Just picked up a Multimix firewire and so far it doesn't work.

Has anyone had trouble uploading the new firmware using a Mac? My computer sees the multimix when it is plugged in but when I try to upload to it I get an error message saying "my device has a problem with uploading" I've contacted tech support and they told me to try a different cable and firewire port which I did. I can't seem to get past square one here...

I tried the Alesis MultiMix firewire on two different occasions and couldn't get the drivers to work either time. Was told by their tech support, after hours or bad elevator music, that it was a Windows XP SP2 problem.

Wanted the Alesis because I've used one of their "Studio24" analog boards for several years hooked up to an old Fostex D-160 and it's always been a good product with no problems. In fact I've been recording with it through an ECHO-Gina 3G PCI card for awhile , but I've had an older copy of Sonar 2.2 and have some latency problems with using the ECHO card.

So, I bought the Phonic Helix 18 Firewire board and it loaded up with the drivers disk right out of the box and I've been using it with Sonar, Sound Forge 8 and Adobe Audition 1.5 with no problems for several weeks now.

Have just ordered an upgade to Sonar Studio 5 this morning, so I'm hoping all will be well and I'll be back up to date software wise for awhile again.

I know The Phonic board is not top of the line as far as mixers. go (for all those non supporters out there) but the preamps are not bad and for Firewire purposes that's all you're using anyway. You've got 16 outs with 2 returns (for stereo) from the board to the computer that are only affected by the channel gains on each channel. The firewire signals are pre-everything else on the board.

So, for the money......you get solid firewire connections plus a good utility mixer to use for an extra stage monitor mix or something for a good price with a 3 year warranty.

Just opinions guys, but it's working for me.

Runing a P4 2.80Ghz dual core
2 gig RAM
2 X 250 gb HD's
Tranzport wireless DAW controller.

Just another follow up. The last 2 rehersals I recorded with the Multimix and had no problems at all. I don't know what the difference is, perhaps it was turning off the anti virus and the other active programs at the bottom of the task bar. It's great when it works - and I hope it continues!

I've had the 16 track one for about a month now and its a cracker, i've been recording for over 15 years in pro studios and via home jobbies and this is a cracker.

I plugged it in as requested and it worked first time on both my main PC and my laptop. I've been to my mates studio and copied off all 16 tracks at once from some tapes I did 10 years ago and I will do a copy of 1 of that tracks tonight so you can hear hopefully. Its excellent recording and I am currently using it to record some guitar tracks for a well known US female artists next album.

Its a quality piece of kit and cost me £333 GBP from here.

For 16 tracks in and a whole host of GREAT features its superb, and whats more it works as a regualr mixer as well.

I just can't find fault with this, at all, of course as with anything firewire you need a little bit of tech knowledge to help you along but not so much, I think most problems will come from people not having firewire setup correctly or their software perhaps being too in depth. This is pretty new technology so you can expect the odd glitch, but to be honest its never failed on me yet!

I use Cubase SX3 with mine and I have to say its perfect.

Well done ALESIS!

Windows XP Professional SP2
2ghz
2gb memory
200gb hd space

i just purchased the alesis multimix 16. i wish i would have found this much information before i bought it. everything here is absolutely correct in that the device sucks. ive spent 5 days trying to get it to work with sonar 5 producer. all alesis could do was recommend i replace it with a new one! they thought the mixer itself was defective...i doubt that highly. after reading all the bad press, theres no way in hell ill get another one and waste another week trying to get it to work.

it just pisses me off that alesis would be so ****ty as to put this product out without being sure it was rock solid...they have a long history of quality stuff to up-hold, and this is giving them BAD press. they certainly experienced these issues in the developement of the product...so what, they just ignored them?? this is ****.

using:
hp pavillion 2.6 ghz
1 m ram
120 g hard drive
sonar 5 producer


a t vish
www.soundclick.com/carolblaze

ORIGINAL: carolblaze

i just purchased the alesis multimix 16. i wish i would have found this much information before i bought it. everything here is absolutely correct in that the device sucks. ive spent 5 days trying to get it to work with sonar 5 producer. all alesis could do was recommend i replace it with a new one! they thought the mixer itself was defective...i doubt that highly. after reading all the bad press, theres no way in hell ill get another one and waste another week trying to get it to work.

it just pisses me off that alesis would be so ****ty as to put this product out without being sure it was rock solid...they have a long history of quality stuff to up-hold, and this is giving them BAD press. they certainly experienced these issues in the developement of the product...so what, they just ignored them?? this is ****.

using:
hp pavillion 2.6 ghz
1 m ram
120 g hard drive
sonar 5 producer


a t vish
www.soundclick.com/carolblaze

Wait a minute, did you not read my post?

If mine works fine why doesnt yours?

I would suspect its less to do with Alesis and more to do with "user error".

What type of problems are you having, can you tell us a little about what you are doing - what you want to do etc.

Have you run the driver update, or are you using the ones that came with the mixer?

Not trying to be a smart-aleck, just trying to help and a little more info would help.

randy

sadfish, of course i read your post. did you read anyone elses? and there are other places where these problems are slowly being divulged (http://www.darrenlock.com/mt/archives/2005/12/review_alesis_m.html). everywhere i read a problem with the product, its exactly the same as mine or any others ive read. i wont respond to the "user" comment other than, im a database manager and ive been doing music via computer for around 10 years. if it is the user, then alesis needs to go back to the drawing board. besides, dont you think that would have been discovered talking with alesis? instead their solution was to send me a new mutlimix. i wont be doing that, ive opted for the motu 828mkII. i have no explanation why yours works. ive seen stranger things happen in the computer world.

for those who wanted more detail, im not sure i can say more than what the other posts on this subject have already said. yes i have the newest drivers. yes ive updated the firmware. yes im using ****ing asio drivers. i posted the particulars of my machine (windows XP, 2.6 ghz, 1 m ram, 120 g hard drive). i talked with alesis 5 times in one day...like i said, sonar, previously working fine with a soundblaster audigy card, could not get through a previously recorded project in sonar without some sort of click or pop. i could get it to START OFF playing ok, but in the normal process of pointing and clicking and doing the normal stuff, it would break down. when going into the audio dialogue of sonar to try different combinations of different parameters, the program or my computer would crash. if i didnt re-start the computer, clicking the sonar icon would not open sonar and i would have to "end program" using the "task manager" (cntrl/alt/delete). once i would get sonar open again, the multimix would be gone from the driver lists. removing via "add remove programs" and via the drivers in "device manager" was not always straight forward. sometimes it was already gone from device manager. sometimes the found new hardware dialogue would come up even after id already installed the software and hardware...these are all documented problems in this forum. im not impressed that one person here has said they are happy with the performance or experienced no problems.

a t vish
www.soundclick.com/carolblaze

It is a shame you arent getting your mixer to work properly to be honest i've not had a sinlge issue with mine since I got it, as I say on both my Sony Laptop and my own made PC it works just fine.

Both have on board Firewire and they both saw the device and it stick all the time.

With regards to your post about "everyone" having issues, well people only tend to go looking for threads like this when they have problems , so generally this isnt necassarily true.

I'm sure for every customer with a problem there are 10 or more without.

Either way if you wanna cheque any settings or anything, feel free to MSN me at paul@saints.org.uk and i'd be more than happy to see if I can help you.

Well, sorry that the multimix went south on you carolblaze and I hope that the motu 828 gives more reliable results for you. Yes I have seen some strange things in the computer world myself.

Come back and visit the forum when you get the chance.

randy