Glitchy Audio and PreSonus Firestudio

WelchRecording

WelchRecording

New member
Thank you for reading, as this problem is currently messing with getting a professional level of work done in my garage studio.

I'm using PreSonus Firestudio Project via Firewire as my audio interface and everything works properly except that the audio being outputted to the Firestudio when I'm recording with Ableton Suite 8.0.3 glitches every ten or so seconds and is very bothersome. I've done a lot of research and found that the problem may be that my computer is not fast enough to support the device, but according to Ableton's required specs I should be fine:

ASUS A8N-SLI Motherboard (Socket 939 - prevents me from upgrading my processor past an Opteron 185)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 Dual Core Processor @ 2.0GHz
2 GB DDR-333 RAM (Motherboard does say that it supports DDR-400, however)

I'm planning on spending over $400 to upgrade the processor and memory of the computer to a AMD Opteron 185 @ 2.6GHz and 4.0 GB RAM DDR-400, but before I do this I don't want to be an idiot and have the problem be something software related.

I've noticed that Ableton 8.1 has been released and would upgrading my software to that version fix it or is it simply hardware related?

Thanks for reading, hope this will help solve my problem.

EDIT: I'd misread the PreSonus system requirements when I had checked them a month or so ago and it does say that a processor of 2.5 GHz is *Recommended* so is the one-main-problem that I need to fix?
 
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Regardless of computer (within reason) you should be able to get glitch free recording at the cost of latency. I don't use Ableton, but it's basically the same with all DAWs.

What are your sample rates and buffer sizes on the Presonus driver set at. By raising your buffer, you can probably get rid of the glitches, but your latency will go up and may be a problem.
 
I've tried setting the buffer from 64 all the way to 288 samples but haven't tried setting it higher as I figured the lower the buffer the more performance enhanced it would be, I'll reply with results from that test when I get back to the studio. Haven't had any problems with latency however, and I'm running it at 44.1 Khz. Thanks for the tip!

EDIT: The interface supports up to 96 KHz but I figured a lower rate would help
 
I've tried putting the buffer size all the way up to 4096 samples @ 44.1KHz and even 4096 @ 96 KHz and it lessened the glitches quite a bit but I will still get one every 15-30 seconds. Ableton 8 series does consume a lot more memory and CPU than older versions as the program lags a lot more when I move tracks from here to there or do something than it did in versions 7 and before but I don't believe it's the reason that the output audio is glitching.
 
Thought we were on to something there. Anything less than 128 samples is probablty too low for even the fast machines.

Usual buffer is around 256 - 512 and then latency becomes a problem. Have you tried using direct monitor with the Presonus. That may be a solution.
 
Alright I fired up the microphone and recorded while having it directly monitor what was being done and while I was recording it sounded like there was no glitches what-so-ever.
However, when I re-played the audio track there were glitches that were recorded into the audio track itself, whereas the previous problem was that the audio tracks themselves would be fine but it would glitch randomly during playback.

Recorded @ 44.1 KHz 512 Samples

EDIT: I was using the PreSonus driver to monitor the input channel while it recorded in Ableton.
 
I've purchased a AMD Opteron 185 processor (2.6GHz dual-core) and 4 GB of Kingston DDR-400 RAM, so I'll update this post after I've installed the new hardware to see if that fixes the problem. Otherwise I'm stuck to recording while the audio glitches.
 
I dont think your Processor is a problem.

I can run 36 tracks with a lot of plugins on my HP laptop (1gb ram, 2ghz Core Duo) without hickups at >512 samples on my Firestudio.

Your problem is probably related to graphics drivers, wireless/internet cards, or most likely your Firewire ports chipset. PLEASE CHECK THOSE before you dump a ton of money into your system.

The funny thing is that I can run the same stuff at 3ms latency on my firepod. The firestudio needs like 5x the latency to run on par. Its definitely is harder on the system.

Also Are you running any plugins while tracking?

I have a problem using this amp simulator it really causes all kinds of problems.

-josh
 
EDIT: I re-read the compatibility checklist, and it did say that nForce4 motherboards, which is what I have, have those symptoms. I do need to purchase a new PCIe Firewire card. APPRECIATE THE HELP GREATLY I'm sorry and I probably should've been able to find that information without taking up your time. Hopefully someone searching for the same problem can find this post.




The drivers for the firewire/IEEE seem to be working fine but I'll definitely have to see if I can find some kind of an update for them perhaps on the motherboard's/ASUS web site.

As far as the plugins and such, I didn't ever have this problem when I used to use a USB M-Audio FastTrack Pro using the same software. That also points to a possible Firewire driver issue.

The graphics/wireless internet drivers and the latest available and I can play video games like Warcraft 3 and Battlefield 2 with no problem.

I've already purchased the parts and I might as well get them anyway because it'll make the computer as fast as it can possibly be with that motherboard.

The firewire chipset I don't believe is on that compatibility list, but it's a IEEE firewire port the same size as the one on the Firestudio and it's on the ASUS A8N-SLI (nVidea SLI) motherboard. If need be I could probably buy a PCI firewire port to make sure it's compatible but I think the hardware itself is probablly fine. The Firestudio didn't work with my Dell Studio laptop firewire port but it's one of the smaller ones that are using the RICOH chipset so go figure.

Greatly appreciate all the help though! Now I'm on the hunt to find some possible motherboard/firewire driver updates.
 
I had a similar issue that I could not isolate. Eventually I figured out that it was my sound card believe it or not. Once I upgraded my sound card the audio artifacts disappeared. Even though it prob is your motherboard, it still may be another issue.
 
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