Presonus Woes

By the way - when I do getr some audio to playback - when I go into console view and pan one track left and another right - does not work - they are both still balanced no matter where I set the pan.  HELP PLEASE

By the way - when I do getr some audio to playback - when I go into console view and pan one track left and another right - does not work - they are both still balanced no matter where I set the pan. HELP PLE

Describe your signal chain in detail. (Mono/Stereo tracks, Track interleave. The routing of your tracks to bus and main outs and so on.)
Cj 
 

The one thing nobody has mentioned that is a SIMPLE first step in troubleshooting this problem would be to make sure that the drivers for the INTERNAL sound card are not being used by Sonar.

Options>Audio>Drivers and make sure that only the drivers for your PreSonus hardware have check marks in front of them. Once you do that, go back to the "General" tab and run the Wave Profiler. That simple procedure has cleaned up many a mess for me.......

BTW, I have run both a PreSonus Firebox, MOTU 828, and Digi MBox2 Pro on my Gigabyte motherboard's onboard Firewire port with no issues, and it doesn't use a TI controller. Now, I know that TI has a reputation for rock solid 1394 implementation, and my add-in card has a TI chipset for this very reason, but I've had good results in other scenarios too.

I don't think you need to piuckup a TI chipset right now.  Here's something to try.  Put the soundcard to WDM and when you are in Sonars Audio Options..........it should the very last page where it gives you the buffer size for 16/44.1 24/44.8 and so on.  That is the number you want to put in all the buffer sizes to start with.  I know this sounds crazy but it worked for me and I use a Tascam.  I actually put in a bigger number in the MIDI Playback buffer because even if you are not working with MIDI in your projects it still links everything together.  Then, you can go lower in all the other buffer areas and I think there are 2 other areas where you can do that.  When I first got this Tascam piece I couldn't get it lower then 14ms but then I discovered these other areas to work with buffer sizes and I am currently working at 5ms on projects.  It's a big difference and yes I know.....its 2ms but it is better then what it was.  Try it out. 

You have the same setup as I, just another firewire card.

This is what I discovered:

#1. Turn off all visual effects in W7

Usually you do the setting to Optimize for Performance.

I'll do that first.

#2. That you have the legacy driver

This does not mean you do not have the TI chipset, and even so might not be so bad anyway.

The default driver in W7 is known to cause problems and those that fixed computer for you might be aware of this. They usually select the legacy driver instead of the chipset default.

For me I got 60% average cpu on one core running the audio on firewire. This whether playing audio at all and even without Sonar running, just the soundcard turned on.

So switching to the legacy driver reduced cpu by 2/3 to 20%.

The going into BIOS and turning off core parking "C-state Tech" disabled reduced cpu by still 2/3 down to 7%.

My machine is a Dell Vostro 430.

There seems to be a lot of overhead running 4500 interrupts per second as it was in my case.

So drivers and intel firmware seems to need updating to run properly with the newest multicore cpu's still.

Anyway these steps made my machine run adn 128 samples ASIO buffer without any crackles or dropouts and about 10% cpu on that core running audio. This does not increase when audio either so it seems to be running 100% transfer to soundcard whether actually any data or not.

On my old pc, P4 2.8GHz XP SP3 the same thing runs at 4% on one logical core(hyperthreading), but with 192 samples ASIO buffer. So W7 really need some updates on drivers for these new multicores. Seems inefficient to use that cpu.

So I wouldn't give up on the firewire chip you've got yet anyway. I ran my test above with the same results with TI and VIA chipset firewire cards. Both cards were PCI Express type.

90+ % of the time when someone posts a problem with a Firewire audio interface, they're not using a TI chipset Firewire controller.  You can read these forums and see several posts (saying the same basic thing) nearly every day.
In the majority of these cases, moving to a good TI chipset FW controller resolves the problem.
Note that if your machine is having multiple (other) issues, a TI chipset FW controller won't address/fix those problems, but it is without question the best place to start if you're looking for rock-solid performance.
 
If you're still having issues after installing the TI FW controller, then I'd have a look at your DPC latency.

Thanks Jim, maybe I should get one. Are they easy to install? Can you order them on line? What's a basic price for one port? Or should I do two while I'm at it?

 
Hi DS,
 
An ADS Pyro PCI TI Chipset FW controller sells for ~$35 locally.
This card has three ports
 
You can order TI chipset FW controllers online.
 
At the very least, I'd get one for your desktop.
The laptop situation will likely not be improved by a TI chipset express-card FW controller.  The express-card slot is likely using the same brand of (problematic) controller.  IOW, You're not circumventing the problematic chipset.