Alesis io26 and io14 Interfaces

[pjnfran]

So there was a new driver posted and I was glad to see it. my system has remained relatively untouched other than my installing opting for logic express over garageband. so here we go...

 

oh...before I go on I just have to say that I agree with MormonMacMan in that it's great to be able to have such an affordable piece of hardware "potentially" provide so much. However, what's happening here is akin to, say, buying a Porsche advertised to go 0 to 60 in 3 seconds only to find out that, for some reason, it stops dead in it's tracks every 500 yards. Sure, you're going fast enough to go 0 to 60 but you never go far enough to actually get to 60. It's true that firewire may be the culprit...maybe even mac or os x. The thing is, how much consolation would you get out of being told that your particular model of Porsche's problems are likely due to the fuel and that the car actually runs better on nuclear power? Not much, I suspect .

 

I would have loved to have known that the io|26's performance wasn't tested as thoroughly on mac's or that it had firewire limitation or whatever. At least I would have known what to expect. Again, though, at $400.00 I made a conscious choice to accept that this might not be all that it's cracked up to be. I've accepted that there will be issues but not forever...not for my needs at least. I simply factored in the fact that the company will continue to improve on the product and not leave us high and dry before getting the product to a point where it is performing as advertised. If I wanted something that would work right now then maybe I would have gone with something more tried and true...like analog.

 

At any rate, I really like the hardware. It feels good, it's great when it's working but when it doesn't, well...it doesn't.

 

So I still had the 1.50d0 installed which was giving me those crazy errors I mentioned before. still don't know what they mean. they go away with 1.5d2 but the limitation of that driver was that I was not getting any midi output through the io|26. Bummer because I wanted to use wife's keyboard (GeneralMusic Pro2).

 

So I noticed that the pdf that came with this package was very precise and extremely detailed in comparison to the previous instructions. I love that they are listening (or appear to be).

 

so I'm just going to skip to the part where...

 

I've just rebooted, installed the HDM monitoring software and now I'm ready to see what's up!

 

I open system prefs:

click on the alesis1394 preference pane in System Prefs:

 

"No Alesis 1394 devices are connected at this time! Please connect a Alesis1394 device and try again!"

 

hmmm...same issue as last time. Doing a comparison of the HDM app in both 0412 and 0419 I found that they were identical. the drivers are different so I was hoping for a different result.

 

it does confirm that this is the new 1.5d4 driver.

bummer...

 

open audio/midi setup:

 

nope...no go. the Alesis 1394 icon is now just a ghost shadow of its former self. it's still there but dimmed and unaccessible.

 

let's try the hardware monitor:

 

nope...no pulse.

when I close it I get this error, though:

 

The application Exited process quit unexpectedly.

2007-04-25 03:15:25 -0400

EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)

KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x0a636e74

 

this happens every time I open and close the app.

 

here's the error report they want me to send to Apple:

Date/Time: 2007-04-25 03:15:28.300 -0400

OS Version: 10.4.9 (Build 8P135)

Report Version: 4

 

Command: Exited process

Path: Exited process

Parent: kernel_task [0]

 

Version: ??? (???)

 

PID: 1119

Thread: Unknown

 

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)

Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x0a636e74

(null)

Unknown thread crashed with PPC Thread State 64:

srr0: 0x000000000a636e74 srr1: 0x100000004000d030 vrsave: 0x0000000000000000

cr: 0x22000024 xer: 0x0000000000000000 lr: 0x0000000000029910 ctr: 0x000000000a636e74

r0: 0x000000000a636e74 r1: 0x00000000f0182d40 r2: 0x0000000001b2f56b r3: 0x00000000061f5970

r4: 0x0000000000000000 r5: 0x00000000000003e8 r6: 0xffffffffffffffff r7: 0x00000000001457e9

r8: 0x0000000000000001 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x0000000000000007 r11: 0x00000000a0b8c740

r12: 0x000000000a636e74 r13: 0x0000000000000000 r14: 0x0000000000000000 r15: 0x0000000000000000

r16: 0x0000000000000000 r17: 0x0000000000000000 r18: 0x0000000000000000 r19: 0x0000000000000000

r20: 0x0000000000000000 r21: 0x0000000000000000 r22: 0x0000000000000000 r23: 0x0000000000000000

r24: 0x0000000000000000 r25: 0x0000000000000000 r26: 0x0000000000000000 r27: 0x0000000002025a00

r28: 0x0000000000000000 r29: 0x00000000061f5970 r30: 0x00000000061f5af0 r31: 0x00000000061f5970

