Sonar 2.2 & Tascam FW-1884 sync problems?

Hey all,
I see someone else asked a similar question over a month ago and got no replies. Anybody else have this experience now?
I just got this FW-1884 yesterday morning and it seems great... if I could just get it all working! I had it going pretty well on my old Dell Pentium III 550 in Sonar 2.2, but really got it to use with my new VAIO laptop, Pentium 4M 2.2 GHz. Everything looks to be set up fine on this computer, but there seems to be a sync problem. When I record, the result is off by a random small amount, different every time. I tried singing a dorky little vocal ditty and adding a harmony, but the second track would be off. I tried setting up a metronome (out of the 1884 via MIDI port 1 into a keyboard, audio from the keyboard going back into the mixer) and recording it, only to find it out of sync. I tried recording several tracks of the metronome, and it came out slightly different every time.
Is this a latency problem or what? Tascam says it's zero latency monitoring, but a lot of good that does you if you never know where the audio's gonna end up when you record it!
Clock set-up seems simple enough. 1884 set to internal, 44.1 Hz, Sonar set to audio Sync, and 44.1 Hz.
Any ideas?

Damn if I don't have the same problem...Question-Did you not have the sync problem on the old Dell Pentium III? or did you only notice it when you started with the new lap top?

I have tried messing with the quick start option in the FW control panel with no luck and there is no consistency on how much out of sync the tracks are. I've also found that when recording multiple tracks, some would be in sync and others not.

Really a bummer because this unit has some serious potential. The good news is that its version 1 drivers and it can only get better. For now, I am zooming in on the clip and cutting off the beginning silence and the realign the clips, which is a pain.

To add to the confusion, I do still have my delta 1010 installed on my computer but I have the drivers disabled in Sonar.
The next step for me is to completely remove that card (1010), drivers and references in the AUD.INI and try reinstalling the FW drivers. I don’t think this will help, I still think it’s driver related but I do think it’s important to eliminate other possible variables.

Hey,
It's good that there's at least two of us. We can narrow this down a bit, and then I'll pester Tascam on the phone until someone talks to me.

I only noticed the problem when I moved to the laptop. I'll go back to the desktop and check again. But I did slap down 5 or 6 tracks of guitars, bass and vocals, so I would have noticed. I didn't try multiple tracks at once on the laptop - I can't believe you're finding different tracks that you record at the same time out of sync! That's horrible! I was figuring at least live recording would work out.

Another key difference I didn't mention before - the desktop is Windows 2000, the laptop is XP. What about yours?
Do you have a 4 or 6 pin firewire port on your computer? The Sony laptop of course only has the 4 pin, and Tascam "recommends" using 6. I assume on a desktop you've got the 6 pin, so that'd rule out that problem when I talk to support.

The desktop also has a Tascam PCI-822 card installed. Same as you, I left it in, but with the drivers off in Sonar. So I doubt the soundcard is your problem. By the way, the Quick Start panel is very important. On the desktop machine when things were working, if an input or output I was using at the time wasn't quick start enabled, there was a stutter when stopping or starting recording or payback. It was smooth if quick start was checked. So to save resources and keep things smooth, it looks like the thing to do is open and close the 1884 control panel as you enable and disable recording on individual tracks.

Randy

I am running Windows 2000 and using Sonar 3 but the issue was the same w/2.2.
I do have a 6 pin firewire port, it’s an Orangelink.

It seems to me that the Quick start option was an afterthought on Tascam’s part. More of a quick fix to a deeper routed problem, which I believe is what we are encountering. (Way back my delta 1010 had similar issues with the early version of their drivers as far as a stutter when playback started)

Here’s what I’ve learned based on trial & error:
1. When recording, enabling quick start on outputs, causes a late start on all tracks. This did not change whether inputs were enabled in quick start or not. I will only enable quick start on outputs when mixing or editing.
2. Can’t tell a difference when quick start for inputs is enabled. For both of these tests I tried various selections of ins /outs including checking all.
3. Inputs 1&2 seem to always be in sync except when quick start is enabled on outputs. I’m guessing when you recorded 5 or 6 tracks of guitars, bass and vocals on the desktop; it was using inputs 1&2.
4. Out of curiosity, I changed the playback timing and recording master in Sonar to different sources including SPDF ins. No change.

So basically I know not much more than before…back to the drawing board.

