Brand New Firestudio Project - My first experience.

[Spyrofunk]

Hello.

My Firestudio Project is working great, however I need to report some issues.

1) Saving a mixer preset saves it as TXT, not in the SET extension, this is minor, if you change the extension the preset loads fine.

2) Presets doesn't save the output select settings, upon loading, the 3/4 5/6 7/8 and SPDIF are turned off, then I need to turn them on again.

3) The input 4 sometimes blinks with a little peak, dunno why, nothing connected there.

4) Recording with ASIO slows performance, developers need to work more on this since it shouldn't happen.

5) Some plugnis (Mr Tramp, MrRay) doesn't work, they makes the driver go crazy, this is the first time I see this, and I'm sure is driver related since these plugins ALWAYS worked great in other hardwares.

System specs.

AMD 64x2 6000+
ASUS Crosshair
4gb RAM (corsair 800mhz)
Presonus Firestudio Project
Creative Audigy (with kx drivers, both cards coexist without any glitch)
Two Samsung monitors
Nvidia geForce 7600GS
Genelec 8040a audio monitors.
FL Studio 7.4
Cakewalk Sonar 4
Cubase LE (shipped with presonus)

Everithing not needed is disabled in BIOS.

[Spyrofunk]

Just noticed ASIO and WDM both are multiclient!

thanks for that!!!! that's SUPER useful!

[Spyrofunk]

Ok, ASIO should work a lot better :(

I'm testing with one of my song projects:

With my old Audigy with kX drivers I can play at 2ms (96 samples) without a glitch.

With my Firestudio Project I get cracks and pops even at 128 samples buffer. And if I move the timeline window while playing makes things worse.

kX drivers uses a "kernel/SMP/nowait" mode which really improves performance, maybe devs at presonus can check out that. (www.kxproject.com)

I'm really looking forward to see a better ASIO performance, is sad to see how such a wonderful pro card performs poorly.

I've tried with two different Firewire connections, one inbuilt in MOBO and the other is external, also tried with a PCI latency of 255 (max allowable) and nothing....all settings, setups works equally the same.

It's all matter of GREAT drivers, please take that in mind folks. And the audio hardware scene is really plagued of these problems....please. please, make something.

[Spyrofunk]

Here are some ideas to improve ASIO performance.

1) Make drivers to operate at kernel level with SMP capability.

2) Allow the user to turn off certain outputs and inputs (at driver level, in the mixer), the less ins/outs the better the driver will perform (you don't need all in/out all the time, only when recording a complete band for example)

[Spyrofunk]

Hey folks this is interesting!!! and also proves when I say that less ins/outs equal less CPU usage equal better performance.

I just installed ASIO4all, configured it to use my firestudio (it shows only one stereo in and one stereo out), and ran my demo project using 96 samples buffer...guess what? not a single glitch!!!

it's worth to mention, this project is a heavy one, and also has a video player.

Also worth to mention, using ASIO4all with my firestudio I can load and use MrRay and MrTramp, this supports my idea that the problem is in the presonus ASIO driver.

so....for now, I'm going to use Presonus ASIO for recording, and ASIO4all for mixing, heavy sequencing.

devs....please check this out, is a very clear example.

[vcovco]

Hi Spyrofunk,

The FS project has very good latency for a firewire device. I think you'll find that on average, PCI interfaces outgun firewire devices in terms of latency. The being said, the RME Fireface 400 blows everything away in terms of latency, but it is also double the cost of an FS project.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that there is not much internal low-level driver development on the FS or FS Project at Presonus. Judging by the frequency of driver updates and since both of these devices use the DICE-II chipset, Presonus most likely relies on the SDK's from TC technologies:

http://www.tctechnologies.tc/support/software.html

I agree that companies should take a cue from the guy who did the asio4all driver...nothing short of amazing in spite of the fact it only sees a few channels on asio-compatible devices.

[Spyrofunk]

Well, maybe you're right, I have yet to see any Firewire interface to perform optimally in terms of latency.

But yes, there's still that ASIO4all driver that demonstrates the card can go better.

That and some in deep options the presonus ASIO should have, for example, switching between 16/24bit / a proper ASIO control panel / and I still think it can perform better if they allow user to disable some in/out.

I think my FS works well no matter what, I'm a former Aardvark Q10 user and you cannot imagine how painful was that card in terms of drivers, jeez...I think from day 2 I started to see some bugs, reported them to the team but they were never solved, ...I'm talking about 3 years using the card and doing tricks (involving service restart, PCI lateny tweaks etc...)..over and over all day long.

It was a shame since the hardware was remarkably good, but there was one m-o-t-o-r-o-l-a chip inside that apparently made driver devs go nuts until the company went down.

The FS layout makes me think there's one former Aardvark engineer behind ;) I don't care, I guess the man to blame is Igor Levin, now founder of Tadaaaa!! Antelope Audio...how original lol.

[Spyrofunk]

Hmm...just discovered WDM only provides 1 stereo in/out...so is not a problem in ASIO4all

[Spyrofunk]

Solved!!, just configured the CPL that comes with the drivers.

BUT: Everytime I boot, the CPL goes back to "Speaker Stereo" instead of "Speaker Direct Out" in the output menu.

other than that, my FSP runs quite smoothly.

