Ditching Audiofire8 - next?

[Tobiah[_4_]]

I have worked with Echo tech support through three mother boards,
and four firewire cards and endless OS tweaks, and nothing will
stop the periodic underruns I'm getting. My latest motherboard
has the older PCI slots, so my choices are greater now.

I like what the Audiofire8 was supposed to do, so the Layla 3G
looks great. It's exactly what a want: a handful of clean
balanced ins and outs to bridge my mixer to my computer, and
two mic pre's on the front to bypass the mixer completely
if I want to, for the cleanest stereo recording.

Does the Layla 3G do the A/D in the box and send digital
through the 'vga' cable, or does it send audio the way
the M-audio Delta series does?.

There must be a hundred PCI interfaces out there. I'd
like suggestions on other PCI solutions that that provide
at four to six 1/4" balanced ins and outs, and if two
of the ins are phantom powered XLR capable, than that's
ok. S/PDIF is a plus.

I also really like the 'virtual outputs' of my Echo MIA MIDI.
If the internal mixer had such a feature, it would lessen my
need for a large number of outputs.

Thanks,

Tobiah

[Mike Rivers]

On 8/11/2011 2:56 PM, Tobiah wrote:

> Does the Layla 3G do the A/D in the box and send digital
> through the 'vga' cable, or does it send audio the way
> the M-audio Delta series does?.

I don't know, and I don't care, and I you shouldn't care
either. You're probably concerned about bringing audio into
the noisy PC environment. Well, for a good designer, it's
never been a problem. This isn't 1994 any more.

The last Echo interface I had around here was a Gina
probably ten years ago. On that one, the box was just for
the connectors. Maybe it had the mic preamps in it. But the
A/D and D/A converters were on the card that went into the
computer. Noise wasn't a problem.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[malachi[_5_]]

For what it's worth, for what you describe, you might look into a used
Frontier Tango24. It's simply a converter that has eight 1/4" ins and outs,
decent sound quality, word clock capability and ADAT lightpipe. You'll need
a PCI card with optical ins and outs. Shouldn't set you back more than a
few hundred dollars on eBay. If you don't need a bit depth greater than 24
or a sample rate faster than 48 kHz, they're pretty nice.

They're not manufactured anymore but they're in the class of used gear worth
taking a look at.

I have three going into an RME Hammerfall card. I get generally good
results with that.

malachi

"Tobiah" > wrote in message
...
>I have worked with Echo tech support through three mother boards,
> and four firewire cards and endless OS tweaks, and nothing will
> stop the periodic underruns I'm getting. My latest motherboard
> has the older PCI slots, so my choices are greater now.
>
> I like what the Audiofire8 was supposed to do, so the Layla 3G
> looks great. It's exactly what a want: a handful of clean
> balanced ins and outs to bridge my mixer to my computer, and
> two mic pre's on the front to bypass the mixer completely
> if I want to, for the cleanest stereo recording.
>

[Badmuts[_4_]]

"Tobiah" > wrote in message
...
> I have worked with Echo tech support through three mother boards,
> and four firewire cards and endless OS tweaks, and nothing will
> stop the periodic underruns I'm getting.

Did you check dpc latency and set PCI latency higher? Did you set windows to
prioritize background processes?
In what situations do you get underruns?
What is your buffer size?

[Tobiah]

On 8/27/2011 4:40 AM, Badmuts wrote:
> > wrote in message
> ...
>> I have worked with Echo tech support through three mother boards,
>> and four firewire cards and endless OS tweaks, and nothing will
>> stop the periodic underruns I'm getting.
>
> Did you check dpc latency and set PCI latency higher? Did you set windows to
> prioritize background processes?
> In what situations do you get underruns?
> What is your buffer size?

I did do those things. Buffer size makes no difference.
The DPC latency program always shows green. I used a
high performance profile with all eye candy turned off etc.
Nothing will stop the Echo Firewire Analyzer from showing
occasional underruns/overflows ever minute to two minutes.
Each one is audible. Their tech support has given up on
me and no longer responds after weeks of my trying suggestions.
Nothing mitigates the problem. I'm no suspecting
the Audiofire itself. All of the other hardware has been
upgraded two or three times.

[John Albert]

"Nothing mitigates the problem. I'm now suspecting the
Audiofire itself. All of the other hardware has been
upgraded two or three times."

Prediction:
Hooking it up to a Macintosh will "mitigate" the problem.

The piece of hardware you should be upgrading is the
_computer_ (and the OS that it's running on)!

[Phil W[_3_]]

John Albert:

> "Nothing mitigates the problem. I'm now suspecting the Audiofire itself.
> All of the other hardware has been upgraded two or three times."
>
> Prediction:
> Hooking it up to a Macintosh will "mitigate" the problem.
>
> The piece of hardware you should be upgrading is the _computer_ (and the
> OS that it's running on)!

IF you really believe, that hooking the interface up to a Mac running Mac OS
is a safe bet against any potential, then you haven´t experienced the Mac OS
X driver for Presonus´ Firestudio FW. ;-)
Last summer, the latest driver version from the Presonus website caused the
Mac-equivalent of a "blue screen of death" on Windows - with a well-equipped
Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. Fortunately, at least the older driver on the
included CD somehow works, though seemingly also not reliably stable.
The unit had just been sent in for service and the tech guy said on the
phone, that it worked alright with his Windows PC.

Problems can occur with all hard- and software setups... it may just take
poorly written drivers.

[Trevor]

"Phil W" > wrote in message
...
> IF you really believe, that hooking the interface up to a Mac running Mac
> OS is a safe bet against any potential, then you haven´t experienced the
> Mac OS X driver for Presonus´ Firestudio FW. ;-)
> Last summer, the latest driver version from the Presonus website caused
> the Mac-equivalent of a "blue screen of death" on Windows - with a
> well-equipped Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. Fortunately, at least the older
> driver on the included CD somehow works, though seemingly also not
> reliably stable.
> The unit had just been sent in for service and the tech guy said on the
> phone, that it worked alright with his Windows PC.
>
> Problems can occur with all hard- and software setups... it may just take
> poorly written drivers.


Exactly, but it's amazing how many people would rather blame the computer or
OS for badly written drivers, especially the companies that wrote them!

Trevor.

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