I have a FW1884 also, what are you using for your timing and playback master? I am using sonar 3 with 1028MB P4 and 6 pin Fire Wire. I am usnig the WDM drivers, what are you getting for latency? I can only get 46ms
What do you have the latency set on for SOnar and the FW1884

Right now I have FW1884 Analog 1:2 as the play back and record timing master. I am working with 18.9 latency (the Buffer Size slider will go as low as 1.5 w/FW-1884), if I go lower I sometimes get dropouts. With my Delta 1010 I worked with 11.6 msec latency (low as 10.2). I have a Pentium III, 512 ram,Seagate Cheetah SCSI Audio drive. I have the audio latency set at 64 on the FW-1884 control panel although the manual recommends setting it higher (1024-2048). Setting it higher causes distortion in playback. My average projects have 8 to 16 tracks of audio with an eq or compressor plugin on each track, 2 aux sends for reverb/delay and a few midi tracks.

I was able to replicate the problem with my metronome test on my Windows 2000 desktop machine after all, but was able to get it fixed by playing with buffers and latency. Even when I was still having trouble with the click track, I took one of the delayed click tracks, and recorded 7 vocal tracks on top making silly rhythmic noises, and they all lined up together, and with the click. So I don't know why, but the audio seems to work okay on my pentium III 550, 392 RAM, Windows 2000 machine with Sonar 2.2, a Tascam PCI-822 card installed but drivers off in Sonar, GigaStudio's service running in the background. Sounds a lot like your setup, marcoR.
So now I'm going back to trying the same mucking around on my laptop, pentium IV-M 2.2GHz, Windows Xp.

So my big question, that doesn't seem to be answered anywhere on here:

Is anyone happily using the Tascam FW-1884?! What's your system, in detail?

I'm not sure of this because I was merely scanning the threads; but see if this works.

1.) Don't put FW-1884 on INTERNAL sync. Make sure the DAW/Sonar is the master. I did notice that someone said you have it on Audio Sync; which is correct...as far as I know.

2.) Definitely use ONLY 1 Digital Audio interface. I had looked very closely at the FW-1884 at a local Gtr. Ctr., thinking I could use my Aardvark Q10 as a drum sub mixer via the S/PDIF and the rep told me I would be ill-advised to try to maintain 2 different drivers. I would consider installing maybe a 3-port FierWire card in the PC just in case you need to rec'v a Video signal.

I'd be really interested to see if those fix your problem; cuz I'm still in the market for a controller. I'm leaning a little bit closer to the O1X; but still not completely decided.

Good Luck,
King Conga

Interesting. I've got the FW1884 on a 2.4 Ghz, P4 and an ASUS mbo. It's pretty solid and no such delay problems. All tracks record pretty much in synch. I did have a problem when i installed Soundforge 7.0 as it seemed to hog the drivers if I started that first.

I now start Sonar first and everything works fine.

King Conga,
Funny you mention using your Aardvark Q10 as a drum sub mixer via the S/PDIF because that was my exact intention for my Delta 1010. If it wasn't for the sync issue it seemed it would have worked. I did try it and the delta recorded fine though the S/PDIF of the FW-1884 (delta drivers disabled in sonar/delta does work as a stand alone) and the sync delay was the same as inputs 3-8 on the FW. I have since abandoned the idea at least till I can resolve the issue at hand.

Removing my delta 1010 and drivers was the last thing I wanted to try but is the next step.

Don't get me wrong, yes the audio sync issue sucks but I'm sure the next version of drivers will resolve it if I can't figure a work around.
As far as a control surface for Sonar it absolutely kicks ass. All that is missing is eq support for the ultra funk eq and its there.(it does support cakewalk FX EQ beautifully)
I've been a dedicated cakewalk user since 6.00 and the FW-1884 is what I've been waiting for. As soon as the FE-8's are out I'm getting 4 of em!

didger,
what changes did you make to latency? did you make them in sonar or the audio latency slider in the FW-1884 control panel?
what do you have each set to?
I'm at 18.9 in sonar and 64 in FW control panel...

On the desktop, I had the 1884 control panel set to 512 (and then ran Sonar's wave profiler to make sure it sets all the buffers in there to match), and had Sonar's latency down to the fast side, which got to around 17ms. It seemed to be going pretty well.
But similar settings in my laptop produce the random offset recordings.
I'm really wondering if this is related to latency or not. I be boggled.