 

so now I open up logic express:

 

yikes! there it is. sound and all. I get a message in the system.log stating:

"Apr 25 03:09:57 PJnFranMachine kernel[0]: IOAudioEngine[0x61b0200]::setNumSampleFramesPerBuffer(0x2000) - Error: can't change num sample frames while engine is running."

 

but that's it...

 

I can record my guitar, my wife on her keyboard (analog output) and two mic's simultaneously, while adjusting input gain and volume. I just don't have the advantage of seeing it on screen.

 

OH....still won't recognize midi input from the keyboard with the following config:

keyboard midi out ---> alesis midi in

 

It shows on the alesis led that it is receiving midi but the g5 is just not hearing it. I swapped out cables with two new ones, one short (3ft) and one longer (9ft) but no go. I've decided to channel the midi out through to the midi in of the Axiom 25 I bought and that seems to be ok. I'll keep this driver installed because...hey hey hey... no continuously scrolling errors in my system or console log. definitely an improvement. no audio drops and random buzzing (so far). I did get this error in my system log after exiting logic express:

 

Got handle to device

Device does not support 88.2 KHz sample rate

Terminating

 

 

Why is it that the Alesis1394 preference snap-in doesn't see the device but all my applications do...including the Sound option in System Prefs?

 

The AlesisHDM software works on my Mac Book Pro, by the way...that's weird...so does the Alesis1394 System Prefs snap-in.

 

I guess I'll just have to wait till the next release where they, hopefully, put out a HDM app.

 

anyways...see you on the later show.

[Anderton]

Well, there's no better way to derail a Pro Review than to go to Frankfurt for a week, come back with a horrible flu, then edit 40 videos on the show. And there was more, but I won't bore you...

Anyway, I've been testing the io26 with Live because that's another Pro Review that got derailed, and while I was it, figured I'd check out the ADAT in. I tested it with the DigiMAX FS and also with my Panasonic DA7 mixer; as the io26 doesn't have ADAT out, I set up the DigiMAX FS and DA7 as masters, and synced the io26 to the ADAT in. It all synced up perfectly, and voila -- the io26 went from having 8 XLR mic pres to having 16

What this implies to me is that if you're into live recording and you need lots of mics, you're covered. Furthermore, I had mentioned earlier that the mic pres don't exactly pour on the gain. So in a live situation, you could use the io26 mics for amps, instruments, vocals, etc., then run a higher-gain pre (like the DigiMAX FS) for room mics and quiet signal sources.

When you consider the io26 has two ADAT ins, that means you can easily end up with 24 mics going into your computer...pretty cool.

[Anderton]

Here's something interesting. I've been using the io26 with a cheapo FireWire card and it's been working fine. Then while doing videos, I had my camcorder hooked into the FireWire out of my Emu 1820 PCI interface; it too worked fine.

Today when hooking up the io26, I used the cable that had been plugged into the 1820 for the camcorder. All seemed well; the io26 FireWire and sample rate lights went on. But after about a minute, the io26 started cutting in and out. I connected the AC adapter to the io26 and it was back to normal.

I then hooked it up to the FireWire card again, and everything's been fine since. Maybe Jim or someone else knows the answer, but does FireWire spec a particular amount of current? Or are some FireWire outs "beefier" than others?

[Anderton]

Those who have been following this thread probably know that I've had great results with everything I've tried with the io26 on Windows or Mac G5 (I don't have a MacIntel for testing), except for Sonar on an AMD X2 machine although Sonar works great with the io26 on my Pentium-M Rain Recording laptop. The problems I've had were the same ones I've had with the TC Electronic K24D interface: Skipping, tempo speed-ups, and ring modulator type sounds.

Today, TC posted a public beta driver for the K24D that eliminates the Sonar problems. As some of the TC technology is part of the io26, this is a good sign that TC has found the source of the problem and fixed it. As a result, I think it's safe to speculate that this will likely work its way into the next Windows update for the io26. I realize this doesn't affect a huge percentage of users, but it's encouraging.

