Problems getting the Edirol M16 DX to work

Hi everyone,

Been and bought a Edirol M16 DX just recently and I was setting it up the other day and having a play with it to try and get used to what it does exactly and how to go about using it. Well I'm really impressed with what it can do, there's so many ways to plug things in it's great and it looks nice too with a separate input output console. The problem I was having was that everything was going well with my first experiences of using it until I hit a brick wall and couldn't get anywhere. I'm also using Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer Edition for multitrack recording on the PC so linking it up to that is essential in getting them both to integrate and work together.

I have also by the way recently built a new PC. I decided to spend a fair amount of money on components so I could have something fast that performs well but decided that it would be a bad idea and a big mistake to switch from Windows XP Pro 32bit so I'm sticking with that and don't want to get involved with Windows Vista because of the fact it's horrible. My PC I've built is a Intel Core 2 Duo machine that's clocking both cores at 5.35 gigahertz and I also have 2.0 gigabytes of system memory (DDR2). Also a ASUS motherboard the P5K with all the other bits and pieces including the new SATA hard drives (not RAID) and using a Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music soundcard.

Getting down to the basis of the problem I was having, I got my Edirol M16 DX all running and plugged in with my condenser microphone on channel 1 using the phantom power. Got the driver installed for the M16 in windows XP, plugged in the driver and completed the driver installation. Then did the new update 2.0 on the device which worked perfectly and then eventually got the microphone working and could hear the sound perfectly through my headphones. Once I'd had a little play around I thought it would be a good idea to try and make use of the fact you can connect it directly to the PC using the USB 2.0 cable so I thought I'd see what that was all about. I looked around at the settings and made sure that Sonar 7's setting were correct and everything before then arming a track on record and selecting my input from the M16 and output which was again the M16 so I could record and play back so see what it was like.

I started to record on the track in Sonar 7 and recorded some sound into my condenser mic and when I'd finished went to play it back and have a listen to the result. I would have imagined that it would work no problem but it didn't and it sounded really terrible with lots of pops and clicks in the recording. It was breaking up constantly when I played back what I'd just recorded so I thought I'd go to the back of the manual for the M16 and see what it said in the troubleshooting section. I knew that the settings on the M16 weren't set too high because I'd already tested the sound levels first before I started recording into Sonar 7 so I ended up looking in the section that talks about if you have "Noise or pops are heard when recording/playing on your computer".

It has several suggestions in the manual, here is the list of things it suggests to try out:

1. Priority to background settings in windows XP setting.
2. Power management settings in control panel in windows XP.
3. Any additional USB devices running whilst the M16 is plugged in.
4. Adjusting the buffer size in the M16 driver settings dialog box in windows XP.
5. Numerous software programs running.
6. Whether a local area network is running on your PC and it's causing a problem.
7. Whether the sample rate setting matches in the M16 and Sonar 7.
8. If there's not enough system memory.
9. Whether a USB hub is being used.
10. Are you using the included USB cable.

Well I went through all these solutions, tried each one apart from the fact I couldn't find what it was talking about in the manual in relation to solution number 2. It said look in Advanced Power management Support and I couldn't even find what it was talking about. I tried solution number 1 and recorded something again but it made no difference it was still a very bad recording from the M16. As far as any other devices are concerned I couldn't think of anything that could have been affecting it, I have a webcam that wasn't even running, a printer too also not even plugged in and a midi keyboard controller that I also tried unplugging to see if it was affecting the sound. After looking at those solutions I went on through the others, tried every buffer size setting I could, the other programs I was running on my machine they were just normal ones I always run like anti virus software, my LAN was running but it wasn't that after I tested it. I made sure the sample rate setting was the same in both the M16 and Sonar7, I'm not using a USB hub, I tried using a different USB cable that was gold instead of silver, still nothing was any different and finally I thought to myself, well I have 2 gigabytes of fast Corsair memory here so what am I supposed to do to make this thing work as it says in the manual?

Later on after I'd thought about what to try instead I loaded up a wave file into Sonar 7 and played it back into the headphones plugged into the M16 to see if it sounded ok but even that was poor quality like the sound was breaking up. I'm 100% sure that my Edirol mixer is working fine no problems, it seems to be just like any other that was made in the factory and it works fine but yet I can't get it to record into Sonar 7 like it says in the manual, it just won't do it! The big question floating around my mind now is are these things supposed to carry audio through the USB 2.0? I managed to get the sound to work fine in the end by plugging the Aux inputs and outputs from the M16 into my soundcard's input and output but then what is the point in that? I'm not really sure what the main reason for having a USB 2.0 connection to the M16 is? Can anybody maybe shed some light on this, perhaps I've missed something out somewhere, perhaps I've not done something I should have.

Anything you can say really about the Edirol M16 DX would be helpful to me, I guess it will take some time to get very used to how it all works but if this USB connection doesn't seem to record in a nice quality then it's not a very good place to start in learning about home recording.