aardvark!

i hate to say it, but my gut reaction is that perhaps your interface has finally become obsolete...i had an aardvark pci sound card years ago and it was great! it seemed to be about the best way to go at the time and i'm glad i invested the money that i didn't have...but technology has dug the aardvarks grave a few years ago and now you might be better off saving up for a better unit. your computer is decent (assuming that when you say "lots of ram" you don't mean 512MB or less) and even if you invested in a $300 USB interface you'd have a piece of hardware that would be compatible with most applications and would actually have much better mic pre amps than the aardvark... i just spent $350 on a "clearanced presonus firestudio project" and it is leagues better than the aardvarks quality and functionality. Aardvark went out of business a few years ago and as recording software gets updated, the drivers for "out of business" aardvark CO remains in the footprints of the industries rapid pace.

sorry to be blunt.

best advice...pay the most attention to the last bullet of things you 'tried'....presonus products are shiny, and they are good quality...and best of all, presonus is not going out of business, so they'll continue to update their drivers for whatever new thing comes up next (at least for the next several years or more). some of the best songs i've ever recorded were done on my old aardvark (and that was with about 512MB of ram ;) but now i'm doing much much more with better hardware that cost me less than i paid for the aardvark a few years ago....

JUST DO IT. BUY SOME NEW GEAR... you won't regret it

i hope this helps

love keith

What may be happening is that you have got your PC's built-in sound card enabled as well as the Aarvark, and Reaper is assigning the first two channels to this. The result is that the Q10 channel input numbers are starting at 3 and not 1. Try disabling any on-board sound card and see what that does.

Thanks for the replies, guys. I woke up to a nice text message from the singer that I had to send home, telling me "not to sweat the small stuff" ;)

Goya: I'm completely open to the possiblility that the thing is just cacked at this point. It's been working fine up til now - I just did a country demo less than a month ago, with the same drivers/PC/DAW software that went nothing but smoothly. If I need to buy new gear, so be it - I'd rather spend the cash in hand on mics and a better compressor, etc. though.
As I was searching for a new unit, I was really trying to find a similar quality unit to the Q10 - when it came out everyone was raving about the clock and the quality of the preamps... The Presonus units look to be cheaper (in cost) than what I originally paid, but you're saying the preamps are actually better sounding than the Q10?

Boswell - That's a good suggestion. When I first put the system together, both soundcards were co-existing quite peacefully. I disabled the onboard anyway. Maybe in the process of reinstalling the Aardvark drivers last night the onboard was re-enabled - I'll check it out and report back.

ahh yes the q-10.
i was using 2 of those for 16 channels until 5 years ago.they sounded good.

i had similar issues sometimes with the input routing(among other things) getting mixed up.
the problem with re-installing driver 7.13 in my experience was that it did not totally uninstall and i could never hunt down the left over files so it would appear to re-install but with the same issues.
the only way i could ever truely re-install fresh was to re-install the xp operating system and re-format the drive but it always came back to normal with the new xp install.
pain in the but though but it's the only way you'll know for sure if it's toast or just confused.
good luck.

hi again...in regards to better preamps i do have to admit that i was using the 4 channel aardvark - the "direct pro 24/96" i think it was called...i actually had two of them for a total of 8 inputs. i was under the impression that the Q10 was basically the same hardware with more inputs and a slightly better look. i could be wrong, it's been so long and i never did that much research in the first place. I can say for sure that using the same mics/cables and applying the same knowledge for recording (pretty basic) that i've always had, the 6 channel acoustic drums that i've recorded recently sound much better...a notable difference from the tracks i'd get from the aardvark(s) years ago. tighter low end and fresh highs right out of the can...no processing. the software i have now is a little better too so when i apply some dynamics it makes things even more awesome!

i was in a crummy mood and slightly drunk last night, and after reading my first reply just now, i realize that i might have seemed a little edgy and unnecessarily forthright...my apologies. i suppose that if you have a set up that works for what you're doing then it wouldn't be a bad idea to get some good mics or something. i'm just pretty excited because i just got a new interface and i'm loving it!

long story short, the preamps on the presonus are very very good for the price you'd pay.

Goya,
Hey no worries, I didn't read it as you now think it probably came across. The first thing I thought too was, "oh f***, guess I'm going shopping..."

I'm not really familiar with the difference between the 24/96, Q10, etc either. I do know that I paid almost double for the Q10 back then, than the asking price for the PreSonus (or just about anything else I've been directed too) today. It feels a little fishy to me, to be replacing a $1500 interface with an $850 one - which is an apparent upgrade to boot! Not that affordable is bad, per se... All I know is the Q10 pres sounded gobs better to me, than the then current Digi stuff ;)

Boxcar,
Thanks for that info - it seemed like maybe that was the case when I reinstalled too. Again, I seem to remember the other "official" versions of the drivers being much more of a process than 7.13. Seems like maybe they've missed a few processes in setting the installer/uninstaller up - probably in an effort to simplify the whole thing. So on that note - I'm in the midst of a fresh XP reinstall on that machine. We'll see what happens.

In the mean time, I've been out at some shops today - narrowed it down to the Presonus FireStudio Tube, or the newer M-Audio ProFire stuff. I'd have to order both in (or shop online...) so I've got some time to decide.

Comparisons?

Yep - clean install of Windows did the trick. I can't say if I'm relieved or just irritated now. :D

Thanks for the help.

that's the q-10's.
funny driver/nice sounding purple box.