Hey marcoR,
You said you're using the FW-1884 with Sonar 3. Does everything work on there, and it is it easy to figure out and setup? I just got my 3 upgrade in the mail but wasn't going to upgrade until Tascam released drivers for 3, but if it's working for you, I'll go for it. Since I'm having this trouble with 2.2, I figure it can't hurt.
Randy

Yes all the control surface functions are still supported, there is nothing lost.
By the way I did remove my delta1010 drivers/card and it still doesn't work...Really frustrated about audio and the midi ports suck too. I hope we don't have to wait 6 months for new drivers. On the "Gear" forum there are some guys raving about how great the FW-1884 has been to work with. No such luck for us...Guess its time to call tascam.

marcoR,

So, do I understand that NOTHING is working now? Not to try to appear that God's gift to Geeks, AT ALL, but did anyone try the suggestions I made. I didn't see any remarks regarding that. That syncing issue really doesn't seem like one they would've released it with still lingering; especially on one of the industry stnd apps like Sonar. Also, I can't remember if any threads or reviews I've read say whether or not it runs softsynth controls. Does it? I'm waiting anxiously for SampleTank2 L to get here Mon.; so it'll be awhile before I can afford to get either that or the Yamaha O1X. Has anyone heard/seen any reviews of that piece on Sonar?

King Conga

King Conga,

I did try your suggestions and a lot of variations.
Apparently there are a few that are not having this issue and are having success with the tascam.

I am suspicious that those that are having success are not trying to sync audio to midi.

Also I may be describing the problem wrong...The issue is a few msec of silence being recorded prior to the actual audio. Cutting of the silence and realigning the clip back to 1 will bring it all back in sync.

Exception is; tracks 1-2 record correctly without the beginning silence, all other tracks have it.

Hey there,

I'll share my adventure....

Months ago, I lucked out and found a 1884 at the Guitar Center here
and bought it immediately (knowing how hard they were to come by).
Anyhow...I experienced the exactly thing you describe with the WDM
drivers. The ASIO drivers seemed to work good except for the increase
CPU strain, no application sharing and a nagging problem of a lag in
starting and stopping.

Tascam was NO, let me repeat, NO help. I spoke on the phone to
sevral people who had no idea what the unit was, let alone how to
troubleshoot it....the last guy was at least honest and said he'd
never touched one!

A guy at rec.audio.pro gave me the name of some folks at Frontier
and they were fantastic. They asked me intelligent questions and actually
seemed interested in fixing the drivers. They made a code change
to the ASIO drivers and emailed to me to fix the lag....fantastic. But,
I had no firm date given on the WDM fix, so I bailed and returned the
unit while I was still in the 30 day refund period.

It's a really nice surface, though....totally pro feeling...nice weighed
jog wheel and large transport (great for my fat fingers)!

Long story short...skip Tascam and call Frontier!

JAY

Thank you very much!

Do you still have a copy of the drivers they emailed you?

Or how to contact them?

Hook us up...

Ummm... there's ASIO drivers? I thought it was just WDM. Shows what I know. Hmmph.

Could you pass on the Frontier contact info or do you not have it anymore?

I just upgraded to Sonar 3, still am having slight trouble when working with MIDI, but happily recorded a short MIDI-free song, just 4 tracks for 1 minute. Did a lot of takes on one track and didn't notice any problems just working with audio. But if I was trying to use the metronome MIDI, I'm sure it would be all messed up.

But, after my brief successful recording experience, I'm pretty confident that the thing'll be great when we're past 1.0 drivers. I had made a promise before never to get anything at 1.0. Bah.

Hey guys,

I'm not at my home PC, so I don't have their
direct emails (I'm not sure if they want me
posting them anyway).

I can't give copies of the drivers out, sorry.
I promised them I wouldn't proliferate them,
it was totally beta straight from the developer,
no QA, just to get me going. They treated me so
well, I owe 'em!

Here's the general info from the website:
Frontier Design Group
240 Mechanic Street
Lebanon, NH 03766 USA
phone 1-800-928-3236 or 603-448-6283

If you get to tech support I'm sure it'll be the
same guys...I think their names were Brian and
Barry.

JAY

That was me that posted a month ago and got no response. The problem disappeared when I reverted to MME. It seems that there is a glitch in the tascam that doesn't talk to SONAR 3 right when you use WDM. So, I am sucking more space and using MME and it works beautifully.

