Pro Reviews

[billie10]

Anybody experiencing low gain issues? I have an Alesis io|14. (ebay - $170)

I'm recording a nylon string classical guitar on input #1. I'm using a Shure SM57 to do this. I know it's not the loudest guitar type, but sheesh, I would've thought the gain was better that it is.

Basically, I've moved the mic as close to the guitar sound-hole without touching it, and my levels are still too low! I have the gain turned up to max.

Anybody else having this issue?

Vocal levels are ok though, as is playing my electric guitar direct-in.

If I can't boost the level for my acoustic, then does anybody have any ideas to boost the track in Garageband after its been recorded?

Is there a special way to increase the sound in Garageband?

thanks!

Hairfarm

Are you using a canon (3 pin) to mono phono cable?
The gain increase by using a canon to canon cable (both 3 pin) or canon to stereo phono (balanced 3 core cable) - instead of canon to mono phono, is remarkable - it is much higher. Also use really good quality cabling. My Shure sm58's and 57's clip easily with a loud source and run on high qual. canon ended leads.
Gain on the iO26 is fine, I never need to go past 7 or so on the inputs with mics or guitars- which is about optimum.

[Birdienumnum]

Just an update. Everything continues to go well with my IO/26 and my newish Intel iMac. I don't even need an adapter. I installed the recent driver update and things continued well as before, no difference to me. The huge difference is still: using my newer computer rather than my G4, which technically met all the requirements but choked on the IO/26.

[Supergreen]

I've recently bought one of the io14 soundcards, and am having real difficulties getting it to work on my computer.

My problem appears to be with playback - when playing a file on either windows media player 11, or ableton live 6.0.10 the audio will often stop dead, and i will be forced to reopen the application for it to start again. Sometimes this happens almost instantly (I hear the first beat of the track and then it cuts out), and sometimes it will run for a while before stopping. I have tried adjusting both the buffer size and the system latency compensation, and the cutting out does reduce when both of these are set to the maximum - however, my computer is very new and has no problems with any other high intensity processes or applications running on it, so it seems strange to me that i should need to be operating under such high buffering.

I'm running a Dell XPS M1710 Notebook, with dual 2.33GHz processors and 2 gig of memory. The io14 is connected with a Belkin 6 pin to 4 pin firewire, and the power unit is also attached to the io14. I also have all the latest drivers.

Could anyone possibly shed any light on the situation? I am hesitant to try to record anything when my soundcard is so unpredictable.

[hairfarm]

Greetings,

I bought a condenser mic (AKG Perception 200) to test and see if gain is still too low. I'll post back later after testing. I also bought a Mogami mic cable three pin to three pin, 15 ft.

Some questions please:

I play around in Garageband, and am confused about latency settings. I use a Macintosh G5 computer with a gig of ram.

In my Mac System prefs, I have an "Alesis Firewire control panel" with different latency settings referred to as: SYSTEM LATENCY SETTINGS. My choices are, High, Low, and None. What do these mean to me?

Also, in the Garageband prefs, there is another latency setting referred to as:
"Optimization Settings". Then under that preference, I have two options: Large Buffer size for maximum number of tracks and Small buffer size for minimum delay when playing live instruments.

Can the Alesis control panel latency settings conflict with the Gargeband latency settings?

Which setting/s should I use for the Alesis and Gargeband for best results I'm new to this and could really use the help please.

I can't find info on the internet describing this exact issue.

thanks,

Hairfarm

[xFkx]

Greetings !

I have just taken the alesis io14 out of the box, looks stellar !

Btw, the included firewire cable is 6pin -> 6pin

I have a 4pin firewire socket in my laptop, when i buy a 6 to 4 pin converter will everything work fine ?

[xFkx]

anyone ? :idk:

[NIXin]

xFkx: POL: Tak, ale takie przejściówki są ciężkie do zdobycia. Kup poprostu kabel firewire 6-4 pin i tyle (w każdym sklepie komputerowym znajdziesz)
ENG: Yes, It will be fine. But converters are hard to find, it'll be easier to just get another firewire cable 6-4 pin.
Regards.

