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LunchBox42 2 September 2008

Hello all,

I am having some issues getting my PreSonus Firestudio 26x26 to work with C4.

I updated the firmware and all on the FS, and made sure all the updates are good on the C4.

The problem: When I boot up the PC, I turn on the PreSonus FS, and then the firewire light blinks for a few, and then it turns solid blue. All is good. However when I fire up Cubase, Cubase locks up on something along the lines of "SSE Optimized DSP..." and then all of a sudden the Firestudio fire wire cable starts blinking red and blue again. Then everything locks up until I power off the PreSonus. Once it is powered off, the computer begins to respond and Cubase crashes.

Ideas?

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Codemonkey Tue, 09/02/2008 - 17:43

"SSE Optimised DSP"

SSE is an instruction extension set available on some processors. What type of CPU do you have? I don't know much about SSE itself, just what it is.
(Or, is the FP acting as a DSP?)

How about a few PC specs, who manufactured your firewire chipset, are you on XP or Vista or some crazy thing like linux+wine?

anonymous Wed, 09/03/2008 - 08:32

Make sure to get a 400mhz not a combo with usb or 800mhz. I bought a FP10 and ended up having to send a TI 800mhz Firewire card back because I didn't read the stickies on the Presonus forums. They actually recommend certain brands like I got a Pyro (I think) and it works great. It was like $15 cheaper as well so my restocking fee at least was absorbed.

Angstaroo Thu, 10/09/2008 - 20:33

LunchBox42 wrote: Hello all,

I am having some issues getting my Presonus Firestudio 26x26 to work with C4.

I updated the firmware and all on the FS, and made sure all the updates are good on the C4.

The problem: When I boot up the PC, I turn on the Presonus FS, and then the firewire light blinks for a few, and then it turns solid blue. All is good. However when I fire up Cubase, Cubase locks up on something along the lines of "SSE Optimized DSP..." and then all of a sudden the Firestudio fire wire cable starts blinking red and blue again. Then everything locks up until I power off the Presonus. Once it is powered off, the computer begins to respond and Cubase crashes.

Ideas?

Hi Lunchbox, sorry to hear you're having troubles. I too have a Firestudio, although I'm only using the Cubase LE that came with it right now but I plan up upgrading to Cubase 4 here soon. Time and money and all that... I haven't had any problems with my setup yet, although I occasionally will get a couple clicks/glitches in the track I'm recording. It doesn't happen often, just a handful of times so far. I'm in the middle of recording a project for some friends of mine and it's my first recording with this setup, and it's been nice that I haven't run into any real issues yet. I'm using firmware version 318, FPGA version 73, software version 3.1. I've only recorded a maximum of six tracks at one time at 88.2khz resolution at 24 bits. My buffer size is 224 samples, which is where it seems happiest at with my setup. That's a little higher than I'd like, but again... it works well.

I personally found the Presonus forums quite helpful before I bought the Firestudio and my Firewire card. I didn't have onboard Firewire on my computer, and the Presonus forums recommended Firewire 400 cards with the VIA or TI chipset. I bought one with a VIA chipset and it's been great. I was also worried because my rack isn't sitting right next to my PC, and I've read of problems with longer Firewire cables contributing to latency. I ended up finding a 25' active extension cable at TigerDirect and decided to give it a shot, and it's been working great and hasn't caused any additional latency.

Anyway, on to your issues: I would suggest looking for a Firewire 400 VIA chipset card and getting a good, quality cable under 14' in length if you haven't already.

With Cubase, try starting it up without the Firestudio connected. It should recognize that you've changed audio devices (to your default sound card) and should ask if you wish to test the new device. Then, when you go back to the Firestudio, it should do the same thing again. I always run this test to make sure I'm getting a consistent connection to the Firestudio.

Without having run into this issue myself and without being there to fiddle around and try different things, it's really difficult to give you much help. It sounds like an issue with Cubase and your CPU, since the error is that SSE Optimized DSP error, although it does seem strange that it then messes with your Firestudio's connection. Starting up Cubase shouldn't cause the system to reject the connection to the Firestudio... if there was a connection issue, it wouldn't have connected in the first place. If there was a problem with Cubase and the SSE Optimization, Cubase should have issues starting up whether the Firestudio is connected or not. So it seems to me that this is definitely a problem with your current configuration of CPU and onboard Firewire. I would try buying a different Firewire card and/or cable and see if this solves the problem. Make sure you buy the card from somewhere that you can return it if it doesn't solve the problem. I would also try and contact Steinberg's tech support, although they may just brush it off as a "hardware error" and consider it someone else's problem, but their forums might be a good place to check as well.

Good luck!

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