[CJay]

I noticed your using sonar4. I just got the firestudio project and i use sonar 7 producer and for some reason WDM driver mode works better. Im using Vista32.
I dont have an answer for your speaker direct out not saving, Mine doesnt switch back to speaker stereo, but i have a solution for your one stereo out in WDM mode. You need to set your in and out channels manually and youll see all your in and outs. Hope this info helps you a bit. I'm going crazy with the routing of input channels in sonar. If i stereo 1/2, it comes out in mono in sonar and if i use channel 3 mic pre and choose it in the drop down menu in sonar, i dont hear the signal, ill hear it if i choose 1/2 left or something like that. I just got this, so i know its a config problem, but for the life of me itrs driving me nuts
Cj

[Spyrofunk]

Sad to hear that...technically speaking, I don't use Sonar anymore, why, because I got tired of ****ty things going on that sequencer (poor automation accuracy, poor piano roll, audio stopping when sonar feels a droputs)

I use FL studio all the time, I used to be a huge Cake fan, but not anymore.

FL studio works great with my FSP, and I'm really confident the guy behind it did a great job when it comes to stick with the ASIO SDK at the maximum. So when something is broken in other software I'm sure I can blame the software on not my FSP (or any other audio interface)

Sonar is good, if I have to compare it with Cubase, Logic wins there, but I think FL studio OWNS all of them by far. (am I being religious here?)

I always liked FL studio since v3 but, the day it REALLY showed me it was superior was when I had to do a soundtrack for a full featured movie and I was able to load ALL the audio and ALL the video for 90min movie PLUS an entire orchestra sample library, I mean FL had to manage huge ammounts of data in RAM and it did it flawlessly at 4ms...just tell me a single app capable of such a task and I'll switch.

thanks for your reply man :) I'ts always great to see people willing to help each other.

Ah!! and BTW....Cake and Sonar ALWAYS worked better with ASIO in my system...but since I'm having a better results with ASIO4ALL instead of native ASIO, I guess Sonar works great with WDM.

It's just a shame you have to do all with a single CPU instead of allowing both cores to do the job, Presonus fault, Cake fault? dunno, but I know Cake is famous for things like these, it was vey common having to wait for bug fixes with them...and they were always very slow.

[Spyrofunk]

BTW: Just for the sake of trying...get ASIO4ALL and use ASIO in Sonar, and see if you have the same problem with inputs there.

I'm pretty confident ASIO4ALL will give you the same performance as native WDM. I tell you, here ASIO4ALL works good, I mean going 3ms or less without glitches.

Despite the fact ASIO4ALL is a software layer, that doesn't automatically means is worse.

Try it and let me know please.

[CJay]

No, im getting 1.8ms with up to 20 tracks of audio asnd then 2.8ms from 20 to 25 and so on. Its working great for me, sorry for your bad experience.
It's just a shame you have to do all with a single CPU instead of allowing both cores to do the job, Presonus fault, Cake fault? dunno, but I know Cake is famous for things like these, it was vey common having to wait for bug fixes with them...and they were always very slow.
__________________
what do you mean by that, Im using both cores with my AMD64x's2 5200 pc. Matter of fact the only problems i heard for people nit being able to use dual core pc's was with the Mbox pro tools stuff, but that was fixed a bit ago with a driver update. Also, i record Audio 99.999% of the time, so Sonar works great for me, because i dont use the PRV or automation. I use it to track, mix, and them master (well try to master..)
Cj

[Spyrofunk]

It's pretty obvious I have quite some years without touching Sonar.

Anyways... I've read that you have to disable multicore support in Sonar to be able to work without crashes.

I told you about ASIO4all to see if it solves your problem with the audio inputs order.

[mikedocy]

Anyways... I've read that you have to disable multicore support in Sonar to be able to work without crashes.



Your statement applies to FireStudio 2626, Sonar and dual core.
Presonus has stated that the updated drivers to fix this will be released soon.

The Firestudio Project already has good working drivers that
get along good with Sonar and dual core.

[markensminger]

a little off the subject,but did you get the eyeq plugin

[Spyrofunk]

Thanks for the heads up Mike, I didn't know that.

...eyeq?

[CJay]

I told you about ASIO4all to see if it solves your problem with the audio inputs order.
It wasnt a driver error, it was me not knowing how to configure it in the fire control. I figured it out today. They have 10 sequences for WDM and each sequence needs to be set with 2 inputs. Im glad i figured it out
Cj

[markensminger]

yea,it's called an eyeq.there's a nice picture of it on the website,and on the box.i haven't had any real problem's with this unit other than a setting for drivers in background.but seeing that you just got yours,i thought mabye the eyeq was still pictured on the back, and if you could find it in your plugin package,you could point me in the right direction to find mine.but if it's not advertised on your packaging then please forgive the off base question.happy holidays

[markensminger]

ok i got the eyeq plugin via tech support email.sorry to be offbase in this thread.thanx for being patient with my eyeq question

[Wesley DeVore]

Do you like it? (sorry, OT, but I'm curious). I'll start a new thread. I'm desperate to hear how everyone likes it. I love it!!