[jpleong]

xFKx, Just so you know, a 4-pin Firewire jack does not provide bus power so you will need to use the included mains adapter. JP

[ritualdevice]

I just wanted to stop by and post an update on my problems with the iO|26 interface. My issue (which was expounded back on page 24-ish) is that my iO|26 cuts out when I use it to play system sounds (iTunes, WinAMP, WMP). To get sound back, I would have to click "disable" and then "enable" in the System Sounds setting of the Alesis control panel and reinitialize the hardware. I used the DPC latency checker application, which everyone should be familiar with, and found that I was getting intermittent spikes that coincided with the iO|26 quitting. I tried everything in the way of troubleshooting, removing all extraneous hardware, clean OS install to a new drive, loading only the OS and the Alesis drivers, nothing worked. I noticed that many of the spikes were coinciding with the fan on my nVidia 7900GT turning on and off, though correlation does not prove causality. I replaced the video card with an ATI HD2600XT and things have been a bit smoother since. Just a bit. I still get the quits in iTunes, though they're slightly less frequent. Bear in mind that this is all happening under Windows Vista and did not happen under Windows XP. So I believe it's related to the OS architecture or the drivers, rather than the hardware itself. I've related all this information to Jim and the engineers at Alesis, but they don't seem to be able to repro the bug, which is really disheartening because I've done about everything I can do short of buying a new computer. I can't justify a $2000 expense to fix a problem with a $300 unit. I've tried every Windows audio optimization tweak guide on the net, updated all drivers and BIOS, downloaded several hotfixes, even the beta of Vista SP1. Nothing is helping the issue. I've never been able to pinpoint what is causing the DPC latency spikes. The latency checker program is good for showing that they exist, but tells nothing about who to point the finger at. If anyone knows how to isolate the source of latency spikes I would appreciate it. As I said, I've tried selectively removing (or BIOS disabling) non-essential hardware like network adapters and RAID controllers and USB controllers with no luck. It looks like there are several of us experiencing this. I'm not sure why the engineers can't reproduce it. I've tried the system latency compensation settings, and buffer size adjustments, but I still get the stoppages in iTunes. iTunes plays fine through the HD Audio on the motherboard, though I've now disabled this hardware for troubleshooting purposes. The machine is rock solid in all other regards. I can render for days (8 days in fact) continuously in 3D Studio MAX, so it's not an overheating or memory issue. I can also play games for hours, which has me wondering whether it has something to do with the way Vista handles switching in and out of "3D" mode for video. It seems certain functions (web pages with Flash, drawing thumbnails on a folder full of images, etc.) will occasionally coincide with a loss of audio playback. I tried disabling Desktop Composition, and Aero as well, but that didn't change anything. I'd just about be willing to mail my freakin' computer to Alesis just so they can get to work on the fix for this bug. Or if the fault isn't with Alesis, at least they could write a driver that more robustly handles DPC latency.

[Markman (orig)]

I'm not sure why the engineers can't reproduce it.

Interesting enough, the drivers are written by TC, wich has similar problems with their own competing product. So the Alesis drivers are not even on the upper half of their ToDo-List...

[meepzork]

ok i talked to alesis support and i went through all the steps they recommended. long story short it looks like somehow my LEDs for ch 5-8 got fried. Everything else works fine, i just have no level indicators for 5-8 without using software. so my options are to hang in there with what ive got in hopes that a newer firmware/driver combo might fix it, or to send it back to alesis and wait however long it takes for them to do whatever they do (repair? replace? refurb?)

what would you do?

[NIXin]

I just wanted to stop by and post an update on my problems with the iO|26 interface. My issue (which was expounded back on page 24-ish) is that my iO|26 cuts out when I use it to play system sounds (iTunes, WinAMP, WMP). To get sound back, I would have to click "disable" and then "enable" in the System Sounds setting of the Alesis control panel and reinitialize the hardware.
(...)

I have the exact same problem (which I also explained a few pages back), I didn't spot the exact hardware causing it yet (using DPC Latency I get some peaks like you described). Unfortuenatly I'm on a laptop, so exchanging eg. graphics card would be impossible. I can only disable different hardware and test...
I also have Zoom H4, it can run ASIO/DirectSound - I have no problems with it, so it's diffenatly a driver bug in IO|14 & IO|24.

