with a specific chipset. My MOTU 828mkII will only work with certain firewire cards that have the right type of chipset (it's very frustrating). Try it on another computer if you have one. I usually have good luck with onboard laptop firewire, but bad luck with the third party cards like pci/pcmcia.

Nuke
 
I also have a phonic and sometimes the mixer doesn't show up on the phonic control panel. A power-down reboot (turning the computer completely off) has always resolved the problem.

You should reload the drivers as suggested by Mofo. To remove it, do so in Window's Control Panel Add/Remove Programs. Then reload it with the cd.


Hope this helps.
 
Hey everyone. Thanks for the help so far, but unfortunately I have been unable to resolve the issue.

So far I've:
  • Uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled them
  • Was unable to find the mixer in the system device manager
  • Unplugged the mixer, replugged it into all 3 of my PC's Firewire inputs
  • Used two different Firewire cables
  • Tested another Firewire device (it worked)
  • Did a system restore as advised by Phonic
  • Opened the mixer and made sure the Firewire inputs were connected to the main board properly
  • Tried the mixer on another machine (a Mac, couldn't detect it)

I can't think of anything else and I'm stumped. I'm starting to think that it's hardware failure. When I connect it to the computer the computer simply does nothing. No "New hardware" message, no mixers in the Phonic CP, no new hardware sound, no hardware disconnected sound.

I'm going to call Phonic tech support, and I'm expecting they'll ask me to ship it to them. Being a large mixer, and being that I am in Australia, I imagine it won't be a cheap endeavor :( I'm just completely clueless as to how this happened. Everything was done carefully... nothing was bumped around or anything. All my Firefox settings disappeared too for some reason :confused:

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated though.
Cheers.
 
Sorry to hear you're having so much trouble. I know this is real lame, but you didn't say you completely powered off the computer. I'm sure you did.

I find it difficult to believe that taking the mixer to your school for a few hours would cause the firewire interface to stop working. Would you be able to get a loaner from the store for testing?

I'm keenly interested in how you resolve this problem because I have one also and want to know what problems it might have and what to do to solve them.

Cheers,
 
Yeah it's stumped me :( As you said though, I did power the PC down.

I opened the mixer up and unplugged the Firewire ports chip and plugged it back in. I also took the main Firewire board off the main board and re-seated it as well. This was the advice Phonic gave me over the phone last night.

They gave me a phone number of a local vendor that I could take the mixing desk to so they can get it repaired. I guess that's my only option at this stage :(

Lesson learned - Be very careful with these boards. They're obviously delicate.
 
Can you try attaching the mixer to another computer's firewire port to rule out your computer being upset for whatever reason?
 
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