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?

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 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

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?

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.

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...

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.