I reloaded the 0404 default session, still nothing. here is a shot of my PatchMix along with a little insert of my settings on my audio track too (on the right side) - anything I have set wrong? I get bars reading out on my mixing board, but no audio coming out of my monitors or showing up on the track when I hit record...

I would recommend you remove all those Sends, and leave only a single ASIO send in your Aux 1 bay. That will cut you down to only a single input in Audio Drivers - the "Emu ASIO Aux 1 L" input.

Then in HS, you should have three options: "Left Emu ASIO Aux 1 L", "Right Emu ASIO Aux 1 L", and "Stereo Emu ASIO Aux 1 L". Pick whichever one you want to record.

If you leave all those sends in Patchmix, you create a lot of duplicate inputs in HS. That just confuses things.

One thing for sure is that default PatchMix skin turns me off.
Now that you have things working as they should, you could learn how to configure PatchMix for your purposes. As stated above, you should remove the ASIO sends on the PCI Card In L and R channel strips and leave the ASIO send in the Aux master section for Left, Right, and Stereo recording from the cards analog inputs.

The following image shows my personal default session in PatchMix. It's a complex configuration for my needs, but as you can see, there are no ASIO sends on the PCI Card In L, and R channel strips.



With this configuration, I have three sources of record input in a track to choose from. All having Left, Right, and Stereo - ASIO Aux, Wave, and S/PDIF.

ORIGINAL: RobertB

DeBro, That is a much cleaner skin. Is that part of the package, or did you download it from somwhere else?

You can get that skin from this link:

http://www.productionforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1459

It's the 1.81 .exe file.

Thanks guys. What is s/pdif stand for? I get what ASIO is now,I think. I'm not really sure what WAVE is either. It's coming together finally. Based on another post, I'm thinking about possibly upgrading to SONAR Home Studio 4 - looks like you can do loops right inside there instead of having to deal with swapping between acid/hs. You guys ever use it?

Ok makes sense. I'm not using anything like that at the moment, so it's a non issue for me for now. I'll set up PM like you said then. So let me see if I have this straight:

I only am inputting 2 audio sources into my PC right now: 1) A microphone for voice, which is routed through a preamp into my mixer, and then into the sound card L input. 2) My guitar, which comes from the amps' direct out into the mixer, and again into the L input (doing these separately of course).

So with PM set up as you describe, there is now only one strip that deals with that signal, and I choose it in HS as you described above, post 96. I assume since these are analog audio sources, that I would choose AUX 1 L as my input (not sure what the WAVE means or is for) correct? I guess the last thing I am unsure of is what is the difference between selecting the input types in HS - although I see the s/pdif is for digital sources now...

Ok, I think I get it - man it used to be so much easier when I just plugged my guitar into my amp! LOL

You can have as many strips as you want.
I keep a strip for every input I use regularly, plus one for Wave and one for ASIO.

Your best bet is to start with a default session. (ie. Default Multitrack)
Then, delete the strips you don't need. (ie. SPDIF etc...)

To add strips, first, plug your instrument into the input on your EMU.
Click on the add strip button on the left near the top of PatchMix.
Select the input you intend to use for that strip. Create it.
It's possible you may have to reboot after plugging into the soundcard to get that input to show up on the list.

I usually go right ahead and add a Trim Pot and a Meter to my strips.
I also don't worry about multiple ASIO sends in my PatchMix.
If I have 4 strips set up, I have ASIO 1/2 in the first, ASIO 3/4 in the second, ASIO 5/6 in the 3rd, and ASIO 7/8 in the fourth one.

Hope this gets you on track! <--pun lol

ORIGINAL: tdellaringa

So you are saying I should only have ONE strip in Patchmix, and it should be AUX ASIO correct? (seems I would at least have 2, one for L and R??) So, how do I know if it is an AUX - are all strips AUX? At any rate, so - I don't want it to be a send - but I'm not sure what send even means.

Yes, you should have one strip for the right, and one strip for the left. You should also have a WAV strip, which things like WMP play through, along with all your Windows system sounds. (Ever hear that tip that you should turn off system sounds for your DAW, so you don't accidently record a system sound in the middle of a take? Well, with the Emu card in ASIO mode, this can never happen, so feel free to leave your system sounds turned on.)