[Anderton]

We touched on the Hardware Direct Monitoring feature earlier, but it's a pretty sophisticated applet and I wanted to make sure I gave it a little more attention.

 

The attached picture shows the right half of the mixer. For those who aren't familiar with the concept, direct monitoring means that you can mix the inputs and outputs of the interface internally, without using the computer. This avoids the latency involved in going through a computer, and also allows you to use the interface as a digital mixer (although you still need a computer if you want to control it, e.g., change faders and such).

 

You can set up four different mixes, all available simultaneously, to outputs 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8. This is handy if you want to send different cue mixes to different musicians as they record. You can, of course, also blend in the signal coming back from your computer (such as the final mix from a DAW).

 

There are two views available, Narrow and Wide (the picture shows wide). Narrow view shows all channels on screen, but you don't see the meter calibrations, and if you typed in custom names for the inputs and outs, you might not see the full name. Otherwise all functions are available (mute, solo, pan, channel link, and fader setting.

 

In wide view, you can scroll left or right to see all channels, but there are also show/hide buttons. For example, if you're not using one of the ADAT ins, you can hide it to reduce clutter.

 

The metering is pretty cool, too. You can choose different meter scales (high, medium, and safe) that alter when the meter shows the signal "going into the red." This doesn't actually change anything happening with the audio -- just the dispaly. For example, with "high," the meters indicate red at -12db; with "safe," at -21. You also have peak hold options of 3 seconds, 8 seconds, or "hold the peak until you hit the Peak Reset button."

 

Finally, you can also call up the device configuration control panel from the mixer, choose whether the headphones will monitor analog outs 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, or 7-8, and which of those outputs will feed the SPDIF output.

[instred]

Thanks for the info, I hope it is soon for the update, as I have a AMD X2
4600+ and the only way I can use Sonar is Affinity Soanr to one CPU. With Project 5 the unit is working fine.

Ed

[Anderton]

We've had one report from a Macintel owner about the new Mac drivers. Any other Mac people out there with comments? Please let us know what system you're using if they work for you, and if they don't work, we want to know that too.

[soclose]

ive had the io 26 for about a week now.
its my first interface and i love it.

im running
Machine Model: iMac4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB

i installed cubase but have not used it yet. i have been recording with garageband 3 and it has been great!

my only complaint is the crazy buzzing noise from the outputs in the back used for latency free monitering. the buzzing is from the imac itself but affects the outputs on the io26. it does not affect the recording though.

[Anderton]

Thanks for the info, I hope it is soon for the update, as I have a AMD X2 4600+ and the only way I can use Sonar is Affinity Soanr to one CPU.

 

 

Can you explain to me what you mean by "affinity Sonar to one CPU?" I assume you're talking about something other than turning off multiprocessing within Sonar - maybe a BIOS adjustment or something?

[Anderton]

ive had the io 26 for about a week now. its my first interface and i love it.

 

 

Good choice, I think. You'll won't feel the need to trade up for some time with all that I/O.

 

 

my only complaint is the crazy buzzing noise from the outputs in the back used for latency free monitering. the buzzing is from the imac itself but affects the outputs on the io26. it does not affect the recording though.

 

 

I wonder if this is a variation of the "Firewire whine" that many users have reported with various Macs and Firewire interfaces. If you close the HDM application, does the buzz go away? Just curious...

[instred]

Can you explain to me what you mean by "affinity Sonar to one CPU?" I assume you're talking about something other than turning off multiprocessing within Sonar - maybe a BIOS adjustment or something?

 

 

Sure,

After I start Sonar I have hit Ctrl, Alt, Detete to get to task manager.

click the process tab. Then I find Sonar on the list and right click it.

In the pop up menu at the bottum is Set Affintiy... Left Click and choose what processor or Cores the application can run on. When I limit Sonar to one on the AMD chip it works but not as a low of a latency of I can get with

Project 5. I'm just glad its working for me and I hope an update is in the works. The unit sounds fantastic, I hope I don't have any more issues:thu:

[Anderton]

Thanks Instred! Great tip!! I'm glad the io26 is working for you, I'd bet you're a Windows update away from being able to use dual core X2.

