Alesis MultiMix 16 FireWire

About 2 weeks ago I bought the multimix 8 firewire , I returned it the next day for another one and returned that one yesterday . I had the same problem with both . They would stop responding with my computer ( I tried them on 2 different computers ) .
I tried there tech support but that was a joke ! I think they have to do some work on there drivers at this point .
Hope this helps .

Mojoblues, did you try the updated drivers? The date on their site says 10/2005 for a new driver release.

Ohhey, I use an Edirol FA 101 with my laptop but the 16 ins on the Alesis would be nice to have if it worked properly.

randy

Slipmip, didn't see a price.

randy

Mojoblues, I have sent a couple of questions to Alesis. The new drivers being one of them. I will post their response if they send one, may have to bug them a little but that will be no problem.

randy

responce from Alesis -

The updated driver does add more stability to Sonar and other DAW’S. Also the 1394b connection will be compatible with the mixer.

Thanks slipmip for the info.

randy

I am going to pick one up today, use it for a while and see what happens. The effects are probably not that great, but I have a few singers that might benfit from a reverb - help them open up and be comfortable. I hope that the preamps are not noisy, what did you think of them - were you able to use them enough to tell? I will not use all the ins, not very much anyway, but if it works it will be great to have them. I like the firewire as well.
Give me a few days and I will post back.

randy

The computer should see 16 separate inputs plus a stereo mix. This is the answer that I got from Alesis, and that is what I see in Sonar4.

The only problem I have had so far is the drivers have to be loaded each time I turn my computer off and then back on. Use the updated drivers on their web site, or at least that is what they told me.

Going to try 12 ins today and see how things go.

randy

Yeah, I have the MultiMix8 Firewire and am having much of the same problems that everyone else is getting. I emailed tech support and got a reply asking for my phone number and a good time to call.

I get a lot of stuttering when I try to monitor through Sonar 4, only when I playback or record over a previously recorded track. Plus it happens when I just play rewired into Reason. I have a US 122 also, but that never gave me the problems that the mixer does. I think that is Sonar though because I play through Reason by itself and have no stuttering at all.

I have a SB Audigy card that I use for playback because sometimes I can't get items to play through the mixer even though my sound settings have it correctly set to the Alesis. I also find that if I keep the computer on, the firewire connection will just turn itself off. Not only that but now when I play games and then quit them, all of a sudden (not every time) I lose all audio interfaces...my control panel sees no audio input. Weird. This has only happened since I installed the drivers for the Alesis. I also upgraded to the newest ones with no difference.

So far, everytime I've gone to record, I have had problems and set backs. Since I don't have much time on my hands, this piece of equipment is almost useless. Unless I get some kind of resolution within the week, I'm bringing it back. I have too basically.

Specs:

Dell
Windows XP Sp2
Intel 4 3.0 Gz
1.4 Gz Ram
24 plus Gigs on both IDE hard drives
SB Audigy
ATI Radeon 9800 Gfx card.

I do lots of multimedia/3d animation and video, so I need a pretty powerful system. I think I'm pretty OK in that respect.

funny, in Sonar if I switch to Asio I get a bluescreen crash almost immediately. I have to do a hard shutdown and then when I come back up Sonar is set back to WDM.

I am able to have both the soundcard and mixer running simultaneously. I get the stuttering and sometimes I get some horrible distortion peaks. For intance, playing the piano in reason. It will be reasonable, then DISTORTION that almost blows my eardrums off.

I found that if I go from the soundcard out to either the RCA ins or to their own channels, that sound issue is lessened as well as the issue with stuttering. (It is still there though).

I'm really not interested in workarounds....I'm interested in the product I paid for doing what it states it should do. I know it may sound harsh and impatient, but hey, I think that I'm a bit justified.

If this doesn't pan out and I have to return it, I'm going back to my US 122 until I can save enough for the Mackie Onyx and firewire option (which I think is a bit much)

Oh, well...done ranting. Good night all

ORIGINAL: randy

Info from Alesis support -

This should be fixed with a driver update soon so it will be able to work as the manual states.

When I was waiting the past 5 months for Alesis to release this product, I volunteered to be a beta tester, and Justin Baro said they had enough testers. Looks like we all ended up as beta testers anyway.

jim

ORIGINAL: jimarter

From Alesis website;
<<Cross-Platform FirmWare update for the MultiMix FireWire mixers (coming soon)>>

I wonder what they mean by "cross-platform"; mac and windows? and I also wondered how many of these glitches they can fix with driver updates until we have to install a firmware update. You would think that after being 6 months late on their initial target date to ship the product they were waiting until they worked all this out.

From other posts here they better hurry and get it figured out or they are going to have a lot of returns.

jim

I hope this is not a repeat of the ADAT Connect / PCR card. Alesis completely abandoned the folks that bought that card. The only drivers you can get are for Windows 98 and even those didn't work worth a flip. Some vendors just don't believe in going back and fixing things. Alesis and Presonus seem to be in that catagory.. after it ships they are on to other things and can't be bothered with folks that have problems.

ORIGINAL: jimarter

Sorry to multi-post but just got this reply from Alesis, Justin is quick to respond.

<<Hi James,

Unfortunately we do not have a definite list compatible programs. Basically any program that can recognize firewire audio devices should work out well. I have not heard of any problems yet with Home Studio.

Sincerely,
Justin Baro

>>

I told him I would be happy to be the first user to report problems <grin>

jim

Yeah.. the response I got from Presonus on the Firepod was that "nobody else is complaining.. you must be doing something wrong".

I hope this is not a repeat of the ADAT Connect / PCR card. Alesis completely abandoned the folks that bought that card. The only drivers you can get are for Windows 98 and even those didn't work worth a flip. Some vendors just don't believe in going back and fixing things. Alesis and Presonus seem to be in that catagory.. after it ships they are on to other things and can't be bothered with folks that have problems.

This is not a good way to business, I hope that there has been a change in thinking at Alesis.

Myucka, Jim what chipset are you useing for your firewire. My laptop has a T.I. on it.

randy

ORIGINAL: mojoblues

Hey frank what was your issue with the Firepod ?

Two things. 1. It doesn't switch sample rates with Sonar like other sound cards do. You have to set it and the default for Sonar BEFORE you start Sonar. It's a real pain unless you work at one sample rate all the time. 2. It dose not have a software mixing like most other interfaces do now.. even their own Firebox has a software mixer for zero latency monitoring but not the Firepod. Your only way to monitor is with the one mix knob and that is only good if you record one thing at a time.

There are new drivers out after over a year and they didn't fix anything, in fact some folks had to revert back to the old one because of performance problems. Just like the Firestation they can't seem to save it.. it's just not going to get fixed now.

Hi Myucka, I use the control room/headphone out with the 2 track button pushed down to monitor with. Then the headphone/control room knob to control the level of the signal.

The input and output is set to the multimix.
Why use the Sound Blaster as the output for the mixers line in, is it to record midi? If so
could you use Sonar to produce the midi?

As of right now Alesis, (until a driver update) said to turn the computer on and let it boot up completly. Then turn the power on to the multimix, by doing this I have access to the multimix control panel and sonar runs fine. Hope this helps. Post how things turn out.

randy