maudio profire lightbridge help

[mcguin]

We too went through a lot of trouble with our new PROFIRE. We went through 3 PROFIRES. Sweetwater were good enough to keep sending them no problem. Unlike you, we wanted to run a relatively fast PC that was bought specifically to connect to our RADAR via light pipe into SONAR, Mpowered Protools or CUBASE. Two issues before it finally got solved. The main one that would probably have worked from the beginning - apparently the PROFIRE does not like certain processors - after changing out motherboard (to one with a built-in firewire port), and then ram, and then an top quality PCI/firewire card - we discovered that the processor in the specifically purchased PC would not work. We changed PC's with another (not quite so fast) studio PC and no problem at all. The two machines had different processors – I can’t remember what they were, but I’ll find out when I go back to the studio on Wednesday. However we also definitely had one defective PROFIRE (the second one) so this whole mess took a couple of weeks to solve. M-Audio were NO help at all. Sweetwater tried real hard, but in the end it was just swapping out parts and finally the whole PC that got things sorted. Now that it's working - it works great!!
Good Luck.

Dan

[Poopants]

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but when I got my Firewire 1814, it would keep dropping out and protools would stop recognizing it and it would do all kinds of weird stuff...I called up M-Audio and they informed me that I can't plug in the interface and even 1 more firewire hard drive...the only way to do it is to plug the hard drive into the 1814 and then the 1814 into the computer (on a mac at least).

They tell me it's the Mac's fault for using the same firewire bus for all of the FW ports, but other interfaces I've had don't have this problem so I guess they just make $hitty drivers

[lozion]

Try syncing with wordclockout to your ad16 and no other devices on the firewire bus.
Should work...

[chrisrulesmore]

Originally Posted by Poopants

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but when I got my Firewire 1814, it would keep dropping out and protools would stop recognizing it and it would do all kinds of weird stuff...I called up M-Audio and they informed me that I can't plug in the interface and even 1 more firewire hard drive...the only way to do it is to plug the hard drive into the 1814 and then the 1814 into the computer (on a mac at least).

They tell me it's the Mac's fault for using the same firewire bus for all of the FW ports, but other interfaces I've had don't have this problem so I guess they just make $hitty drivers

Wow, I've been having a lot of problems running Pro Tools 7 on my brand new iMac Intel machine with the 1814 and have just about exhausted the troubleshooting of both the software (upgraded to 7.3) and hardware (Apple verified my machine is running perfectly). Never thought it could be an issue with the 1814 preventing the use of an external firewire drive.

Has anyone else found it impossible to run two firewire devices on a Mac when using M-Audio interfaces?

I am extremely dubious of M-Audio's claim that Apple is to blame. Their drivers are TERRIBLE.

-Chris

[numrologst]

it was definately a driver thing... I had always heard that maudio drivers were nice... at least according to the guys of at the DUC...

I installed the original driver for the profire and now it seems to be behaving... Luckily this is not my main system, just something to get work done on the road... But so far since I went back to the old driver it is working flawlessly

[djtrailmixxx]

I'm curious as to what your firewiare chains are like. One thing to remember is that If you are using a multichannel interface and an external HD on the same bus, you are going to saturate that bus. First off, using consumer external storage for multimedia is a stupid idea (With exceptions). It is a backup solution. If you can't have an internal Raid 0 Solution, Then the only next options are A) Single internal drive with high performance, B) ESATA or C) HBA attached SAN storage (great for shared storage in larger studios). Everything else I would be weary of.

If you have an option of putting your external storage on a different adapter/controller, I'd try that as an option to the single port and H/W chain.

[naethoven]

Hey guys,
Check out the thread in the "So Much Gear..." forum titled "EVERYONE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH A PROFIRE LIGHTBRIDGE, READ THIS!"

Check it out, it could help us all (even if you use a different m-audio interface).