You're computer did not come with an ASIO driver. It came with a DirectSound driver from Ricoh or whomever made the audio chip. You're system is perfectly ASIO compatible. I would avoid the onboard 4 pin firewire and the preloaded Ricoh drivers. Asio4All is sort of a last ditch ASIO option and is not used by anyone with a legitimate interface and well written drivers.

Does PT9 state no interface is needed or that an AVID interface is not required? That is two completely different things. Onboard sound cards are decidedly not particularly good for real audio recording. PCI/PCIe card interfaces have the best and lowest latency.

You can not aggregate devices on a PC with limited exceptions by a few companies that have written their own ASIO drivers for their own gear. Presonus comes to mind as does RME and a very few Mackie items. Mac's are different and Core Audio will aggregate devices up to a point.

Sorry, IDT used to be C-Audio and before that it was Sigmatel.

I see. well thanks for the information. At present I've purchased two Tascam interfaces (tascam us 800, and tascam us-1800 ), both of which incapable of functioning properly with protools 9. The drivers they've written only communicate on latency settings that protools 9 isn't able to understand. I purchased a focusrite saffire 6 USB last night, and although I love the preamps, it only offers 2 inputs, and let's face it, for a usb interface for under $200 I really can't complain. I am curious however if there is anything out there than can compare to Tascams US-1800 that has 8 XLR inputs and 2 line ins for $299, yet can properly communicate with protools 9. You had mentioned presonus being protools 9 ready. SInce I"m only able to use a usb interface I think I'm rather limited. I spoke with my teacher about the firewire adapters they make for usb and had mentioned how iffy I've read them to be. He agreed and didn't have much more to offer other than to try it out. Should I look into the presonus interfaces and just purchase outboard preamps?
thank again

There is no reason that the Tascam units shouldn't work with PT9. None. I don't like budget Tascam at all but they should work. USB devices won't install an ASIO driver per se but still should show up in the devices list of PT. I have not seen v9 so don't know how their device selection works but no doubt there is something in the manual like on page 69 "Configuring Pro Tools Hardware Settings." Make sure that you have actually activated the inputs and outputs which is where most folks go wrong with Cubase/Tracktion/etc.

This is the reply I get when attempting to run protools9 with either tascam product.

"your audio device is configured with an unsupported buffer size. Please select one of the following supported buffer sizes in the device control panel: 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048"
I can not pass this point to get into the playback engine of protools 9. The device settings don't offer buffer sizes that match protools and as a result, and this is what I"m told, these interfaces cannot communicate with protools

What settings does the Tascam offer? milliseconds?
Latency(s, not ms)=Buffersize(samples)/samplerate(Hz, not KHz)

You will no doubt have to access the Tascam USB settings from the Windows Sound applet in the control panel. Set the Tascam as your default playback and recording device. Then you should be able to access the settings. Now it would be a lot easier for me to set it up if I were there in person ^_^

I have two Dell Inspiron 9400 (or e1705-same machine) and they work great for audio once I tweaked them. I do run firewire interfaces by choice. If you do end up with a firewire device then you should get an Express Card firewire adapter with a Texas Instruments chipset.

this is the rmail i got from tascam regarding the error message i posted:

"At the moment we are either waiting on a driver update for the US-800 or an update to Pro Tools to remedy that issue. I apologize but at the moment the US-800 isn't able to work with Pro Tools because of that incompatibility between buffer sizes."

You will no doubt have to access the Tascam USB settings from the Windows Sound applet in the control panel. Set the Tascam as your default playback and recording device. Then you should be able to access the settings. Now it would be a lot easier for me to set it up if I were there in person ^_^

The US-1800 only offers 5 latency settings from very low to very high. PT9 only sees the very high setting and I believe I see that in my playback engine as 512. However I can not playback any recorded tracks once I enable record on track 2, thus rendering this interface as unuseable as well.
I appreciate the suggestion for the firewire adapter and will most certainly look into that. That would help considering the options i have with usb.

Attached files

Until you get to the Mastering quality Tascam tools, I really dislike them. I've told the story before about being so frustrated with a Tascam studio recording board I pored gasoline on it and lit a match. Tascam is heinous about supporting their gear and writing decent drivers. M-Audio is almost as bad at drivers but their gear tends to work ever so slightly better. If you decide to throw in the towel, I recommend you check out RME, Presonus, TC Electronic, EMU, and MoTU. I'm probably forgetting some company but I don't recommend very many anyway.

In general you are going to want to tweak the crap out of the Dell to use ProTools with any significant plugins unless PT9 completely rewrote the engine. I use the Black Viper tweaks as a starting point. Also, on the 9400 I have set up for dual use, I run Reaper to print the initial tracks and then import them later into whichever DAW is the destination (Audition, Samplitude, PT-M7). Reaper is like greased lightening and if it had a file editor and mastering suite I would probably ditch all the others.

you've been a tremendous help. Thanks for the tips, i'll research your comments and reply when I have a better understanding of reaper and black viper. Thanks again!

I know in the past PT was was quite picky about the computers they could run on, not sure about PT9.
Does your machine show up on the compatibility list?