Well, just following the thread here and I hate to see the MultiMix FW getting bad press since it's been such a useful tool for me.
I use the 16 input version.

I understand there were initial product release problems because I preordered my unit, received it a day after the distributeor received it,
and promptly beat my head against the wall for 2 weeks trying to get it to work with Sonar 4 PE. Alesis told me to wait for driver updates
and I did. After installing the latest drivers from Alesis (posted 1/2006 on their website) I have yet to have any problems getting my
computer to see this device. For 2 months now I have had 0 (!) problems and days full of pleasurable experience with this product.
I use this product approx. 2-6 hours a day 4 days per week, 70% for mixing and playback 30% for recording. I record direct and mic'd
drums, bass, and guitar usually 1-8 channels simultaneous. Most recordings are under 5 minutes, but I've recorded up to 25 minutes continuous
on 8 channels with no distortion or dropouts. Amazing considering my computer is only 1.3GHz with ATA/33 hard drive (bought in 2000 and
still goin' strong!).

Having said that, I still can't get it to work with Sonar using WDM drivers. Who cares though, it works beautifully using the ASIO
drivers with < 10 ms latency for up to 8 channels (the highest I've used so far). I did accidentally turn off the mixer before shutting
down Sonar once which caused my computer to spontaneously reboot, but that was my fault. The reboot was ultimately caused by
Windows I would suspect...

Ok, so someone claims the headphone output is mono in some cases...Is this true? I will have to investigate. Someone claims that turning
on phantom power turns off the stereo inputs...I don't know the answer to that either. Turning on phantom power while the device is turned
off still lights up the phantom power indicator though. Also, the 2-track coming back over FireWire is VERY HOT. I personally run the
2-track into the Main mix and then send the Main mix to the Control Room output in order to control the level in my headphones. Or control the
level within Sonar...And the stereo tracks don't have input gain controls. These are just annoyances in my book, not any type of deal breaker.

If my house burned down I would definitely buy this product again...

Just my thoughts and experience...

Well all was going well until last night, I got home and turned it on, well I turned the on switch to on and nothing happened.

Its going back today, will get a replacement though as I beleive its the real deal. But thats not very good.

Skylab,

I experienced the same kind of communication losts using my multimix 12 FW, 6/4 pin cable, HP pavillon laptop, XP SP2 and Cubase LE, ASIO driver only.
This does not occur after a specific action. May be (as far as I can see), when I do not perform any action during few minutes like play/record within cubase.
Error message within Cubase is : "Error getting information from dice bus : (1f)", then communication is lost.
I use the same workaround to get the communication back : exit from cubase, switch on/off the multimix, start again cubase.
I reported this to Alesis. I will let you know the feedback.

Skylab, did you get any solution regarding this ?

HEY
I HAVE ALESIS MULTIMIX 12 FIRE WIRE AND SOUNDBLASTER X-FI ELITE PRO <BUT NOT INSTALLED EITHER!>
I JUST WANTED TO KNOW
1>HOW GOOD IS THE MIXER?
2>CAN I MIX DOWN MY AUDIO AS WELL AS MIDI TRACKS FROM THE MIXER
3>HOW GOOD ARE THE EFFECTS
4>CAN THE MIXER AND SOUND CARD WORK TOGETHER?
5>WHAT IS THE FINAL RE VIEW ABOUT THE MIXER?

I got my guys to spring for the Phonic Helix Firewire 18. We think it works just fine with my Dell Inspiron 5160 laptop (3GHz processor, 1GB RAM). I use an external firewire hardrive for the audio. We record 10 tracks at once, and the box keeps up.

That's right, two firewire, 1394a devies, connected to a laptop.

Price was $459 at zzounds, but it's about the same everywhere I looked.

To be honest, the Phonic firewire mixer does about 20 things we don't really need, but it does do the one thing we really wanted, which was to record 10 tracks at once to Cakewalk. I know Ohhey keeps plugging "I would just get a firewire interface with good drivers. That way you can use any mixer or preamp you want. ", but this is so simple and it works.

Alesis relased a driver update to fix an incorrect channel count for the 12 and 16 channel mixers.

randy

The reason I ask is that I have a MOTU 828mk2, but I'd really like to expand my number of inputs without having to ditch my existing audio interface (or fork out for another 828).

Have you considered using a Behringer ADA8000? This would give you 8 more inputs and outputs through the ADAT ports on the 828 while still avoiding any driver problems. You would also still be able to take advantage of the 828's Cuemix DSP mixing.

Just a note for reference purposes as this is one of the few discussions of the Multimix Firewire.

I have just installed the Multimix Firewire on a fresh install of XP SP2 and found immediately that the drivers did not load correctly.
Device Manager showed the Multimix Audio but none of the other drivers loaded and there was no ability to select the Multimix as the Audio Device in the Audio Properties.
Nothing I could do with security, firewalls, device drivers would correct this problem.
Anyway to cut a two day saga short I stumbled across an article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base called
"Performance of 1394 devices may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2" here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222/en-us

I first un-installed the Multimix and its Drivers then ran the KB885222 update, rebooted then installed the March drivers from Alesis and Bingo! everything installed and worked as it should.

The system is a Pentium D820 in a 945P chipset with a TI firewire Port.
It is all brand new with a new XP Home SP2 CD.

HTH
Daze

damn. i'm just another victim... got my multimix 12 a few weeks ago, returned it after a couple of days just to face the same problems with the second one..

just finished reading this whole thread and i'm kinda glad, that i ain't the only one having troubles with this mixer.
this guy from the support told me, that he had never seen this problem nor heard about it which i really can't believe after reading this thread... to me, it really seems like those guys just string you along with **** like "wait for the next update" or "we never heard about a problem like this, must be a user-error"..

i was really glad when i read your post daze, cause i thought that i finally had found the resolution i'm desperately seeking for... but it's still all f***ed up..

now my computer doesn't even recognize the multimix after switching on & off..
i'm tired of installing, un-installing and re-installing. and i'm tired of talking to those guys
and hear the same ignorant answers over and over again. plus i really don't feel like
sending my mixer back again, since it took them more than a month to return it to me...

i just hope that any of you guys will figure out how to really and definitely fix
these problems soon, cause i'm really at a loss with this..

any help is highly appreciated!!!


Wayne

Hi Wayne, will try to help as much as I can. Not to sound like their tech support but just to find out where you are at.

If you haven't yet you need to go to the Alesis web site and get the latest driver update. There is a PDF that comes with the ZIP file that tells what you need to do and in what order. There is also a helpful PDF on FAQ etc. This was not the easiest install that I have done but when it was finished everything works well on my laptop as well as my desktop.

Post back when you get a chance.

randy