Hi there,

You may have read of my year long and somewhat pathetic attempts to get
an MBOX to work with my Thinkpad. I've decided that enough is enough
and I'm going to ebay it.

I would like to replace it with something rock solidly reliable and not
finicky. And smaller than the MBOX would be ideal. I was thinking
that the Echo Indigo I/O would fit the bill. Has anyone used this for
pro recording?

The things that I would be using it for would be for recording my voice
for radio documentary projects, transferring audio from minidiscs and
tapes and occasionally recording live stereo of acoustic music.

I have a Beyer Dynamic M58, and I'm not sure what I would need to do to
get that to interface with the Indigo. Also I would like to get some
recomendations of a good, audio editor with some good eq control (while
being fairly user friendly).

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Paul

wrote in message ups.com...
Hi there,

You may have read of my year long and somewhat pathetic attempts to get
an MBOX to work with my Thinkpad. I've decided that enough is enough
and I'm going to ebay it.

Yes... and I posted a rather inflammatory response there moments ago.

I would like to replace it with something rock solidly reliable and not
finicky. And smaller than the MBOX would be ideal.

I suggest not replacing it with anything until you get a grip on using
customer service routes and problem solving in time periods of less
that a year. Sorry....

DM

Ummm...

thanks for that.

Paul

wrote in message ups.com...
Ummm...

thanks for that.

Paul


No sweat. g If I was familiar with XP, I would honestly be quite
willing to try and get your M-Box working for you... but I'm no fan of
XP yet and I've never tried any of the Digi stuff on a Windows platform.

I wish I could say more. If you had been on any version of Windows
other than XP, I might have been able to offer some helpful advice in
troubleshooting the problem.

DM

wrote:

I would like to replace it with something rock solidly reliable and not
finicky. And smaller than the MBOX would be ideal.

http://usbpre.com/




I have a Beyer Dynamic M58

Dynamic mics are typically more sensitive to preamp choices than
condenser mics are. The SD box has Lundahl transformers in it -- many
dynamics sound quite different than they do on a transformerless preamp.

Listen to several if you can.

Hey Kurt,

Thanks for the suggestion. The other thing I failed to mention is
price. Looking to find something that sounds reasonable in the under
$300 range.

Paul

Paul,
I suggest that you go to a pro audio store and have the hardware and
software installed and tested before making any more purchases or
sales.

If you're running anti-virus, messenger, games, internet utilities,
microsoft office etc., they are all likely to have at least one
component that conficts with pro audio hardware/software. You would be
surprised what these programs do in the background (even if they are
not open and running). And that's only the software conflicts. There
may be hardware issues as well.

Mike

wrote:

Sound Devices USBPre

Thanks for the suggestion. The other thing I failed to mention is
price. Looking to find something that sounds reasonable in the under
$300 range.

Keep your eye on eBay and you can sometimes find a USBPre. New they run
$550 street most places.

Good luck.

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 20:39:16 -0400, wrote
(in article . com):

Hi there,

You may have read of my year long and somewhat pathetic attempts to get
an MBOX to work with my Thinkpad. I've decided that enough is enough
and I'm going to ebay it.

I would like to replace it with something rock solidly reliable and not
finicky. And smaller than the MBOX would be ideal. I was thinking
that the Echo Indigo I/O would fit the bill. Has anyone used this for
pro recording?

The things that I would be using it for would be for recording my voice
for radio documentary projects, transferring audio from minidiscs and
tapes and occasionally recording live stereo of acoustic music.

I have a Beyer Dynamic M58, and I'm not sure what I would need to do to
get that to interface with the Indigo. Also I would like to get some
recomendations of a good, audio editor with some good eq control (while
being fairly user friendly).

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Paul


What's happening with the Mbox?

Ty Ford



-- Ty Ford's equipment reviews, audio samples, rates and other audiocentric
stuff are at www.tyford.com

I can't record for more than 1 minute consistently without constant
9129 errors. The buffer is set to its highest setting. I've used both
SP1 and SP2, reinstalled everything, etc.