I just tried the MME drivers in Windows XP and had the exact same problem as with WDM. Tim, are you on Windows 2000?

But, as Jay described, the ASIO drivers seem to have better timing, but massive dropout problems. So since my problem description matches his, I'm really hopeful for the ASIO fix from Frontier! Their voicemail says email support@frontierdesign.com for fastest response. Marco, if you haven't bugged them yet, I'd be happy to forward the fix to you, so that we don't make them uncomfortable about passing around so many unofficial beta copies.

Randy

They haven't got back to me yet...
Yes please send me the fix.
marco@arismls.com
MME didn't work for me either.

They haven't got back to me yet either. I was just offering in case you hadn't written them yet, thinking that maybe we were better off if they didn't have multiple people asking.

opps...Maybe we should have got together on that plan before we went off stiring up a bunch of muck w/frontier tech support.

Yep! Whoops! I did that make an ass out of you and me thing, and assumed you'd have written a post like I did. I've still been trying to call, anyway. Nobody's answering.

Okay, I actually reached Brian on the phone. He says that they can't give out the new drivers and only allowed a few lucky folks to test certain bits at a time, BUT they are almost done with a new release including fixes for WDM and ASIO, plus more support for Mackie HUI emulation and maybe some other new bits. He _thinks_ they'll send it to Tascam the beginning of next week, then it'll be up to Tascam to post it for us to download.

So this is cautionary good news. It may be just another week that I have a nearly worthless $1200 piece of gear in my studio!

Please don't anyone else bug Frontier for another week. ;-)

I couldn't even get mine to install. Halfway through the install process I got an error message that Tascam tech had never seen. They were quite condescending, letting me know that "audio programs" were quite sensitive and required Windows to be in a rather pristine state in order for the software to install cleanly. Thus, they recommended wiping my hard drive and reinstalling Windows. I in turn told them that I had a LOT of "audio programs" in my system, that it works just fine, and that I was not in fact installing any "audio programs" at all - just a set of frickin drivers. I thanked them for their expert help, hung up, and promptly returned the FW-1884. Shame, I really wanted it to work

I got my 1884 up and running. So far I have discovered the EQ knobs are not controlling the EQ enabled in any of the tracks in my song. They are supposed to be mapped to the Cakewalk fxEQ. I even tried doing a remote control with the EQ knobs. After assigning an EQ knob to a parameter, Sonar responded but not correctly. For instance, when I move the gain knob (or encoder as Tascam calls it) it would only cycle between full gain and no gain, nothing inbetween. All the knobs reacted this way to all the EQ parameters. I shouldn't have to try any remote control set up anyway. Tascam says they are supposed to be mapped to Sonars EQ. I'm disappointed. BTW I'm using Sonar 3.

The eq works just fine in Sonar 3 for me! Sheesh, everybody's got a different problem. The only thing that confused me about the eq was that the frequency nob didn't do anything on a selected band until I had done something with the gain nob.
At the moment, now knowing that there should be official, non-beta drivers out next week that have been in development for a few months, I'm inclined to say it's not even worth turning this unit on until the new drivers are installed. No unit works for all users and systems at version 1.0, and it's not worth the hassle to try with a revision right around the corner.
I for one intend to relax and do this weekend's recording project hopefully as one last goodbye to my analog console. And cross my fingers, hoping that I only bought this board one week too early rather a year and half, like when I got Tascam's PCI-822!

The FxEq works for me in both 2.2 and 3.
Are you doing this?
1. Patch the FxEq to the desired track in Sonar (Keep the FxEq in view).
2. Press “SEL” on the corresponding track on the FW-1884. The button will light. up.
3. Select any of the EQ control frequency buttons. (High, Hi-Mid, Low-Mid, etc) The button will light.
4. Turn the gain encoder and you should see the curve changing on the graphic view of the FxEq.

I hope that helps…

I have tried this. One thing I should add is that when I first attempted to use the EQ in the 1884 the gain was working but only the gain. After I tried the remote control with the EQ knobs and then disabled the remote (after it worked poorly) and went back to using them normally (the way you explained) and now I have no response. I wonder if there is a way to set everything in the 1884 back to default and try again or I might just wait for the new drivers and hope for the best.

I couldn't find anywhere a way to set everything back to default. There is a Default MIDI Control Values.pdf on the install CD. It should help you get back to where you started. Thats sucks though...

