ORIGINAL: randy
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

That is what they told me also, but it is still not 100% reliable. Alesis also told me yesterday when I complained the WDM drivers won't record without some amount of clicking and popping no matter how I set the latency, that I should not use the WDM drivers and use the ASIO drivers instead until they have new WDM drivers that solve the latency problems.

My problem is that when using the ASIO drivers the panel only shows inputs for the odd numbered channels, i.e. 1, 3, 5, 7 and so on. The tech asked if it shows all the inputs with Cubase, which it does, and he said then it's not Alesis problem since that shows the mixer is working fine.

To me, if the driver Alesis provides has some "issues" and only works with Cubase then it IS their problem. He did not know how long it would be before they had new WDM drivers or the firmware update, but they are working on it. I hope it is very soon.

Jim

I contaced Alesis and pushed for giving me an estimated date to provide a new driver update, got this reply;

<<I cannot, but I am assured it will be very soon as it is passing all testing with flying colors.
>>

I hope it is soon. If I can't make it work with Sonar I would get a different product.

Jim

has anyone used this on a mac yet?
I cant seem top find any reviews that state the same problems sited here,
macs usually have no driver problems, so i'm curious to know

I have the Alesis analog Multimix 12FXD and it works great for me.

Hey, sometimes certian things just need to stay analog, you know?

Peace

Sorry to dig up an old post, but.....

I purchased an Alesis MultiMix 8 Firewire a couple of weeks ago and have had nothing but problems with their drivers, even on a brand new computer.

As I understand it, their drivers essentially replace the existing sound-card drivers in Windows. The MultiMix-8 "becomes" your sound card for all of Windows. After installing the Alesis drivers on a brand-new Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop, audio operation is flaky to say the least. I let the computer completely boot up. Then I turn on the MultiMix. Sometimes the drivers will load the MultiMix OK; other times I have to configure the MultiMix drivers manually via Windows Control Panel. Once in a while, everthing goes fine and the MultiMix functions correctly, playing audio smoothly through any Windows application (Windows Media Player, MM Jukebox, etc) and will even function correclty in Cubase LE.

Other times, the audio is very choppy (in Cubase or any Windows audio application), it stutters, and there is a lot of distortion in the audio signal resulting in bacially "trashed-audio". My problem appears to be completely independent of any recording software (Sonar, Cubase, etc). The issue seems to be the Alesis drivers and how they interface with the Windows XP operating system. It's a crap-shoot as to how the drivers behave. I have tried turning on the MultiMix and laptop in just about every conceivable order I can think of. I've tried 4 different Firewire cables....... Nada.

I have tried the MultiMix on my desktop PC (1.3 GHz homebuilt w/ WinXP) and it seems to work OK. However, I bought the Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop and the Alesis specifically to use together. It just hasn't worked out well at all. I have downloaded the most recent Alesis drivers from the Alesis website and it didn't help.
(1394\ALESIS&MULTIMIX_FIREWIRE\FE420F004950500; September 30, 2005) Version 1.0.48.5

However, the actual driver files are from TC Tech Inc (version 1.0.14.0 copyright 2003-2004)
Windows\System32\DiceAsio.dll
Window\System\Dice1394.sys

Once this "trashed-audio" operation begins, it seems to permanently gum-up the IEEE1394 Firewire bus. If I unplug the Alesis MultiMix, Windows doesn't acknowledge that it has been disconnected. The "green-arrow" Icon is still in the Windows system tray, indicating that Windows thinks the MultiMix is still connected to the Firewire port of the laptop. At that point, if I try to disconntect the MultiMix and connect say a camcorder to the Firewire port of the laptop, Windows doesn't recognize the camcorder. It seems like the Alesis drivers grab the Firewire bus, trash the audio, and won't let go of the bus. You have to re-boot to get the Firewire port to function normally. Again, this laptop is fresh out-of-the-box withOUT a bunch of extraneous stuff loaded on it.

I called the Alesis Tech Support today (Tuesday) at (401) 658-3921 about a dozen times or more between 11:00 AM to 12:00 noon and no one ever picked up the phone.

At this point, I'm looking at returning the MultiMix8. Between the MultiMix and the Dell, I've got $2k invested along with 2 weeks of 2 AM nights trying to get things working correctly. I've un-installed and re-installed everything many times with no luck. This product could be great. It seems to be a very well built unit and if it worked reliably as advertised, it would be well worth the $400. It's ashame the hardware engineers built such a great product, only to be thwarted by flaky software issues and/or poor drivers. I'd like to think they'll release some new drivers soon that will fix everything and save my sanity; but I'm not holding my breath.

FWIW, Dell Inspiron 9300 (1.73 GHz Pentium M w/ Centrino, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB HD.