I thought it was because I was using a USB 2.0 drive external drive
which is not supported, but I disconnected that last night and tried it
on the internal drive and the same thing happened.

My last idea was to get a PCMIA firewire card and run the external
drive off that (it has Firewire and USB 2.0) but DIGI doesn't seem to
support PCMIA firewire cards. Which confuses me because I don't know
how they support the IBM T series laptops, but no way to use a Firewire
card.

The honest truth is that I use this computer for a lot of things, but
I'm pretty careful regarding what I put on it. I do have Office, which
I need, also photoshop, etc. But I don't really have a choice with
those things, and I can't afford two laptops. I don't need a ton of
power, just something that can record well without too much hassle.

Thanks for your thoughts
Paul

In article .com writes:

Thanks for the suggestion. The other thing I failed to mention is
price. Looking to find something that sounds reasonable in the under
$300 range.

"Sounds reasonable" is relative, but if you're not willing to spend at
least $300 for your equipment, you'd best be satisfied with "good enough"
and just concentrate on something that works.

There isn't a linear relationship between price and sound quality,
although there's definitely a relationship in the obvious direction.
When it comes to input devices, below $100 or so, you have utility
stuff that just works, and there's no point in comparing which one
sounds better than another in that price class. In the $200-$500
range, you get better sound quality, but again, the differences
between a $200 and a $500 unit are more in features and build quality
than in sound quality. Get over $1,000 and you can take another boost
in sound quality.

Maybe you should augment your computer's built-in sound card with a
respectable mic preamp or even a semi-respectable mixer, and work up
from there as your requirements grow to the point where you can
justify spending more money.

But I'm sure you realize that if you want to use ProTools software,
you'd best work on getting your M-Box working. You won't find a less
expensive route.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Hi Mike,

Thanks again for your advice.

If I could get the Mbox to work, I would be very pleased BUT I really
am not sure what else to do. I've already done a clean install of
Windows XP and that didn't seem to help. I've disabled everything that
I could think of and that didn't help. I've just spent so many hours
trying to figure this thing out.

I guess it's too late to ask this question, but is it possible that I
have a bum unit? It does function and occasionally I have been able to
record 1 track as long as 20 minutes. I'm not sure where I'm going
wrong.

Paul

During boot up press the key for bios setup...... disable the laptop's
internal sound card...... alternately go into control panel and disable
the internal soundcard.
See if you get better results..... Are there more than one flavor of
drivers for the MBOX ie ASIO or others try different ones. The option to
have just the OS and your audio program does not require a separate
machine..... You can either set it up for dual boot with two copies of XP
or get a drive caddy and another hard drive.
You don't mention the software you are using but possibly this is a software
problem rather than hardware..... does it give the same errors using the
internal sound card?..... what type of driver is that card using? I work
in a Win 2K environment so cannot give you more specific instructions....

Regards:
Eric

In article .com writes:

If I could get the Mbox to work, I would be very pleased BUT I really
am not sure what else to do.

One thing you can do is go to a live person for help. This may be
inconvenient, but surely there's someone you can find who's reasonably
local. The M-Box and WinXP aren't exactly rare birds. Dealers are
sometimes even helpful.

I guess it's too late to ask this question, but is it possible that I
have a bum unit?

Sure, and finding someone else who has a similar setup can help you to
confirm this. Try your M-Box on his system, or his M-Box on your
system. There's only so much you can do asking questions of people who
aren't there to look with their own eyes.

Fill out this form and post it here in rec.audio.pro:

================================================== ===========

I live in [your location here]
(optional) which is about [ ] miles/km from [a major city]

I'm having trouble getting my M-Box to work with my [make and model]
computer running Windows XP

Please respond if you have any experience with a similar system. I'll
be happy to bring my stuff over to your studio along with some
[beverage and snack food of your choice] if you'll be willing to spend
an evening helping me out.

================================================== ===========


It does function and occasionally I have been able to
record 1 track as long as 20 minutes. I'm not sure where I'm going
wrong.