I wonder if there is a way to set everything in the 1884 back to default

According to the PDF manual I downloaded:

"While in MIDI CTRL surface mode, SHIFT+CTRL+F8 resets the MIDI surface programming to factory default settings."

Hope this helps.

According to the PDF manual I downloaded:

"While in MIDI CTRL surface mode, SHIFT+CTRL+F8 resets the MIDI surface programming to factory default settings."

Hope this helps.

I down loaded the manual and already tried the SHIFT+CTRL+F8. Unfortunately, this did not help. When I move any of the EQ encoders(knobs) I see the midi activity light blink. Cakewalk tech support recommended trying a program called MIDIox that can be download from midiox.com, it's free so I might try this. Thanks.

Oh well-- figured I'd take a shot. <g>

Appreciate you trying. Thanks.

Iguess its a good time to be broke, as I would be have some of the same problems, maybe I wait till the new drivers are out, please post when they are out

"While in MIDI CTRL surface mode, SHIFT+CTRL+F8 resets the MIDI surface programming to factory default settings."

Actually, you have to leave MIDI CTRL mode for SHIFT+CTRL+F8 to reset the MIDI surface programming. Details…

TO get my latencu down I had to use mme drivers; I got down to about 30ms with 4 buffers in playback running a p4 2.4 and 1028megs of ram and xp home. GO figure that you have to use MME over WDM

I am on my 2nd FW-1884. The first froze. Even before it did, I had sync problems. So, I returned it . Then, I bought a new computer (MusicXPC) and tried a new/different FW-1884. After several attempts, tweaking and much frustration, I wasn't even able to get the software to install correctly. I have been a loyal and satisfied TEAC/Tascam user for over 20 years, but I've got to let go of this one for now. It goes back Monday. Maybe I'll come back to it when it is more stable. Good luck to all who decide to live on the cutting edge. This time it's a little to sharp for me.

Hey RMorgan,
I know you're discouraged now (as I have been), but why return it Monday when Frontier said they're probably delivering new drivers/installers to Tascam on Monday? They've been working on these for months, as evidenced by Jay's experience, and he said even a hastily made small tweak on the ASIO drivers made it work for him.
If you're still within your returning window for another week, I say at least wait to try the new drivers! That's what I'm doing.
RG

didger,

Thanks for the encouragement and info. I was scanning the previous posts and missed the reference to the new drivers. Hope they improve the installation process as well. I have a good & long relataionship with my local Dealer, so waiting a few days shouldn't be a problem. No doubt they would prefer a sale over a return. Let's hope Frontier and Tascam are prompt in their deliveries.

The eq works just fine in Sonar 3 for me! Sheesh, everybody's got a different problem. The only thing that confused me about the eq was that the frequency nob didn't do anything on a selected band until I had done something with the gain nob.

Update!
I started a couple new projects and found out the encoders on my 1884 do control the fxEQ in Sonar after all. They seem to work the same as didger reported. You must move the gain encoder first before the frequency or Q do anything. Once you know this all is good. However, after deleting the Cakewalk fxEQ and trying to control the Sonitus EQ which is automatically assigned to a track once the EQ enable button is pushed, I found it did not work. The 1884 has no control to the Sonitus EQ which is kind of disappointing since it would only take one click of the enable button and then you have EQ on that track. Anyway, since the Sonitus EQ was not working with the 1884 I disabled it and patched the fxEQ to the same track. Guess what?! The 1884 would not control the Cakewalk fxEQ. It seems if you try to use the Sonitus EQ and then disable it and go to the Cakewalk fxEQ the 1884 gets confused(or Sonar does) and the 1884 EQ encoders will not work. I started a new project with 4 instances of the fxEQ on four different tracks and the 1884 is working great. I will not attempt to use the Sonitus EQ for now.

I could write a book about this thing after what I've been through in the last 24hrs. Basically my view is that thing, with it's current drivers, is crap. I can get it to work perfectly after about 10 mins of twiddling (including disabling the interface and reinstalling the Sonar plugin) but as soon as I restart the computer after a successful session, Sonar doesn't recognize the FW anymore as an audio card (usually). There are a number of other inconsistent, intermittent bugs (including the buttons not lighting up). Very frustrating. I wouldn't recommend this interface to anyone. I'm hoping the new drivers will fix the probs but I wouldn't hold my breath for them coming out on monday. Luckily, I just bought this yesterday so I've got thirty days to return it. Very frustrating.

