Somehow, it sounds like you are recording to RAM? Instead of going directly to a hard drive? When the RAM fills up, recording stops. It really sounds like a case of operator error or something that has gone unnoticed? I don't think it's the equipment. It rarely is. Even though you spoke to them on the phone something is still not quite configured correctly. Vista eh? Welcomed to the land of untested, unproven, Beta like operating systems. It may very well be Windows Vista?

I'm no help
Ms. Remy Ann David

yeah, I was thinking about having him try it on an XP computer.

Still is a pain because we bought a laptop just for this
i suppose if it came down to it we could always overwrite XP on it.

Two things:

1) you're writing to your system drive. Big no no. Get an external drive.
2) How are your audio buffers? 512 should be good. Sometimes you can get as low as 128 but if they are set too low you will get a buffer underrun error.

just out of curiosity why is it bad to write to system drive?

Because your system drive is busy running the OS and all of the background services that it needs to access. Anytime your OS needs to read something from the drive while you are tracking will potentially cause glitches in your recording.

Frankly, I've had nothing but trouble with this box. Its Firewire implementation seems to be very inherently flakey. (I'm told that host computers which use the TI Firewire chipset are the most likely to work, FWIW.) There are also definite problems with analog crosstalk. When one input channel clips, it adds significant noise bursts to adjacent channels.

As a gear manufacturer, I am very hesistant to critique stuff on line, since unfairly cranky customers are a dime a dozen. Still, this PreSonus unit has really gotten on my bad side. So far, it has proven to be a black hole, timewise.

-k

http://www.kenkantor.com
http://www.ztamplifiers.com

I had big problems with the firestudio project as well. If you can't fix I recommend going to the presonus forums and browsing around, but you've probably already done that.

I have Sonar 7 PE for XP and I was going nowhere with the unit after 5 hours of frustration. I ended up giving up and wiped my harddrive and reinstalled windows. When I booted it up, reinstalled drivers, it started working flawlessly. Don't know what fixed it, but it did.

Most people have trouble when using it on other DAW's besides Cubase...

Good info and, perhaps, a light at the end of the tunnel. Let us know if the PreSonus stays stable as Windows gradually adds needed processes and drivers. Two questions:

1- Do you know what the FW chipset on your mobo is?

2- Have you noticed a problem with input crosstalk during clipping?

(I'm trying to localize this problem to either the analog circuitry, the converters, or the front end DSP. Looks like the mic pre power supply scheme, but I want to be sure, so I can talk intelligently to PreSonus tech people about it.)

Thanks!

-k

http://www.kenkantor.com
http://www.ztamplifiers.com

Hi,
I have had this happen frequently. One thing I have noticed, is that it does not happen in Winamp, or WMP... but it does happen in iTunes when I loop 1 song over and over. It will just stop in the middle of the song after a few times. This fits into Remy's theory of reading off of the ram, but I have write caching disabled on all of my drives, do you guys? Do you guys all have iTunes installed? What about USB devices?

yeah, he has itunes installed, but not running

Hi,
Has your friend solved this yet? If not, try opening iTunes alone and loop one song for 15 or 20 mins and see if it stops. If it does, we know it's iTunes. I wouldn't be suprised... this software has caused other problems on my system in the past. Oh, and make sure write caching is disabled on the drive you are recording to. I'm not sure how that's done on Vista, but a search should tell you.

tried sonar ...its still not working.

i honestly hate my life

anyway, How do you find out what chipset you have?

First -
If you have iTunes on your DAW box, GET IT OFF OF THERE NOW

iTunes is a major resource hog and components of it will run in the background as system services even when all of the user services for iTunes has shut off.

Second -
You MUST disable extraneous devices such as CD Roms, WiFi cards (this is a HUGE problem), Card readers, etc. if you're going to use your laptop and even most desktops for audio recording.

Go to the RME website and check out their forums. They have a tool which you can download that will allow you to check and see if your system is stable enough to run audio applications. Chances are, other devices and other processes are dragging your system down badly.

Do a search on optimizing your PC for audio use. There's plenty of info out there.

Also, check and see how many processes you're running. If you're at more than 25 or so, do a google search on each of your User initiated processes and see which ones you can comfortably dump.

You're not recording to RAM. With 2 Gigs of system memory you'd get more than 12 seconds of recording before it would need to dump/refresh or write to the drive.

