Can't record stereo audio with E-Mu 0404 and ASIO drivers

I hope no one minds, but this is a repost from the SONAR LE forum, since no one there was able to offer anything. Also, I didn't think SONAR LE and SONAR Home Studio were that different, and the users would have similar hardware.

This is killing me, because it used to work (I think)!

I've got SONAR LE 4.0.1 and the E-mu 0404 card. Using PatchMix, I can get stereo audio into the card, monitor it using PatchMix (using any one of the standard "sessions"), and even hear stereo audio if I monitor the output of the card.

However, no matter what I do, SONAR will not offer me a simple "stereo" track input using ASIO drivers. It used to (I'm pretty sure), but now all I get for a choice of inputs is "E-MU ASIO (2 in, 2 out)", and if I choose that, I get (get this!):

Left E-MU ASIO PCI Card IN L
Right E-MU ASIO PCI Card IN L
Stereo E-MU ASIO PCI Card IN L
Left E-MU ASIO PCI Card IN R
Right E-MU ASIO PCI Card IN R
Stereo E-MU ASIO PCI Card IN R
Stereo E-MU ASIO Aux 1 L

That's just great. Plenty of options, right?

Unfortunately, I can't use any of them for a stereo recording (except the last one. More on that at the bottom). The ones that start with "stereo" will use consume two audio tracks, but only take the L or R physical input to feed both channels. This obviously just gives me a useless track--but takes up twice as much hard drive space in doing so.

I could have sworn I had the same option using ASIO drivers that I do when using WDM drivers, which is: "E-MU E-DSP Audio Processor (WDM) (1 in, 4 out): Stereo E-DSP Wave [DE00].

Unfortunately, I can't use WDM drivers, since if I choose them, the Wave Profiler runs, everything checks out okay (up to 48K)...but I get nothing when I arm the track. (I still hear audio when monitoring the card, but nothing's being sent to SONAR.) Not being able to use WDM drivers also means I can't audition effects while tracking, according to SONAR. Can anyone verify this?

What am I doing wrong? The PatchMix manual is out of date to the point that screen shots in it are not available any longer. I've reset PatchMix to its defaults and tried blank SONAR templates...but I still can't get audio using the (seemingly easier) WDM drivers, and the ASIO drivers just give me "dual-mono" inputs, since there's no "Stereo E-MU ASIO PCI Card IN L&R" option.

I re-installed all the E-MU drivers, and now seem to have the "Stereo E-MU ASIO Aux 1 L" option. I can get stereo tracks from this--but why do I have to feed the recording system with an aux send? Is this actually the way this is supposed to work? It's not terribly easy to control the aux sends on the E-MU system, so this seems a bit of an odd way of doing things (and it doesn't mimic a real-world system at all).

If anyone's got any insight on what to do, I'd certainly appreciate it!

Thanks.

-Steve

I'd actually considered that, but since I'm doing quite a bit of strings, horns and other "orchestral" sounds, it would be a bit of a pain to do this for every track and then try to manage that lot!
I was just hoping there was something wrong with the setup here that I could fix quickly and easily.
Which card do you use, and do you use the WDM or ASIO drivers?
Thanks!

Windows says I'm using "E-DSP Wave [DE00]" as the default redording and playback devices. That implies WDM drivers, no?

The ones that are marked Stereo.... should be the Stereo Inputs, if not, either something is drastically wrong with your setup OR its a limitation of the LE version... IMHO.

Im using the 0404 with HS2004. This may be of help tho' I mainly record with guitars.
I recently bought a Zoom A2 fx pedal and have been experimenting with it using it as an interface with the 0404 sound card. As many of the fx it produces are in stereo I have been connecting it, via a splitter, to the EMU's 2 analog jack inputs; left EMU......in L, and right EMU.........in R. This then records in stereo.

My other thought is that you could put your problem up on the EMU User's forum at www.productionforums.com or contact EMU tech support. I suspect that you need to reconfigure Patchmix but i'm afraid I can't help you there as I wallowed around in a mire of confusion when doing that myself! Even tho i'd printed out the manual.
Good luck! Gareth

Thanks, Gareth. I'll try E-MU's forum (although I'm already expecting the "Hey, you've re-installed it? Then it's working fine and you've got yourself a SONAR problem. Good luck!")