 

I think some people don't quite "get" that they should ignore the price, and just judge the io26 for what it does. It certainly behaves like it should be more expensive.

[robbe.zappa]

I own and have been using the MultiMix 8 FW. I purchased it to get away from using the cumbersome and very time consuming hassles of the stand-alone DAW's plus the capabilities are endless on the desktop. I have been extremely happy with the MultiMix and have been recording professional level songs for a complete album. I have Cubase, Ableton and a bunch of other pro software but the software I use and like much better than any is Sony Acid Pro 6.0 Correct me if I overlooked anything but going from Acid to Cubase I found that they both had the same features (for the most part) but to me Cubase presented them in a not so natural way.

So I'm browsing MF and come across the io|14. So I start to look more and more into them and read nothing but fantastic reviews. But what I can not find anywhere is what I will gain with the io|14 that I do not already get from the MultiMix8? I am working on a solo album and do not plan on recording several instruments simultaneously so I am not so much concerned with interface I/O as the capabilities and qualities of recording instruments to computer preserving the carefully honed tones I get out of my custom guitars and amps that I have built. So far with the MultiMix I have been ecstatic.

I read a post here by viTo back in March asking for the same info but I could not find any replies.

Thanks for time and for this forum!

Robbe Zappa

[robbe.zappa]

 

FYI: Just for reference from my previous post #350...I am running hardcore systems; AMD64 x2 2G RAM and close to 2Tb of NAS and USB disk storage (plus the 500Gb mirrored SATA 300 drives in the system. I have 4 of these guys I built as well as the entire recording desk and peripheral setup.

 

Rz

[Vibroluxman]

Edited. No longer applies

Cheers,

Eric

[Anderton]

Istred - THANKS! Great workaround. I did as you suggested, limited Sonar to one processor, and it works fine at 128 samples with the io26.

[jimnorman]

Hi Craig,

Yep you found out one of those spec issues that have to do with USB and Firewire. Not all cards and computers are created equal. That's the reason we included the AC adapter. Just in case the user finds out that he can't enough power from his card or computer there is an alternative. Also with running 8 high resolution mic pre's some computers just aren't up to the task of supplying enough power via Firewire.

Glad you are enjoying the IO/26. I'm in Hong Kong right now, but I'll try to keep up with the Forum.

Jim (hopefully not "Lost in Translation") Norman

Here's something interesting. I've been using the io26 with a cheapo FireWire card and it's been working fine. Then while doing videos, I had my camcorder hooked into the FireWire out of my Emu 1820 PCI interface; it too worked fine. Today when hooking up the io26, I used the cable that had been plugged into the 1820 for the camcorder. All seemed well; the io26 FireWire and sample rate lights went on. But after about a minute, the io26 started cutting in and out. I connected the AC adapter to the io26 and it was back to normal. I then hooked it up to the FireWire card again, and everything's been fine since. Maybe Jim or someone else knows the answer, but does FireWire spec a particular amount of current? Or are some FireWire outs "beefier" than others?

 

[jimnorman]

Probably the big differences between the Firewire Mixer and the IO's are:

The I/O's have:
Newly design Mic pre's with inserts, MIDI i/O, Digital Input/out, Adat Lightpipe inputs, Firewire buss power and higher resolution audio recording (up to 192k). If you don't need those things then the Firewire Mixer will likely meet your needs.

Firewire Mixer has- built-in analog mixer, channel EQ, built-in effects, aux sends.

Jim

I own and have been using the MultiMix 8 FW. I purchased it to get away from using the cumbersome and very time consuming hassles of the stand-alone DAW's plus the capabilities are endless on the desktop. I have been extremely happy with the MultiMix and have been recording professional level songs for a complete album. I have Cubase, Ableton and a bunch of other pro software but the software I use and like much better than any is Sony Acid Pro 6.0 Correct me if I overlooked anything but going from Acid to Cubase I found that they both had the same features (for the most part) but to me Cubase presented them in a not so natural way. So I'm browsing MF and come across the io|14. So I start to look more and more into them and read nothing but fantastic reviews. But what I can not find anywhere is what I will gain with the io|14 that I do not already get from the MultiMix8? I am working on a solo album and do not plan on recording several instruments simultaneously so I am not so much concerned with interface I/O as the capabilities and qualities of recording instruments to computer preserving the carefully honed tones I get out of my custom guitars and amps that I have built. So far with the MultiMix I have been ecstatic. I read a post here by viTo back in March asking for the same info but I could not find any replies. Thanks for time and for this forum! Robbe Zappa