There is no such thing as an Aux strip. Each strip has two Aux sends. They're labeled "1" and "2". When you turn up a send, such as Aux 1, it sends a copy of your audio over to the Aux 1 bus. You can put effects on this bus, just as you put effects on strips. Right now, you should have a Send in the Aux 1 patchbay (on the right side of the screen, in the middle).

When you have sound going in, say, your left input, it goes into the Left strip in Patchmix. It then goes down through the volume and pan controls, and out the "bottom" of the strip to the master bus, and the main output.

An Aux send "taps in" to the signal after the volume and pan controls, so that a copy of the signal gets sent to the Aux bus. You have the Aux 1 send turned up to 0 dB. Setting the Aux send to 0dB means "send the signal to the Aux bus after applying an additional 0dB gain change" - in other words, setting it to 0dB means "send the signal to the Aux bus, and keep it at exactly the same level as the main output". If you turn the Aux send up to something like +4dB, then you will not change the volume of the signal that is going out the strip to the Main out, but you will send a hotter signal to Aux 1.

There are two more knobs for the Aux volume. The first one is just to the left of the Aux patchbay. This is kind of like the "input trim" for the Aux bus. You should have this set to 0dB, so that no input trim is applied.

Just like a Strip, the Aux Bus connects to the Master Bus. The second knob, to the right of the Aux patchbay, is the output volume of the Aux bus. This controls the volume of the send from the Aux bus to the main bus, aka the "return" level. You should have the volume for Aux 1 turned all the way down. This displays as -132dB in Patchmix.

If you turn up the output of Aux 1, then it, too, will be heard out the main output. That means you will have two copies of the sound hitting the main output, which can cause phasing issues. In other words, you want to avoid sending sound through both of these routes at the same time:

Strip -> volume/pan -> Main bus -> Master out

Strip -> volume/pan -> Aux 1 send-> Aux 1 patchbay -> Main bus -> Master out

If you set the output of Aux 1 to -132dB, then you interrupt that last chain, and keep sound from going from the Aux 1 patchbay to the the Main bus. This means that you will only hear the direct signal.

This diagram might help. The blue arrows indicate the main signal. The red arrows indicate the secondary signal. The output to HS goes out the ASIO send, as indicated by the yellow arrow. Because the output of Aux 1 is turned all the way down, there is no sound travelling on the path indicated by the purple arrow. If you turn up the output of Aux 1, then audio will travel along the purple arrow, and be mixed with the blue arrow in the Master Volume panel. This is what you want to avoid.

The right side is setup basically the same way as the left side, although the arrows indicate the sound flow for the left side only:

Ok, here it is - how'd I do? My only question is in the master aux area, the second return - i set as -132. I noticed sinc has a chorus on his - so is that where'd you put an effects chain? Or is it just a good place to put some chorus on a voice (I see the tracks are labeled as mic lines)

Great, I think I got it - thanks again!

Also, make sure you check out the routing diagram on Page 26 of the documentation (click on Help in Patchmix). It might clear up any other questions you may have.

Uh oh...problem in paradise.

Everything was working fine, did some voice recording the other day with Sonar. That night we listened to some music on itunes and all was well. The next day - no sound - out of anything! I didn't change anything that I can recall. Patchmix settings are the same, everything seems to be working normally, everything is plugged in, device manager says all ok. How do I troubleshoot this?

The first trouble I noticed was trying to play a movie trailer and the sound wouldn't work right at all, it was like it was coming in and out and only partial sound - after that - nothing...

I tinkered around but got nothing...

EDIT: More bad news, the wife just called - the PC will not boot up now, it gets stuck at the windowsXP screen and never moves on... :(

Turns out it started up the second time she tried.. and it starts up now - but still no sound. Yes, we do turn it off completely. In fact I use a little app called shutdown that turns it off automatically at night since we fall asleep to music generally.

So it starts up, but no sound at all - nothing. Device manager says its working properly...

I did get a dropout message in my last session. I did not change anything in the PM setup that I am aware of. Here is a shot of it - anything jump out?



I can easily stop using the shutdown app, that's not a problem, but it went days without any problem - and I've used it in the past without a problem. But I see your point.