On a side note, I have heard that the FW is picky about which firewire chipset it uses. Does anyone know which is the preferred chipset. The manual shows a picture of a firewire card with a VIA chipset. I am using aTI chipset. For those of you successfully running the FW-1884, what chipset is on your firewire card or mobo?

I just wanted to chime in here with this, while I don't have the TASCAM FW unit, I do run Sonar 2.2XL on a windows 2000 P-III, with a Delta 1010.

If my memory serves me right... isn't there an issue with 2000 not being able to use more than 10 audio and 10 midi devices?

If that is true, could the real issue be that win2k is getting confused by all the drivers, even whatever may be left in the registry after an un-install?

Just a thought... carry on...

Ok, so now I'm mostly up and running. I installed DirectX9 and it helped the problems. I am using the WDM(default) drivers. The Tascam control panel is set to 64 samples. The quickstart has analog inputs 1/2,3/4,5/6,7/8 enabled and analog outputs 1/2, 3/4 enabled. Sonar is set to nearly the lowest slider setting with 4 buffers. I believe the latency is somewhere around 3msec/12msec after the buffers. I am experiencing no operational problems, however, I have to run the wave profiler every time I start Sonar and that's after following a very specific shutdown/startup procedure. If I vary from this then I have to do a windows clean uninstall and reinstall of the drivers. I am experiencing no delays when recording. Everything is pretty much instantaneous. I am not satisfied with the product so far but it does show promise and is usable. I am going to use the FW until the new drivers come out but if they do not solve the problem then I will return it.

My system is a 1.6G P4 with 256M 3200DDR RAM. ASUS P4XPX mobo. Belkin 1394 pci card with TI chipset. Matrox G450 Dualhead. I am running Sonar3 under XP with SP1 and DirectX9 installed.

I have found my 1884 and my computer get along alot better when I do three things.

1. First I turn on the 1884 and then I turn on my computer. When I do this, the computer always recognizes the 1884.

2. Keep my sound blaster card inside my computer disabled.

3. Mute the volume in Windows Media Player (Play/Volume/Mute). Its seems Windows Media Player doesn't get along with the 1884 when using Sonar(WMP hogs the drivers and will not share with Sonar). When I want to use Windows Media Player(when not using Sonar) I just unmute. Actually, I prefer to use Music Match when playing MP3s on my computer. I do not need to mute the volume in Music Match. It does not seem to hog the 1884's drivers like Windows Media Player does when using Sonar.
Hope this helps, every computer has its own quirks.

OK, so I swapped my firewire card last nigt with one that uses a VIA chipset. The old one used a TI chipset. Almost flawless operation now. I occasionally get an error when switching between 16 and 24 bit projects which causes the FW to emit a series of fast clicks and Windows to become unresponsive. Most of the time it will eventually open the project after clicking for several seconds but sometimes it gives me a BSOD. It even works now under Sonar2.2 which I could not get it to do at first. If it continues to work I think I'll return S3 and get my $500 back. So my opinion is becoming more favorable for the FW-1884. Why can't anything be easy?

Did anybody else get an error during install which stated "no language matches Hotfix"? I think this may be my core problem. I've performed a 'clean' windows install and reinstalled several times. I received this error on every install. The installation manual states that the Windows hotfix is necessary to correct a problem in the way Windows implements 1394 operations. Hopefully the new drivers will correct this snag.

digipenguin, so glad to hear that you have solved this problem. I am considering purchasing one o f these units to go with Sonar, and it is good to see the unit will work. Keep us updated on your usage.

Did anybody else get an error during install which stated "no language matches Hotfix"?

Yes, on my Windows 2000 SP4 machine, but not on my Windows XP SP1.
On my Windows 2000, the FW-1884 Control doesn't show up as an option on MIDI output, only on input, so messages don't get back to the 1884. I assumed this was connected to the Hotfix problem. Maybe not? I didn't worry about it because I'm selling the 2000 machine soon, but now you're having that message in XP? Oy, if it's not one thing it's another!

Just got this email from Frontier, as several others probably did, but I thought I'd post it for the world to see here:
_________________________________________
We have just sent off a new round of drivers
to TASCAM for their approval and posting. I think you will find
significant improvement in the audio response of the FW-1884. There are
some aspects, particularly with SONAR/ASIO that are waiting for
Cakewalk's attention to get completely correct.

We are also waiting for access to the new EQ and bussing configurations
in SONAR 3 so that we can put those into another update soon.

