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M-Audio Profire Control Panel
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Old 30th July 2012   #1
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M-Audio Profire Control Panel
Hello Fellow Musicians and Audio Nutjobs,

I'm new here to the forum, but not new to audio production, post-production, and live audio. I am fairly new, however, to computer audio devices and their technologies. I have done a lot of research and know a little about ADAT structure and clocking and the sort. To start off with my personal audio gear collection, I purchased an M-Audio Profire 2626, 8 XLR splitters and an 8-channel 25' XLR snake. I already have a 3-year-old MacBook Pro 15" Unibody maxed on RAM running Snow Leopard. This allows me to leech off XLR feeds just before they reach a live audio mixer for the house mains, monitors, etc. and not deal with the many gain stages inside the mixer. I have plans to double this setup to be able to record 16 channels (and on and on, yadda yadda) and connect through the ADAT ports. Part of the setup includes routing (on the MBP) an on-the-fly "mix" using headphones and the Profire control panel to Audacity on a Powerbook G4 for quick conversion to CD to give to the performing band. Also, I use an external hard drive (with FW400 and USB ports) via FW400 to record to since it is the only hard drive I have that operates faster than 5400 RPM (it's rated at 7200 RPM). I try to use a high sample rate of 96k/24bit even for live recording.

To quit beating around the bush, I have been doing a few live recordings with this setup and ran into a funky problem. The Profire Control Panel freezes up, yet audio still reaches all the right places (Pro Tools, outputs, etc.) From experience, if I try to restart the control panel, the Profire 2626 connection is severed and the recording is interrupted. I did a search and came up with a thread and tried some of those tips (iMac--->FW400 HD----->profire 2626 issues). Since I only use the onboard mic preamps (for now), I disabled the ADAT and S/PDIF ports to limit FW bandwidth. I also switched the hard drive over to USB for a session last week and it had issues after a while with the computer "seeing" it and I wound up recording to the internal hard drive for the rest without incident. On Saturday, I did a gig and made sure those ports on the Profire 2626 were disabled, and plugged the Profire directly to the computer and plugged the hard drive via FW400 into the Profire 2626. After a few minutes of recording, the Profire Control Panel froze, but as before, I was able to record.

Is there anything I am doing wrong, or anything I should try? I have a recording session where the Profire is going to be used and I will be relying on the Control Panel to do its job. Thanks in advance.

-Robert
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Old 31st July 2012   #2
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The pro-fire control panel is incompatible with certain graphics cards; certainly the one in my 2008 Mac pro. dunno if thats any help!
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Old 31st July 2012   #3
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Originally Posted by greyskull View Post
The pro-fire control panel is incompatible with certain graphics cards; certainly the one in my 2008 Mac pro. dunno if thats any help!
Hmmm...I did forget to mention that when I put the hard drive on the USB bus and left the Profire 2626 as the only device on the FW400/FW800 bus, the entire 8 hours I had it running it did just fine. I sure hope it isn't the graphics card...I'm screwed if it is. Maybe in a Mac Pro with interchangable parts (if it's possible) you can change it, but I would be up the creek without a paddle on this one...
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Old 31st July 2012   #4
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Hmmm...I did forget to mention that when I put the hard drive on the USB bus and left the Profire 2626 as the only device on the FW400/FW800 bus, the entire 8 hours I had it running it did just fine. I sure hope it isn't the graphics card...I'm screwed if it is. Maybe in a Mac Pro with interchangable parts (if it's possible) you can change it, but I would be up the creek without a paddle on this one...
I have a similar setup, and frequently record 2+ hours straight, recording all 26 inputs of the 2626 + a stereo mix track. My computer is a 2007 MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I can enter and leave the 2626 control panel whenever I want to, even during recording, and Pro Tools 10 does not glitch or error. And I don't disable anything on the Mac either, wifi is on bluetooth is on etc.

Some things I have found to be important:

- Plug in and turn on 2626 before turning on computer (from cold power off).
- Nothing else on FW port
- iLok and record drive on a POWERED USB hub (I use this one)
- Record to USB SSD drive. I used to have trouble with drive errors, trying several drives without 100% reliability. Since using SSD's I have not had any trouble. I'm using Intel 320 and 520 drives. The Intel 320 came with a bus-powered USB 3-to-SATA adapter in the box, which I use with both drives.

I am using ProFire driver 2.3.2. from here

I'm not sure this helps but at least it shows that there is potential for it to work correctly!

Jeff
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Old 31st July 2012   #5
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Thanks for the reply, Jeff! It gives me hope. I certainly had the most success (with the 2626 control panel) when the ProFire was the only hog on the firewire chain. Since I am on a budget, I guess I will have to settle for experimentation with the hard drive using USB instead. The hard drive in question plugs into AC power and shouldn't cause a problem. The only question in play now is the hard drive on the USB bus. The problem I had was that the computer would stop recognizing the disk connected via firewire once I went to save my session between sets.
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Old 1st August 2012   #6
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yea my pro fire does not like having FW drives plugged in.
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Old 1st August 2012   #7
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Thanks for the reply, Jeff! It gives me hope. I certainly had the most success (with the 2626 control panel) when the ProFire was the only hog on the firewire chain. Since I am on a budget, I guess I will have to settle for experimentation with the hard drive using USB instead. The hard drive in question plugs into AC power and shouldn't cause a problem. The only question in play now is the hard drive on the USB bus. The problem I had was that the computer would stop recognizing the disk connected via firewire once I went to save my session between sets.
Something that may contribute to this: on long recordings, Pro Tools gets behind on the waveform drawing. When you hit stop it can take awhile to finish, and it won't go back into record without error until it's done. I hit "save" every song, but don't hit "stop" till the end of the set.

Maybe this waveform traffic contributes to the drive disconnect or a disconnect-like freeze?

(Occasionally I'll hit "return" accidentally when saving a marker, and this stops Pro Tools. Unfortunately it won't go back into record right away so I'll lose the intro to the next song.... I'm not laying markers during record using the laptop keyboard anymore!)
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Old 1st August 2012   #8
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Oh yeah, I don't flunk with the system once it's going during a set. I have a separate paper-and-clipboard setup where I glance at the big counter and write a rough time down where needed. I will stop it between sets and save. I never tried saving while recording...I always thought it too risky and the autosave function might suffice for backup. I made a special form for marking songs and such, though.
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