I've got my stereo mixer outputs connected directly to the E-MU's L and R inputs. That's not the problem as much as the fact that there is no software-based option to choose a stereo input when using the ASIO drivers. Again, the WDM drivers offer a much simpler and straightforward "stereo" input--but I get no audio at all from the E-MU card. I'm just not sure it works with WDM drivers.

I'll check in their forum, though.

Thanks again.

planetearth,

I have the same E-MU card as you have. What exactly are you trying to record? While you are trying to record in SONAR open PatchMix DSP mixer. Which input strip is the audio going through?

Last March I gave someone instructions on setting up a semple PatchMix session that included stereo recording to a single stereo track in SHS4.

Okay here we go. Click on the "New Session" button at the top of PatchMix to open the "New PatchMix DSP Session" dialog box. The 44k/48k tab should already be selected. If not, select it. From the various templates choose "44.1 blank". Click OK. The "Session Settings" dialog box opens. "Internal" should be set to 44.1 kHz. This will be the sample rate for HomeStudio projects. Click OK.

One single "Wave 1/2" channel strip will already be there for all Windows sound applications. Click on the "Create Strip" button located at the upper left to open the "New Mixer Strip" dialog box. For "Physical Source" select "PCI Card In L" from the dropdown list. Click OK, and the new strip will be in position. Repeat the process and choose this time "PCI Card In R". Repeat once again, but this time click on the "Host Source" button. For "ASIO Output Source" choose "ASIO OUT 1/2" from the dropdown list. This would be the output for HomeStudio to the soundcard. So, there should now be four channel strips - Wave, PCI Card In L, PCI Card In R, and ASIO OUT 1/2.

For each or the newly created channel strips, right click on the uppermost insert slot and choose "Insert Peak Meter". Similar to the Wave channel strip, you can type in anything you want down at the very bottom of these new channel strips.

Now you've got to set up stereo recording from the "PCI Card IN L, and R" channel strips. For each of these two channel strips, click on the top rotary knob in the AUX section and set it to 00. Move over to the "Master AUX" section just above the "Main Mix" meter. For Master AUX 1, set the "Send" knob to 00 and the "Return knob to -132.0. Right click on the first insert slot for "Master AUX 1" and choose "Insert Peak Meter", and in the second slot, right click and select "Insert Send (Output to ASIO/WAVE or Physical Out)". The "New Send Insert" dialog box opens. From the "Select Send output" dropdown list choose "HOST ASIO IN 1/2". Click OK.

To save the session, click on the "Save Session" button. You can select Save or Save As to open the "Save PatchMix DSP Session" dialog box. Type out a file name and click Save. The Session will be saved in the My Sessions folder which was created in My Documents folder.

One thing for sure is that default PatchMix skin turns me off.
Now that you have things working as they should, you could learn how to configure PatchMix for your purposes. As stated above, you should remove the ASIO sends on the PCI Card In L and R channel strips and leave the ASIO send in the Aux master section for Left, Right, and Stereo recording from the cards analog inputs.

The following image shows my personal default session in PatchMix. It's a complex configuration for my needs, but as you can see, there are no ASIO sends on the PCI Card In L, and R channel strips.



With this configuration, I have three sources of record input in a track to choose from. All having Left, Right, and Stereo - ASIO Aux, Wave, and S/PDIF.

This is an ancient thread but is still near the top of Google results for "emu asio no stereo" so...

I occassionally see this issue in Cubase but never was able to determine a cause until today.

Cubase's input buss defaults L & R input to the 404's PCI 1 & 2 respectively.



Of course I should have been tipped off by the fact that both my left & right inputs read "PCI In L - x" but missed it on the first go-round.

I did, though, check my Patchmix strip/channel assignments and discovered what the input bus was telling me, that the Left channel was being routed to the 0404's outputs 1 & 2 instead of the expected 1 & 3:



I didn't seem to be able to change the Patchmix output channel assignment, so I returned to the  Cubase input buss and there was able to set my left channel input to the 0404's output port 1, and the right channel input to the 0404's output port 3:



Problem solved! It should have been obvious, I guess, to make sure the 0404's left and right outputs were actually connected to the DAW's left and right inputs instead of just assuming that the software knew what it was doing.

Hope this helps someone!