It really sounds like a computer optimization problem. The next time
you feel like doing a clean Windows install, before you load on
anything else, go through the optimization tweaks that can be found on
several web sites. TASCAM used to have a pretty good collection on
their web site. Then, install the ProTools software and see how it
works. If it works well under that condition, start gooking up your
computer with the other applications that you need, checking the
recording function after installing each application. See when it
starts to act up.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 09:18:34 -0400, wrote
(in article . com):

I can't record for more than 1 minute consistently without constant
9129 errors. The buffer is set to its highest setting. I've used both
SP1 and SP2, reinstalled everything, etc.

I thought it was because I was using a USB 2.0 drive external drive
which is not supported, but I disconnected that last night and tried it
on the internal drive and the same thing happened.

My last idea was to get a PCMIA firewire card and run the external
drive off that (it has Firewire and USB 2.0) but DIGI doesn't seem to
support PCMIA firewire cards. Which confuses me because I don't know
how they support the IBM T series laptops, but no way to use a Firewire
card.

The honest truth is that I use this computer for a lot of things, but
I'm pretty careful regarding what I put on it. I do have Office, which
I need, also photoshop, etc. But I don't really have a choice with
those things, and I can't afford two laptops. I don't need a ton of
power, just something that can record well without too much hassle.

Thanks for your thoughts
Paul


Paul,

Do you have two internal drives?

Are they both 5400 rpm or faster?

The fact that you use the computer for a lot of other things may also be a
problem. The rule of thumb for good DAW operation has always been a stripped
down system.

Can you create different startup sets with the rest of the stuff turned off?


Ty Ford



-- Ty Ford's equipment reviews, audio samples, rates and other audiocentric
stuff are at www.tyford.com

Paul,
Did you try disabling Microsoft Office's Find Fast utility? This
software runs constantly unless you disable it. It will interfere with
many high demand applications.
Now that you mention installing a USB hard drive... how did you install
it? Was it installed on one USB port or have you used it at any time on
the port that the Mbox is intalled on?

Thanks,
Mike

I use Indigo IO cards with multiple Windows 2k and XP laptops for
location work, mostly recording speech from meetings. I also record
2-track music stuff with it, but this is less frequent. The IO is
rock-solid, totally reliable, and I do not hesitate to recommend it.

However, it does not have built-in preamps like the M-box. I either
plug in to whatever mixer is on-site, or bring a small portable mixer
with me.

-dave
www.themoodrings.com



wrote:
Hi there,

You may have read of my year long and somewhat pathetic attempts to get
an MBOX to work with my Thinkpad. I've decided that enough is enough
and I'm going to ebay it.

I would like to replace it with something rock solidly reliable and not
finicky. And smaller than the MBOX would be ideal. I was thinking
that the Echo Indigo I/O would fit the bill. Has anyone used this for
pro recording?

The things that I would be using it for would be for recording my voice
for radio documentary projects, transferring audio from minidiscs and
tapes and occasionally recording live stereo of acoustic music.

I have a Beyer Dynamic M58, and I'm not sure what I would need to do to
get that to interface with the Indigo. Also I would like to get some
recomendations of a good, audio editor with some good eq control (while
being fairly user friendly).

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Paul

Hi Ty,

It's a laptop, it only has one internal drive. I believe it is at
least 5400 rpm, I thought it was 7200 but I'm not sure.

I'm thinking one solution would be a dual-boot system with another copy
of XP and Pro Tools on a seperate partition. I'd lose 6 gigs, I think,
but I probably can do it. I'm not sure if there is a way to set up a
profile where PT would be the only program running? That would be a
lot better than having to do a whole partition.

Then I could get a firewire card and run my external drive off of that
and free up the USB. DIGI doesn't seem to support PCMIA firewire
cards, I still don't understand how you are supposed to run your
firewire drive on a USB only computer if they don't support PCMIA
cards.

Paul

Hi Mike,

I don't think that I was very particular about it, to be honest. I
didn't know it was an issue. I've used on both of the two usb ports.

How could I rectify?

I will try disabling the Find Fast utility. Is it possible to create a
seperate profile that will not load anything but PT without creating a
dual boot operating system?