Try the new driver as soon as it gets posted and let us know how it
works.
_________________________________________

2 way communication is good between Sonar and the FW on my system so you may have another issue on the 2000 system. Oh well, you're selling it anyway. My XP has SP1 installed also, although this is the only Windows update I have installed. Most of the other updates are security issues which don't really bother me as I very rarely have my netcard enabled and when I do I'm sitting behind 2 hardware firewalls and 2 software firewalls. Maybe I should look more closely at those updates and see exactly what they contain. The version of XP I'm using is an upgrade I purchased about 2 years ago, even before SP1 was available. Oh well, I expected all this when I bought the FW seeing as how it's so new. I had a similar experience back when I bought my Guitarport, literally the day it came out. It's frustrating not knowing if the issue is related to your system or the drivers.

ORIGINAL: didger
Just got this email from Frontier, as several others probably did, but I thought I'd post it for the world to see here:

Thanks for the post. I appreciate the news, since I don't receive these "insider" emails. Please post when you find that the new drivers are actually available online. Sure hope it is soon.

Thanks.
Rich

OK. So I tried to use the metronome function to trigger an external synth and Wammo! Lost all communication with the FW. I tried running the 'Wave Profiler' on the off chance it would restore communication but no joy. Closing and reopening Sonar then Running the 'Wave Profiler' cured it. Something in the midi interface is causing Sonar and the FW to lose communication.

On a side note. Has anyone tried running the FW under an alternative control surfaces guise. Like the Mackie Control? (actually I think this is the only one available. Or does Sonar support the HUI?) I think I'll try this.

Again. Anyone know what Firewire chipset they're using successfully? It's very easy to identify if you don't know how: Goto 'Control Panel' - 'System' - '1394' The name of the installed 1394 firewire interface listed here will most definately be the name of the chipset, not the card manufacturer. For instance, my card is manufactured by Belkin but shows up as 'VIA OHCI Compliant Firewire'.
It will probably something like 'Texas Instruments', 'VIA', or 'Ogere'. Anyone?

According to Brian at Frontier design group, the chipset shouldn’t make a difference. The only requirement is that it is 6 pin and OHCI compliant. I’ve tried all the “feel good” remedies as well and nothing has yielded consistent results. Although standing on one foot while patting your head and rubbing your belly does improve audio sync.

We are at the mercy of the next round of drivers and hopefully Tascam will post them soon. The good news is that they are telling us we should see some big improvements in audio with the new drivers. Which acknowledges that there is a problem with the current ones. The bad news is they have not been able to reproduce the sync issue that I have. If they can’t reproduce it they can’t fix it...
The guys at Frontier are working hard on this and are in constant communication with Cakewalk so we are not waiting in vain. Other things to get excited about are the possibilities of bussing and submains with the FE-8. Yes it’s in the works! And of course control for the Ultra Funk EQ, but that probably won’t be for a while (cakewalk has just exposed the code for the new architecture to the developers).
Lets hope the guys at Tascam are banging away at the new drivers right now and don’t have to send them back to Frontier before posting them. For now keep the faith!

The only requirement is that it is 6 pin and OHCI compliant.

Hey marcoR,
Before I bug Brian again, did he really say 6 pin is a requirement, and give any explanation? The manual seemed contradictory, in that it first said the only difference between 4 and 6 is that 6 provides power, and 4 doesn't. Later it said they "recommend" using 6 pin to get full bandwidth.
Assuming the new drivers work well, I trust I'll be keeping the FW-1884 for a long time on a different system, but for my immediate needs, I bought it to use with my laptop which only has a 4-pin fw port. I'm heading to a ridiculously remote part of Australia for a year, and was planning on the 1884 being my only big piece of gear to lug!
RG

No he didn't say that 6 pin is a requirement, only that the chipset shouldn't matter. He happens to use a VIA chipset.

All I know is that the reliability increased 10 fold immediately upon switching firewire cards. Maybe it's because the new one is blue! Frankly, I don't care why. I'm just happy it's working.

It seems strange that they can't reproduce your sync problem even though others here are having the same issues. Oh well, it is possible the new drivers will fix the prob even if they didn't specifically intend for them to. Good Luck! J

I do hope the new driver fixes the metronome prob though. I use it infrequently, but when it's needed, it's really needed. There aren't a whole lot of alternatives unless you want to sit down and program out a click track.