[FatalFallacy]

We have posted new update of the Mac OS drivers and HDM Control Panel software on the Alesis site.

http://www.alesis.com/index.php?id=58,92,0,0,1,0

Thanks,

Jim

thank you so much!
what an improvement to the last beta!

[d00sint]

Hello,
I've seen this question a number of times, and it was also one of the bad things said about the io26 in a magazine review, and since I don't have the problem myself I can't help but wondering if you didn't miss the part in the manual that says that the gain will be a LOT lower when plugging in a Tele cable than an XLR. If your SM57 is connected to the card using a Tele-XLR cable instead of an XLR-XLR, you will get much to low a gain.

Anybody experiencing low gain issues? I have an Alesis io|14. (ebay - $170)

I'm recording a nylon string classical guitar on input #1. I'm using a Shure SM57 to do this. I know it's not the loudest guitar type, but sheesh, I would've thought the gain was better that it is.

Basically, I've moved the mic as close to the guitar sound-hole without touching it, and my levels are still too low! I have the gain turned up to max.

Anybody else having this issue?

Vocal levels are ok though, as is playing my electric guitar direct-in.

If I can't boost the level for my acoustic, then does anybody have any ideas to boost the track in Garageband after its been recorded?

Is there a special way to increase the sound in Garageband?

thanks!

Hairfarm

[37Vernon]

'The iO26 has top quality converters which are dynamically brilliant, with quiet and uncoloured pre-amps, has really good stereo separation, and if you have a good engineer and studio everything will sound as though it was recorded in one of the worlds top studios. This unit is a steal.'

Great to see such a positive review. Having scoured many a forum and review for a midi/audio interface it did seem that there were no guarantees that any one model would work with any particular computer and/or software combination.
I have just purchased an HP6715b laptop as a dedicated music machine (2 x AMD Turion processors, 2 Gig Ram, Vista. I would like to run Sonar Home Studio 6XL, and have some old kit that I will be using (Akai MX76 master keyboard and Yamaha TG500 tone module).
As Billie was running an HP6710 laptop with Sonar 6 it seemed to me that I had a good chance of everything working well.
The 2 main differences are Vista instead of XP, and I will be going for a IO14 not 26.
Has anyone got anything else they could add to this scenario before I shell out some cash? Would be helpful if it could be not too technical, as I am a 63 year old guitar player and amateur composer just deciding to have a go at some multitrack stuff.
Many thanks for reading this - and for any comments you may feel to make.
Steve

[hannibal90210]

I've never been able to pinpoint what is causing the DPC latency spikes. The latency checker program is good for showing that they exist, but tells nothing about who to point the finger at. If anyone knows how to isolate the source of latency spikes I would appreciate it.

You could try installing Microsoft's RATTV3 although I don't know whether it'll run on Vista?
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/tools/RATT.mspx

I've successfully traced the source of spikes with it in the past on a laptop running XP.

I do have a friend with the same problem as you describe using a iO|14 under XP on his DAW. I'm seeing him soon so will perform the same tests on his machine.

[george dorn]

Hey there!

This is a really great forum. I just want to report, that i bought the IO14 from thomann.de (178€) and I'm impressed. The installation worked fine,using the drivers from the CD. I'm running OS X 10.4.9 Combo Update on my MacPro QuadCore 2,66GHz, 6 GB RAM. I did this Combo-Update for my MBox2 which didn't work without it, and always was doing ugly elctrical noise*. No it's sold and I got my good-looking IO14 with no noise.

I tested it with opening a project in Logic Express, recording one channel with my SM58 plugged in. MIC Gain seems a little low, but sounds good. I cutted and moved the sound and it works fine.

I checked the HDM-Tool and was wondering if i can do two unique headphone mixes. So i got it on Out1-2 for the first mix, and switched the Headphones2 to Analog3-4. But I only get the input signal on the Out3-4 tap, nothing from the computer will arrive on the Headphones2-output...
What am I doing wrong?


Greetings from Berlin.