Thanks
Paul

In article .com writes:

It's a laptop, it only has one internal drive. I believe it is at
least 5400 rpm, I thought it was 7200 but I'm not sure.

5400 RPM is common in the higher grade new laptops, but there are
still a lot of 4200 RPM drives out there. Still, I can record two
tracks at a time (all you can record with an M-Box) with no problems,
even on my three year old laptop that's not particularly tweaked for
audio (as I use it for everyday work too).


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Paul,

These were both big issues for me to get Pro Tools working on the USB
port.

You can disable or even remove Find Fast.

Perhaps a computer geek can assist on your USB issue. I believe you
right click on My Computer, choose Properties, choose Hardware, click
on Device Manager, open Universal Serial Bus Controllers. At the stage
you're in, I'm not 100% sure from here if you just delete them and re
install all your USB devices, or what. But, I found that by only using
a hard drive on the one port and Mbox on one port, and an external
mouse on one port, and never interchanging between, I had stability and
the software never hung up.

Mike

Ohmigod.

I finally figured it out. I just got 26 tracks on the Dave C test
(from the DUC). No problem.

All thanks to this post
http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...fpart=1#837904

I really can't understand why it is so difficult for DIGI to give clear
technical advice. If I had had this information 6 months ago I would
never have had a problem. It seems to be working flawlessly now. I
really can't understand why this thing has to be such a mystery.

Thanks for all your help everyone, you kept me from ebaying this thing.
I hope it keeps working!

Paul

wrote:
Paul,

These were both big issues for me to get Pro Tools working on the USB
port.

You can disable or even remove Find Fast.

Perhaps a computer geek can assist on your USB issue. I believe you
right click on My Computer, choose Properties, choose Hardware, click
on Device Manager, open Universal Serial Bus Controllers. At the stage
you're in, I'm not 100% sure from here if you just delete them and re
install all your USB devices, or what. But, I found that by only using
a hard drive on the one port and Mbox on one port, and an external
mouse on one port, and never interchanging between, I had stability and
the software never hung up.

Mike

In article . com writes:

All thanks to this post

I couldn't figure out what the secret trick was from the post in your
link. Can you summarize it here?


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:47:53 -0400, wrote
(in article .com):

Hi Ty,

It's a laptop, it only has one internal drive. I believe it is at
least 5400 rpm, I thought it was 7200 but I'm not sure.

I'm thinking one solution would be a dual-boot system with another copy
of XP and Pro Tools on a seperate partition. I'd lose 6 gigs, I think,
but I probably can do it. I'm not sure if there is a way to set up a
profile where PT would be the only program running? That would be a
lot better than having to do a whole partition.

Then I could get a firewire card and run my external drive off of that
and free up the USB. DIGI doesn't seem to support PCMIA firewire
cards, I still don't understand how you are supposed to run your
firewire drive on a USB only computer if they don't support PCMIA
cards.

Paul


Paul,

Most Macs fast enough to do audio have FW 400 ports. I don't know the PC
laptop world well enough to know if things are similar. Could be this is
another of those "Macs cost more....(and here's why)" things.

When I bought my Ti book, the seller said, "Wait a week. Mac is shipping a Ti
Book with an analog input.That might be useful for you, right?" Boy Howdy. it
sure was! The 2 channel A/D converter is actually pretty darn nice.
I forget, does the Mbox have ANY firewire ports? I'm thinking NOT. The Digi
002R has two of them. I can plug my laptop into one and an external FW drive
into the other

Maybe you need an 002R. Keep the Mbox and use it as a dongle so you can mix
on the road.

Good luck.

Ty Ford

-- Ty Ford's equipment reviews, audio samples, rates and other audiocentric
stuff are at www.tyford.com

Sorry Mike, it was actually a link within a link.

http://www.digidesign.com/digizine/d...n_id=1&navid=4

I went into MSCONFIG and eliminated all the programs that were running
on startup. I had about 60 processes running and that brought it down
to 30. Seems like a solution. I'm not 100% sure what I did, but the
computer seems to be running fine. I saw a lot of junk on there like
Real audio, MS Office, etc.

