The FW-1884 works fine with win XP/7/8.1/10.
You need to use the win 8.1 legacy 1394 firewire driver with win 10.
What interface are you using now?
I'm using at scarlet 18i8 2nd gen. I have a claret 8pre but my ASUS mother board's thunderbolt interface doesn't work... out of warranty before I tried to hook anything up to it... so I've had that interface for a year now... without being able to use it! I have the 1884 for years... only been able to get it to work about 4 times and gave up trying to get it to work on win 7. Tried 3 different fire wire interfaces (each approved by TASCAM to work) there were just too many install hoops to jump through and then no success. after about 30 hours of wasted time over 4 years... I just gave up and then I had a big remodeling project that went rouge...
The icon at the top next to the power button indicates audio is going into prochannel.
The two dots over the meters are
for audio track : indicate the ch has clipped. reset by clicking them.
for midi track : indicate midi activity.
Thanks... I figured it was clipping but I missed that in my hour long search, I think I even saw that page in the manual but your explanation made more sense. ;-)
[link=https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=ProChannel.03.html]https://www.cakewalk.com/...elp=ProChannel.03.html[/link]
Have you tried disabling any VST effects you have added.
Hit the 'E' key on the PC kbd to toggle all VST effects on/off.
I am unfamiliar with the VSTs shown in the photo so I don't know if you have any gain on these cranked.
Nice, when I hit the E key, it got an instant fatal error and sonar crashed. :-).
Those are waves plugin's CLA is Chris Lord Algee, 76 compressor. I can disable them but I'm betting that they are where my problem is... I just don't know enough about compression to set it right so I think I've got things scewy there even with using the presets, which sound great, but I think it's getting my signal too hot right there. The other is a Bass thickener thingymabob but I can turn it off too.
Why do you have input echo on ? The orange icon over the PAN ctrl which looks like cell phone bars.
Turn it off when not recording.
If you have active mics or instruments connected, this can cause problems while mixing via speakers.
I turn it off, but when I click away from the channel it just comes back on again automatically. No mics are hot and I'm not in any recording mode. that bass is from a midi keyboard so I think it's just figuring, hey, there is a keyboard here on this midi line and you'll need to hear it when you play so it turns back on ;-)
Are you simply having gain-staging issues ?
I think it's a combination of gain and compression abuse/misuse/alien invasion! ;-)
I'm very used to analog boards... I'm very computer savvy, but I'm missing some basic's of how to properly build my mix from the get go and I've never used compression really other than presets. People and tutorials mostly just say adjust it until it sounds right... great... that is useless info if I don't know what is sounds right is like. ;-)
I would get rid of everything but simple audio path.
One ch routed to Master, all others muted.
All vsts disabled. Power off prochannel.
With faders at 0 db, the master should show the same level as the ch meter.
If this is so, then add everything else back in one at a time.
If I turn off all the fx/compression/plugins... it doesn't clip or distort... I know that... and I know it's got a lot to do with how my compression and plugins are messing with things. it does sound much better with my EQ and effects in... but the total sum is just too much. Mostly the base and piano are the problem.
If I get them loud enough to balance the vocal, then they distort both on their own channel and push the master into clipping...
If I bring the vocal down then I can keep everything else down but then my master level is way lower than most recorded reference songs I compare it to. So building backwards from a strong but not clipping vocal... there is no way to get there. And if I keep that vocal level lower, then when it's all balanced in and clean... the end result is that the vocal is about 12-15db softer than another similar mix by someone who knows what they are doing ;-)
so you can see that I'm missing something in the foundation of how to build up the mix correctly. If I do keep everything softer.. how do I then get it all to come up to a radio ready level? YouTube music video in this case ;-)
Thanks for you help.
Bruce