[robbe.zappa]

Thanks for the reply to my post. I appreciate the information. I have an io|14 sitting in a box next to me and I plan on doing a thorough comparison. I will post results here in a new thread as I think there are many that are curious for the same info. Personally, I do not need the mixer portion of the MMFW and given the new capabilities of the io I will probably start to tap into these. Technology in home computer recording is advancing so fast right now it seems like anything new is obsolete in 4 to 6 months. From what I have read the io is bragged to take you well into the future so we'll see.

 

Rz

[BDMSB]

We've had one report from a Macintel owner about the new Mac drivers. Any other Mac people out there with comments? Please let us know what system you're using if they work for you, and if they don't work, we want to know that too.

 

 

I have tried the new Mac driver in my G5 iMac, system 10.4.9, with no improvement. I still get glitches in record and playback, and the output periodically goes all buzzy and the unit must be reset. But I have learned that I don't need to cycle power to reset it, I just have to reload the driver, which Logic Express will do.

 

I have a log of my experience posted here:

http://www.bmumford.com/tmp/alesis/

An image of a glitch with the new driver is at the bottom. It shows that the pop is a dropout, and I have observed them with buffer sizes up to 512 bytes.

[ido1957]

Laptop = HP Pavilion DV6325CA 15.4" Intel Centrino Core Duo T2350 1.86GHz

The laptop is crashing and rebooting, with an error about "Thread stuck in video driver".

Already made change to Video accelerator settings as recommended by manual.

Alesis connected to the laptop via firewire
Sonar Installed/Sonar Software not running

Seems to have begun since installing SONAR - but this is a fairly new buy so it may not be related. It happens without warning after being plugged in/turned on for a while (say 15 minutes max). When the firewire is disconnected it hasn't crashed, and seems stable, Alesis preamps stuck on previous/last settings but can still get sound to the amp/speakers.

Any ideas if this is a SONAR or and ALESIS IO26 problem? Anyone else had this problem?

[Anderton]

I've had problems with Sonar and the io26 using an AMD X2-based multiprocessor system. But then I tried Instred's workaround of disabling one processor, and it's been smooth sailing ever since. (You can't just disable multiprocessing in Sonar, because it still will use both processors for some tasks if they're present.) Here's a step-by-step version of Instred's workaround:

1. Call up Sonar.
2. Before starting work on a project, right-click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager.
3. Locate SONARxxx.exe among the list of processes ("xxx" differs depending on whether your're using Sonar Producer Edition or Sonar Studio Edition).
4. Right-click on SONARxxx.exe and choose Set Affinity.
5. You should see checkboxes for CPU 0 and CPU 1. Uncheck the box for CPU 1 so that only the CPU 0 box is checked.
6. Click on OK.
7. Close the Windows Task Manager window.

Let us know if this helps!

[BDMSB]

More info on the glitches with Macintosh computers....

 

I played a sine wave through the io26 and recorded the playback glitches with separate hardware. The playback glitches seem to be the same as the record ones. They are discontinuities in the sine wave as if some portion of the data was simply dropped. They do not appear to be gaps or inserted noise.

 

I suspect these transients occur more often that you imagine because they would often be masked in normal music. But they stand out dramatically when the signal recorded or played is a sine wave.

 

I will try to capture the waveform of the buzzing mode when it's playing a sine wave.

[Vibroluxman]

Intel mac reporting in - working relatively fine, but I'm having some playback issues in Soundtrack Pro, but I think that is more of soundtrack not working, not an issue with Alesis. Seems fine since the last update, no issues that are apparent over a three hour editing stint last night.

 

Cheers,

Eric

[clik]

I owned an io26 for a few days, about a month ago. Liked it, but the SPDIF out didn't work, despite driver and firmware updates. So, back to the store it went... disappointing, because it seemed like such a great deal.