In a bind with Presonus 1818vsl and Sonar X1--for hours--my back hurts.

You are using ASIO mode, right? What bit depth and sample rate? 

daveny5


You are using ASIO mode, right? What bit depth and sample rate? 

44.1/24  But seems I am in the wrong forum--logged in on my ipad and probably didn't see. For the record, there seem to be serious issues with the presonus 1818vsl. Thanks for trying and see you somewhere else. I am not so used to asio. Have been using wdm drivers down to 2.3ms for a long time with my motu products, and since I have owned other presonus products I thought this might be great--so far it hasn't turned out to be that way---plus I am on a laptop--though a fast one. If I can't get it going I'll contact Jim Roseberry or someone. Thanks man

Michael

michael japanFor the record, there seem to be serious issues with the presonus 1818vsl.

I had the hots for the 1818VSL to replace my E-MU 1820m, but couldn't get over the poor latency performance. Even for folks who manage to get it to run with smaller buffers, the"hidden" latency in the USB and A/D/A sections is high so that the overall latency suffers.


You mentioned MOTU, and I see the 828 in your signature. I ended up with a used 2408mkII/PCIe-424 combo that is handling the same project load at 64 samples (4.5ms round-trip) that the E-MU (PCI) did at 96 samples (6ms round trip). This is with the ASIO driver.

The 1818VSL and 2408mkII/III were on my short list for including ADAT input that I needed for one of my keyboards. The major missing features on the 2408 are mic/instrument preamps and MIDI I/O, but I already have other gear for that.

Anyway, I  hope you get the 1818VSL working to your satisfaction. If you haven't already tried it, I second daveny5's suggestion to try the ASIO driver. They tend to be better written/supported than WDM these days.

Yes, I am using the ASIO driver. Won't even move with wdm. I'm managing--ran the latency checker-had already optomized the xps for audio. I'm working at 23ms at this point which is fine as the main reason I got the machine was for recording a 20 song drum session next week. Thanks for chiming in.

23 ms is horrible. I couldn't work with that. It should be at most 5.8ms and ProSonus claims it should be less than that. 

I'm happy to try to help if I can. I know how frustrating computers can be!

good counsel cactus. And came to the same conclusion that it shouldn't matter for an analog project.
Thanks for your help.
Michael

Hi there
Perhaps you have already solved your problem, but if you haven't here goes.
In your post you have not detailed the Dell XPS computer. Is this a Laptop or Desktop? It is important to understand what each piece has, and what is required to make this process work. I'll assume this is a Laptop, (although most of this applies to a desktop as well) so here's what you need to look for to make this work. In most cases the laptop is irrelevant since it is the sound card taking most of the load and transferring the data to the hard drive. The CPU is hardly doing anything except providing you a visual of what might be going on.
Before we start understand that Presonus ships the unit with all the necessary drivers including ASIO that are optimized for the 1818 and all the rest of the audio devices they sell.
#1 How many Hard Drives are on the Laptop?
#2 Internal Hard drive speed (only a 7,200 RPM drive will work) NOTE! a 5,400 RPM Hard Drive will not work!
#3 Try Turning off the (Use MultiProcessor Engine) in Sonar (some Laptops will not sync correctly and you will have dropouts galore)
#4 You must setup the first Hard Drive for the OS (Operating System) This is also where you must install Sonar Software.
#5 The second hard drive must be a 7,200 RPM formatted hard drive and within Sonar you must tell Sonar that this is the hard drive where all the audio files will be streamed to when recording, and from when you want to play back what you recorded.
If you do not use this method on yor system all the latency issues you describe will never be workable. Pay special attention to the Esata I discuss here because it is the only solution that works!
I have 3 laptops that I use for live recording and they all have different mixers attached to them.
 
The first one is the oldest being a 1999 HP running on Win XP that has 1 internal 100 GB, 7,200 RPM dive and a 2 TB, 7,200 RPM external drive that is connected via a Esata card (and not USB because USB and Firewire hard drives will not work). The Esata protocol operates @1.5 GHZ per second instead of 480 MB per second so the thru-put is 3 times faster than USB 2.0 and it is a true bidirectional @ this speed. USB is also Bidirectional but divides the 480 MB per second (240 MB in and 240 MB out).  These are the kind of things that cause bottlenecks for audio. My HP is connected to a Mackie Firewire 1604 mixer but will work with any USB i have it connected to. It records 18 tracks without a hitch for hours on end.
My second machine is an Acer 20" Laptop built in 2005 running on Win XP that uses 7,200 RPM boot drive and is also connected via a ESATA (PCMCIA CARD) connected to a 24 channel Presonus and records 32 channels without a hitch. I usually record each set as a song and then back at the Studio I'll separate each song so the computer can manage the data more efficiently. I will take only the drive that has the Sonar data on in, connect it to the desktop and away I go. Absolutely no issues.
The third machine is a newer HP running on Windows 7 connected via a USB Motu 828 MK111 and again no issues since we use the Esata.
I've provided three machines that all use USB 2.0 or Firewire audio and they all work with any sound card. The issue is not the sound card as much as it is how the data is being streamed to the device that saves the audio data. If you have a funnel like effect due to the hole in the funnel being too small eventually the contents overflow and so will your audio. Since it has no where to go some of the data spills over and an interruption of data occurs causing a dropout. But, it's not the audio cards fault (usually) it's how much data can be stored on the hard drive that causes the issues!
My main studio computer has 7 additional PC's connected to the host via Ethernet. The host has 6 internal hard drives and 2 external hard drives via an ESATA protocol. This system is 4 years old has 16 gb of Ram and runs on Win 7 64bit. After the field recording is finished (on the Laptop) we connect the hard drives that were used to capture the live band recording and continue producing them in the studio. This setup has never had any issues and uses a 2 sound card approach. There is a PCi card MaXiO 032e from ESI-Pro that the speakers are connected to, and a second Firewire 24.4.2 Presonus 24 channel mixer that I use for recording in Sonar (mics are connected to the mixer and all 24 channels are live). The SPDIF output is routed to the Maxio 032e and everything works perfectly. Full monitoring with effects is available in real time with absolutely no latency or hiccups-ups of any kind since it was assembled.
 
Hope this helps you.

I'm quite concern reading this "The mix pot on AudioBox 22VSL gives you the essential facility to mix between the signal being recorded and current, but unfortunately the low latency is not available if you're using the AudioBox 22VSL with your regular DAW."

http://www.musicradar.com...ox-22vsl-533991/review
Is this true ?