Just venting a little frustration.

An update on the problem I'm having....

I just got off the phone with "Shaun / Shawn". He indicated that the MultiMix drivers are not yet compatible with the small 4-pin Firewire connectors on laptops YET. Their drivers (as of Dec 2005) do not support these small 4-pin firewire connectors. Only the larger 6-pin connecotrs are supported. However, he did say they are actually finished with the next driver update which will fix this problem and allow the MultiMix to work with the small 4-pin connectors found on laptops. The driver is in beta-testing right now and should be released soon.

Who knows; this might be Alesis's answer to everything, "Wait for the next driver update". I'm not sure. But at least it gives me some glimmer of hope that this problem might soon be resolved. I do think Alesis should mention this somewhere on their website.

I am also still waiting for the new drivers from Alesis, even told them if I can't get their product to work properly soon I would return it before my grace period was up and was told to have patience, "it will be worth the wait".

It better be. Like a previous post I spent over $2k combined for a new laptop and 16 channel Alesis firewire mixer specifically for mobile recording and I have not been able to get any acceptable results. The Alesis manual even states that you can use a 4 pin "mini" to 6 pin firewire cable, so as more users contact them the real story emerges, and changes.

They might as well release the beta of the new drivers now because everybody that owns one of these Alesis boards is part of their beta testing whether they intended to be or not. Anything they have would be better than what they have already made available.

Jim

Does anyone know which product is better the M-Audio Firewire 410 or the PreSonus Firebox? And also does anyone know if it's possible to send/recieve with a mixer/EQ for the Firebox? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm trying to get my recording capability up and running and I am quite new at all of this and very confused on what to buy for multitrack recording. I accidentally bought a MultiMix8 USB for the purpose of multitrack recording... which was stupid. I was thinking of buying the MuliMix Firewire now but after reading your comments decided against it and went in search of better equipment. I like the mixing/multitrack capabilies as a combo, but since i hear there is a lot of trouble with the product, how would i go about using an external mixer with the firebox/firewire 410? Would i be able to mix each channel/track separately? I hear the firebox/firewire 410 products are the best for a beginner with a low budget. Please give any info you can, it will be much appreciated. Thanks for listening! I'm sorry if i sound lost in all of this, but i am a total novice in the recording world.

Nick

Hi NitroRat, so far I am using the first driver relase from Alesis. I have had no problems with the firewire port, I have seen the new driver relase but have not installed it yet.

Alesis told me to let the computer completely boot, then turn the power on to the mixer. I use the WDM driver right now, at least till a fix for the ASIO driver. It works fine for me like this.

sorry I can't be any more help than this

randy

Alesis posted their new drivers for the Firewire 16 Mixer 12/26/05 along with a firmware update. I installed both and it solved many problems.

Now I am running the Alesis Firewire (yes, it shows up as another soundcard), the onboard SoundMAX cheapo chip (just to play misc. sound thru the laptop speakers) AND an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook PC card. They all work without disabling anything if kept to doing their own "thing".

Now I am able to shut down my gear properly by shutting down my laptop first before I unplug or power down the mixer with it still attached. I can go from my studio into the house and playback with the Audigy, go back in the studio, boot up the laptop and plug into the Alesis and it shows up again no problem.

Right now I am running the WDM driver because the ASIO driver did not work as readily, but am getting a popping noise with regular frequency like a scratch on an LP (vinyl, remember those?) and I can't seem to get rid of it yet. Doesn't appear to be in the recording.

Tonight I am going to switch to the ASIO driver (which Audigy2 doesn't support but CWHS lets me switch back and forth easy enough) and play around with that and see if I can get rid of the clicking/popping by using different settings. The default ASIO settings sounded miserable and the WDM defaults sounded close enough so I tweaked that one instead.

Anyway, it seems that Alesis did in fact come thru and fix their most immediate and obvious problems.

Now (assuming I get rid of the popping noise) Alesis just needs some more driver tweaking. For instance it shows all 18 inputs (16 individual and 2 stereo ins) but instead of input 1, 2, etc, it calls them input 1 left and input 1 right, input 3 left and right, which is slightly confusing but still can be setup as mono inputs to correspond with the correct input channels; 1, 2, 3 etc.

Not perfect yet but major progress at least, and restored my hopes this will be a great recording setup when I get the (now minor) kinks worked out.

Don't waste any time trying to get the Alesis Firewire without the newly posted driver and firmware update. The October version had too many problems.

my hardware;
Toshiba Satellite (Laptop)
Pentium® M processor 740 (1.73GHz), 512MB of DDR2 SDRAM, 2MB L2 cache and 100GB 5400RPM hard drive.

Best I could do locally with an off the shelf laptop. Could use a faster external HD and more RAM probably.