*[SIZE="1"]The electrical noise drove me crazy. With pro tools, it was there all the time, but a little lower. But with other programs, like Final Cut, it was only making noise, when playing back, and one second longer!!! So I plugged my built-in soundcard into the line-ins and got better monitoring sound...[/SIZE]

[jwmm7]

I've had the alesis i O 26 for half a year now and had the typical problems at first. I still have the quite a high latency of 36mil sec which seems pretty high but its the only stable settings i could achieve because my computer is still pretty good a dell inspiron laptop 5150 3.2 gighz 1.256 mb ram. But anyway my main problem now is that when i use the alesis for monitoring a band it is very noisy when going into my pa system. So what i mean by this is that i hook up all the vocal mikes and guitars into the alesis and then hook it into a power amp or pa system. And when i turn it up to levels to get over the drums and stuff there is very obvious noise which sounds like amplified internal noise from my laptop and annoying buzzing and stuff which is annoying and much louder then any pa system noise. Even when i don't have anything plugged into it and all the pre amps turned down this noise is still apparent. I've tried lots of typical fixes and different pa systems also (and its not the pa settings or daw settings or anything like that). I'm assuming this problem is because of the low gain preamps which causes the overall to be turned up so much louder. Because when i'm just playing mp3's through it, I don't need to turn my pa system up that loud and therefore the noise level isn't to bad. So after all that does anyone know how i could boost up the output without added noise, make it so it doesn't pick internal laptop noises or maybe add a noise filter after the output. any suggestions thanks

[basshacker]

Hey everybody. I've had my io26 for about a month now, and having read about and experienced some of the normal pains trying to get things running, I figured I'd post my experiences.

I've used the interface on both my older desktop machine (a Dell 420SC server) and my new HP mega-laptop. I've had good luck recording on both, using the older drivers that shipped with the unit. I've also updated to the latest drivers, and things don't seem to be any worse at a minimum.

First real problem I had appears to have been caused by a Windows Update - I came in one morning, saw my machine had rebooted, and from then on, I couldn't keep a live connection to the interface. I rolled back to the previous restore point, using System Restore, and things worked. I still need to go back and figure out which update broke things, but my advice there is to use the 'Download but let me install' setting in Windows Update.

The other thing that was bugging me was the 'can't play iTunes/WMP through it' problem, where a song plays for 20 seconds and then stops. It APPEARS at this point that I've fixed that problem by following an earlier post on this board by disabling the hyper-threading option on my desktop machine. It's not uncommon for poorly tested (ahem...) software like the WDM drivers to have problems in multi-processor environments, so this isn't entirely unexpected. If you've been having this problem, and your machine is one of those P 4-HT type deals, you might want to try that.

Other than that, I really like this little interface for what I've used it for. Best of luck!
Ryan

[b.video]

...
As TC recently solved the dual problem with the DICE II chip (also used by Alesis) and Sonar, I think it's fairly safe to assume that any future Windows driver update from Alesis would incorporate this fix...but I say that based on Alesis and their past performance with updates, not on any inside knowledge.

Craig Anderton's reviews of these two interfaces eventually resulted in driver fixes for the above being delivered. The Alesis Multimix Firewire had the same problem long before the io26 and while Alesis support received information about the single CPU workaround, nothing happened for more than a year.

I am a Sonar user who was pleased when last July's Alesis driver (io26 and Multimix FW) was delivered. Now that I am trying to use Sonar 7.0.2, something else bad is happening. In a brief word, sometimes Sonar cannot stop and restart playback when my project makes dense use of some softsynths (z3ta+ or Dim-LE or -Pro). The audio engine stops and there is a message when I hit play: "Unable to open audio playback device. Device may not support the current project's audio format or may be in use." I can get it to work again one time by fiddling, but it keeps happening and cannot really be fixed. I still have an older version of Sonar (6.2.1) and it doesn't have this problem at all, using the same songs.

Cakewalk has described some audio engine problem ("motorboating") fixes with their 7.0.2 release. I believe their tweaks have broken the Alesis drivers again. Oddly enough, when I put the older Alesis drivers back in, the new Sonar problem doesn't happen. However, it is still necessary to use the single CPU fix to make Sonar work correctly.

I am in the process of submitting problem reports to Alesis and Cakewalk, but honestly, I think this review by Craig has been the driving force for the fixes in the long sad DICE-II story.

Is there anyone else here using a DICE-II product with Sonar 7.0.2 (I understand there is one newer DICE-II product not from these two companies that uses a newer driver generation that doesn't have any of these problems.)? I'm interested to hear results.

Bill B.