Ken -
I've played with various PreSonus FW recorders and haven't yet had this problem. However, I don't recall driving them to clipping. I'd imagine that any cheap-ass pre like this would distort like mad at this point. It's odd that there would be such dramatic crosstalk though unless they're sharing some signal path or the power supply is truly anemic, right?

On another note, I've been on-location today and running a TC Konnekt 24D through the stock firewire on my Dell motherboard (Agere or Ricoh, don't recall, but both suck equally). I've been rolling non stop for going on 10 hours now without a single dropped buffer.

And this is the cheap-ass dell that set me back all of $500. (Oh yeah, got Win XP on it as a factory option...)

The trick for me is that everything that's not being used (which is just about everything except FW, USB, monitor, video, keyboard, mouse and processors) is disabled.

Yeah, its a weird problem, and I have only ever seen it on the FireStudio. But, it was on both units I tried. Seems to be something related to the overload LED; perhaps this LED returns to the same ground point as the first stage of the mic preamps. Thus, when you drive one channel hard enough to activate the overload LED, a current spike winds up causing a ground potential on adjacent channels. Either that, or dual opamps are being used that are undercompensated, and oscillate badly when one of their outputs clips.

I think I have one in the storeroom... now I am curious! I'll try and poke around in there this weekend.

-k

http://www.kenkantor.com
http://www.ztamplifiers.com

Cucco wrote: First -
Ken -
I've played with various PreSonus FW recorders and haven't yet had this problem. However, I don't recall driving them to clipping. I'd imagine that any cheap-ass pre like this would distort like mad at this point. It's odd that there would be such dramatic crosstalk though unless they're sharing some signal path or the power supply is truly anemic, right?

Firestudio Project Software Help!?

i have the firesudio project and Logic pro on my macbook pro and love it...everything is running great except when i want to toggle between Logic, and the Firecontrol(software for presonus) or use aux send/rec. I want to send audio out for fx and back but firecontrol locks up everytime i try to toggle between the two..Help! i want to throw it out the window but it sounds so gooood.

Is there an option to release the driver "in background"?

i have the same problem

I use sonar 7 and have the same problem. also using firepod and fp 10
I ha have great laptop and it stops recording but the cursor keeps on moving. i messed around with the sample rate and it stated recording a little then it would dtop and the cursor would keep on moving. please email me if there are any answers

Oh man, I bought a Firestudio project over two weeks ago and I haven't been able to get it working. I'm having this exact same problem (stops during recording, line keeps moving but record is not selected). Buying this unit has been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I have spent 25 hours plus trying to get this blasted thing working. It seems that there is 100 different solutions on all these forums, and I don't understand most of them. I'm not a sound engineer, just an above average computer user who wants to record music. All I know is that I don't want to spend any more flipping time on this unit! I am afraid I have wasted my money on a lemon.

Sorry I can't be more helpful!

-Linus

"Buying this unit has been one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I have spent 25 hours plus trying to get this blasted thing working."

Don't have kids, my folks have spent _years_ and I don't work.

Linus01. You probably need to format, re-install, setup good drivers and have a little tweak here and there.

Sounds like Audio drop outs, something that comes from a bottleneck usually in the HDD but can be in the memory handling of your bloated registry.

Greener wrote: Sounds like Audio drop outs, something that comes from a bottleneck usually in the HDD but can be in the memory handling of your bloated registry.

Yup. Recording to system drive that is fragmented. Possibly? A secondary drive, more than 2 Gigs of RAM and frequent and regular defragmenting would probably help.

I used to have this problem with a firepod
The solution was another firewire card

o, and I strongly suggest 6 to 6 pin cables as these are less flimsy connected then the 4 to 6 pin version

cheers

When I first purchased my presonus Firestudio Project I was running Vista and had the same problem, which after trying all kinds of tweaks continued to go unresolved. I set up a dual boot system on my computer, which allows you to boot up into XP or Vista (there are many articles regarding this simple set-up on the net, the biggest issue was finding the drivers needed.) I use XP for recording which frees up huge amounts of both RAM and processor speed, I also changed the basic configuration of some of the services, there are net articles regarding the settings in XP for a recording computer. I added a second drive to record to and now I can record 16 tracks at one time no problems at all! It is not the Presonus unit, but most likely Vistas settings or its huge use of resources, an extremely bloated program in my humble opinion. I doubt it is the firewire chipset if the computer is relatively new, though it could be.