Point he I think if Digi wants to market the MBOX as something that
someone without a ton of money can use to record music (or in my case
radio), they have to deal with the fact that some people may be using
their computers for other things. I really can't afford two laptops.
So I think they need to provide some solutions as to how to make that
work. If I had read this article 6 months ago, I would have saved a
bunch of time.

Paul

PS Please let me know if I have done something that is going to make my
computer explode. Seems to be running just fine though.

Ty,

The Thinkpad is a really great laptop...I love it (love it so much that
when I fell on it and cracked the LCD I spent $500 getting it fixed).

It's not specifically a multimedia laptop, and its onboard sound is
pretty crappy, but it is stable and tough and works great. I'm
definitely a fan.

That said, more USB ports and a firewire port would be great additions.
And speakers louder than my earbuds would be nice too.

Paul

In article .com writes:

I went into MSCONFIG and eliminated all the programs that were running
on startup. I had about 60 processes running and that brought it down
to 30. Seems like a solution. I'm not 100% sure what I did, but the
computer seems to be running fine.

Ah, well, that sure would make a difference. There are a lot of
programs that are clearly superfluous and some that you might want to
run them sometime, but you can always start them manually. I'm down to
about a dozen, some I still don't know what they are, but they don't
seem to be any big deal. Another thing like this that you can usually
cut back on is Windows Services. I found a web site that had a listing
of these with a description of what they did, and just went through it
and disabled everything that looked from the description that it
wasn't needed on a regular basis. About the only one that I find that
I have to start up now and then is the one that decripts Windows
update files. You get to this list from the start menu. Run, and then
type in services.msc

Point he I think if Digi wants to market the MBOX as something that
someone without a ton of money can use to record music (or in my case
radio), they have to deal with the fact that some people may be using
their computers for other things.

They tend to ignore that. The other thing that they tend to ignore is
that not musician is even enough tuned in to find resources such as
this place or the several web sites that tell you how to do this
stuff. If you call Tech Support, they might refer you to someplace
else, but they don't want to take the responsibility of giving you
some instructions that will mess up your Windows operation. That's
what paid consultants and system integrators are, but of course few
people on a budget don't figure that full system support is worth
paying for.

I really can't afford two laptops.
So I think they need to provide some solutions as to how to make that
work.

How portable does it have to be? You can put together a midget cased
computer for about $400, and if you're going over to a band mate's to
record, you can probalby just borrow his monitor and keyboard. So what
you have to carry is about as portable as a laptop.

PS Please let me know if I have done something that is going to make my
computer explode. Seems to be running just fine though.

That's the acid test. When you buy a computer with software
pre-installed, the manufacturers like to set up the programs that
you're likely to use often so that they load on startup. That way
the programs appear to start instantly when you click the icon, and
you think you have a really fast computer. Of course the fact that it
takes five minutes to finish booting is another issue.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

wrote in message oups.com...
Sorry Mike, it was actually a link within a link.

http://www.digidesign.com/digizine/d...n_id=1&navid=4

I went into MSCONFIG and eliminated all the programs that were running
on startup. I had about 60 processes running and that brought it down
to 30. Seems like a solution. I'm not 100% sure what I did, but the
computer seems to be running fine. I saw a lot of junk on there like
Real audio, MS Office, etc.

Wow! 60 running processes !!! This must be XP, yes? very curious

I have only shut down 2 processes on my 98SE internet surfing toy
and my number of running processes is only 17. I could easily shut
down about 9 more, but I've found that they aren't interfering with
anything, so I just leave them alone. On my 98SE audio workstations
I have 9 running processes, a couple of which I could easily shut down,
but they aren't really in the way either, since these boxes never see the
light of the internet.

I'm just getting into XP (don't have my own yet), so I'd love to know more
about these 30 running background processes. Remove NOSPA to
reply by mail, or post here.

Thanks...

DM

wrote:

If I had read this article 6 months ago, I would have saved a
bunch of time.


Paul, swear to me that the subject you described is not covered in the
literature that comes with the Mbox. I'm almost positive it used to,
but then I take in info from so many sources every day that my recall
may have become corrupted.

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

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