hey FunkeyDonkey! - i like the name.

my guess is that it's not a problem recording the third track....i think it may only be that your 3rd track happens to be hooked up to a condensor mic. ....i know alot of condensor mics require 48v phantom power. if your firepod doesn't carry phantom power, you'll have to get a pre amp with phantom power, run your condensor mic into it, then into the FP to get it working. otherwise you won't be a ble to get a signal on the track that the condensor is plugged into.....that may be your only problem. -probably

have you tried hooking up more than two dynamic mics at once?

your computer specs look just fine. - they should be able to handle the load.

oh..for a decent cheap preamp that supplies phantom power, try the presonus Tube Pre. i think it'll run you like $100. - not bad.
if you wanna go cheaper, there's Beringher stuff fo $40, but idk about that.

good luck!
-jordan

jordy wrote:
my guess is that it's not a problem recording the third track....i think it may only be that your 3rd track happens to be hooked up to a condensor mic. ....i know alot of condensor mics require 48v phantom power. if your firepod doesn't carry phantom power,

I was going to say the same thing.

Its the top blue button on the far left front of the interface if you are using inputs 1-3, and 4. Its says 48V 1-4.

If that's not where your stuck try to be more descriptive in where you are getting stuck.

ALL condensers require either a battery or phantom power whether it be 9v or 48v. The FP10 has Global phantom power I think.

2 Gigs of ram is not unreasonable for audio. ($130 tops for two gigs of decent ram. Less if you do craigslist or Ebay but no guarantees)

You are recording to your system drive which is a problem in itself. Buy a second hard drive and use it as a dedicated audio drive. This is probably whey Cubase is hanging. ($60 bucks buys you an 80 gig EIDE drive or a 120-160Gig SATA drive.)

In Cubase, have you enabled VST input#3? In fact, while you're at it, you might as well go ahead and enable 3 through 8. It should be under the devices menu.

Hi Everyone

Thank you all for your replies. I'm aware of the 48V phantom power button on the FP10. It has two sets of phantom power. I am able to hear my condenser mic only when I turn that on. I am also able to record only my condenser mic.

Once I record my third track either using a condenser mic or a dynamic micSM57 I get a very faint signal. After I normalise this signal it turns out to be heaps of noise.

Cubase hangs on me ever so often. I'm going to have to get 2G of RAM and hope that my FP10 + Cubase has no issues with me from there on. I will also consider an audio Drive for the recordings when I'm able to recording something small but with all 8 tracks.

Hi Jordy, yep, I hooked up 2 dynamic mics and one condenser mic.

If you continue to record to your system drive, it will likely continue to hang. Maybe the ram will help but a dedicated audio drive really is necessary. Your system drive is busy enough with just the OS and your audio apps.

hueseph wrote: If you continue to record to your system drive, it will likely continue to hang. Maybe the ram will help but a dedicated audio drive really is necessary. Your system drive is busy enough with just the OS and your audio apps.

Hi hueseph, I do have two hard disks inside my system. I'm running the OS on one and I store data on the other. The data drive is a 400GB IDE drive. It is however an internal drive. Would I still need an external drive to do the job? SATA perhaps?

Well, I have installed Cubase on the Data drive though. I'm not sure if this could be a issue.

NO that should be good. It must be the ram issue then.

hueseph wrote: NO that should be good. It must be the ram issue then.

Thanks. I'm gonna get 2G or RAM and hopefully it works like magic!

I've upgrade my RAM to 2.5GB and I'm still having the same old problems. I've written to tech support at presonus and hoping they would get back to me positively with a suitable solution!!! going nuts!!!!

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-? :-?

What firewire chipset do you have? Texas instruments is most recommended. Be patient. Occasionally there's a someone from Presonus here to answer questions.

I know you said you store your data on the second drive. You should be writing audio to that drive as well. Your project and audio pool should be on that secondary drive. So when you start a new project you should be creating a new folder on your secondary drive. Otherwise, you will continue to write to your system drive.

Your comp is probably full of crap.

Like mal-ware, spy ware games and judging from your retarded use of smileys you could be into that nasty deep and seedy world of pirated goods. Who knows. Your HDD's are probably not properly fragmented and your registry looks like a pig lived there for a while.

I'm guessing, only because I can guess. It's called making shit up.

Anyways, if I'm correct. All you need to do is wipe your system clean. Re-install windows from a clean source, not a dell installer or an hp recovery system. As in the real deal windows only disk.
Then install your drivers for the various things you need. Motherboard, sound interface leave it as audio only for now as you can. Worry about stupid shit like joysticks and webcams later...
Anyways, you should have done a long format before doing any of this, a proper clean of the HDD's.
Then install your audio software and have a crack.
Things could be shweet.

That's what I would be doing. Depending on what I _needed_ that particular box for the most. And creating a machine that's optimal of one task.

Can you elaborate on what exactly happens when you try to record to the 3rd track?

Like nothing happens?
Cubase freezes?
Windows Freezes?
You can't enable recording on the 3rd track?
Can you monitor levels in Cubase from all 3 tracks before pushing record? What I mean by this is do the meters move when monitor is enabled on individual tracks?
Do the 2 tracks sound good when recorded and the 3rd sound bad and the monitor levels are good on all 3?
Do all 3 skip only when trying 3 tracks at once?
Is it the 3rd track that has problems after 2 are recorded when trying to add a 3rd track?
What bit rate and frequency are you trying to record at?
Can you record 2 tracks at the same time using the condenser MIC? 1 track?

I could probably continue this series of questions for an eternity but you could help by elaborating more.

Thanks guys for your posts. I've kind of sorted the issue out.

I guess I would have resorted to greeners advice of performing a clean format. I've never formatted my pc after I've purchased it some 4yrs back. I do defrag it ocassionaly and I dont collect priated stuff, no games for me either.

However what I did was uninstall Cubase from the secondary drive where I also stored my data and installed Cubase on my system drive and continued to store my data on the secondary drive. In addition I uninstalled all the other programs that I felt I dont use.

I'm able to record well on 3 tracks with mics and 1 instrument. However if I try to perform some editing function Cubase stil hangs. So I ensure I save my project ever so often.

it isn't your ram or your phantom at all, i recently bought a presonus fp 10 also, and ran into the same problem using the included cubase software.
your problem is that when you open your computer, your fp10 isn't your default audio input device. you need to go under prefrences and change the fp 10 to your main device, then go under your mixer and set the channels to your desired inputs. since you're using 3 mics, you'll need to make three new tracks and most likely route input one to track one, input two to track to, so on.....
i've honestly never liked cubase software, it's a hassle.
i prefer to use logic.