Firepod output drops suddenly

[rwelch]

Howdy:

I'm new to the forum but I've had a firebox for about a year and a half, and now a firepod for about six months. The main outs of the firepod connect to a KRK Rockit 10 and two KRK Rockit 5's. When I'm listening to anything through the firepod from my Gateway 2.5 gighz machine, often it suddenly drops all sound. If I turnoff/turnon the unit it sometimes works to recover the sound, but not always. Then a reboot of the machine takes care of it, but sometimes for only awhile. This happens less when I'm in Cubase 4, but very often through Firefox, Windows Media Player, or other apps. Is it a driver problem? I'm using Windows XP (SP2). Thanks for the help.

[Jon Ward]

These issues are often common at first. There are a few settings to adjust to smooth out the audio performance. Please note, if your system does not meet the system requirements of your chosen DAW software, these issues may not resolve.

FirePod and FireBox only: Right click on your PreSonus interface icon in your system tray just to the left of the time. Set the CPU setting to HIGH. If HIGH setting does not improve performance, try LOW.
Right click on your My Computer icon and select Properties. Click the Advanced tab, click the Settings button under Performance, click Advanced tab, then set to Background Services under Processor Scheduling.
Click Start menu, Control Panel and double click into Network Connections. If you have a Wireless Network Connection, right click and 'disable' this while you are running your PreSonus interface.
If you are using Cubase LE, click Devices menu, select Device Setup, and select VST MULTITRACK. Set the number of disk buffers to 12; set disk buffer size to 128 or 256; and click "APPLY".
Make sure you are set to the Presonus ASIO driver. Then click the 'Expert' button and set "audio priority" to VERY HIGH and uncheck "multi processing" if applicable. You may also want to increase any related settings within other recording software.
Lastly, right click on My Computer icon, select Properties, click Hardware tab, and then click the Device Manager button. In here, extend the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers. Double click on the Primary and Secondary IDE Channels and click Advanced Settings tab. Here you will see Device 0 and Device 1. You'll see "Transfer Mode" (which is usually set to DMA if available) and you will see "Current Transfer Mode". Current Transfer needs to be set to UDMA (Ultra DMA) mode. If either Device on the Primary or Secondary Channels are set to PIO mode, this could be your problem. PIO mode is an older legacy and slower transfer mode for older drives. If either is set to PIO mode, first make sure the "Transfer Mode" is set to "DMA if available". You can change PIO modes by either entering BIOS and setting the IDE Controllers to'Auto', the Current Transfer Mode should change. If not, in the Device Manager, as long as the "Transfer Mode" is set to DMA if available, you can right click on the Primary/Secondary IDE Channel listed and 'uninstall' it. Once 'uninstalled', reboot your computer and it will refresh.
NOTE: Entering your computer's BIOS is specific to your computer. Check your computer's manuals and documentation on how to do so. If you have a device set to "PIO mode" and you are uncomfortable with changing these settings, contact a local PC repair technician or techsupport@presonus.com to assist you.

[rwelch]

Thanks Jon. I really appreciate the response!