Asus laptops not recommended for usewith firewire soundcards

Wheelie · Post by **Wheelie** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:41 am

I had been looking for a replacement laptop for about a month and finally made a decsion on an Asus M6va after much deliberation.... a powerful sonoma centrino which looked well built.

I got it home, performed all the usual music xp tweaks, installed Live and M Audio Firewire 410 and to my disappointment the soundcard output was glitchy and the midi would drop out after about a minute.

After trying numerous settings and looking around the forums etc, it seemed like there it could be some IRQ settings that were being shared. In looking at these settings there were 3 other devices sharing the IRQ setting with the firewire port, including graphics card and on board soundcard.
I call Asus Uk and they inform me that firewire soundcards are not supported with Asus products. Wish I had known this before I had purchased the laptop. Anyway the laptop went back and now I'm trying to research another laptop that will not have this problem, but it seems very difficult to know...

Any ideas? looking for centrino 2Ghz 100 gig hd etc...

Anyone had any experience with Fujitsu Amilo or Samsung X50...

Thanks

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 11:34 am

No computer company is going to "support" another company's soundcard.

Thats not just Asus. Dell wouldn't do it either.

All that means is..... they don't have any techs trained in the card to help you. And why should they? It's not their product.

I think your laptop is fine... you just need to figure out some settings on the soundcard, thats all.

settle · Post by **settle** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:31 pm

ive been using an asus for over a year with a firewire soundcard. never tried the built in fw port. i went directly to the computer store and bought a pcmcia firewire card for it.
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_image ... c866&hl=en
ive used it live without a hitch.
most windows machines come with the smaller iee port and i dont like the way they fit. they seem flimsy.
i still luv my m6n. ive played at dirty festivals, clubs without a problem.
hope this helps
x

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:55 pm

Just bought Ozonic yesterday and it works great with the M audio new driver. Surprisingly even better latency then Indigo. I have new Vaio FS 285 so i think with any new Sony you will be OK.

Wheelie · Post by **Wheelie** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 8:07 am

I guess maybe I didn't explain what Asus told me fully...

When I wrote that they said they don't "support" firewire soundcards I didn't mean that they wouldn't give me technical "support" on it... What they told me is that they do not recommend the use of firewire soundcards with their products as the firewire port is not designed for a constant throughput of data (like what happens with a soundcard).

As the firewire port shares 4 different devices on the same IRQ, this is probably why it is not designed for it....

I like Asus products, and I'm sure that if I used a firewire pcmcia card with it, it would probably work... (but I had one and tried it and it didn't detect it, but I didn't try too hard)...

I guess I wrote this so that others who are looking at replacement laptops (especially if they already have firewire soundcards) know what to expect...

I now I'm looking again for a laptop to replace the Asus I took back...

A

shurik · Post by **shurik** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 8:55 am

Hi,
I use a IBM thinkpad and I'm very happy. the r52 series use the texas instruments firewire chips wich are supposed to be the best. I'm using the
T42 with a PCMCIA Card and its great.
cheers

robin · Post by **robin** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 8:55 am

Is it me of is anyone else getting the impression that firewire is that good for audio right now? Search the forums and you can find people having difficulties with PCs, Macs and all firewire devices other than Motu. Even some people going on to use USB instead.

glenclayton · Post by **glenclayton** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 9:09 am

I think the biggest problem is with motherboards with built in firewire ports- for some reason M-Audio just doesn't play nice. I had trouble with my FW Audiophile on both my desktop PC (MicroStar Motherboard) and Dell Inspiron 6000 onboard firewre ports- especially with the volume and headphone A/B switch stopping working after a while.

The problem was solved in both cased by getting another firewire card (PCI or PCMCIA)- well worth the £20 it cost for each!

You can check on M-Audio's site for approved chipsets to look for for both PCI and PCMCIA cards.

deckme(N)tal · Post by **deckme(N)tal** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 10:02 am

I have got a Fujtsu siemens amilo with 1gb ram centrino 1.6 and B0gb HD AND a m-audio firewire 410.
I bought it for a cheap price and it works flawless with this soundcard.
So i think that buyin a Fujtsu can be a good choice...

Left Eye Dominant · Post by **Left Eye Dominant** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 10:44 am

I have been using an Asus P4 3.02 laptop for over a year now. Although I usually use a MBox as the audio interface (for portability reasons), I have connected my MOTU 828 MKII to the laptop in the past using the internal 4 pin firewire interface (I was also chaining a firewire audio drive through the Motu)..... no probs at all, with either audio or midi. Although I have to admit I have not used the Motu/laptop combination for any extended period of time.... think I"ll check this out more thouroughly this afternoon.

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 1:47 am

robin wrote:Is it me of is anyone else getting the impression that firewire is that good for audio right now? Search the forums and you can find people having difficulties with PCs, Macs and all firewire devices other than Motu. Even some people going on to use USB instead.

Finally working well for me (with my Dell 5150's onboard Texas Instruments OHCPI IEE1934 port) is:

- Yamaha 01X as a combined M-Lan audio/MIDI interface and Mackie Control)

- Echo Fire 8

The reason I say "finally" is because I had massive problems thanks to early generation M-Lan drivers supplied with the 01X ... it wasn't until I eventually did my WinXP OS reinstall (which I might add was otherwise working fine for 2 years!) and started with only the latest downloaded version of the M-Lan driver set (1.54) that everything has started working rather superbly ....

Initially I was starting to suspect my system's onboard Firewire was shaky and that was the cause of problems.

Echo AudioFire8 also works well on my system (possibly the easiest soundcard installation I've ever done - it was up and working well within 2 minutes of opening the packaging).

Cheers

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:04 am

i've got a toshiba qosmio f10... it's big, ugly, and pricey but i haven't had a single hardware issue in twelve months since i bought it. so far it just bloody works! i find it constantly amazing and i always still expect something to go wrong, but it even does a few things it isn't meant to, like powering a 7200rpm 2.5" external drive off of one usb port instead of two like everyone told me i'd need! can't recommend it enough!

i have to admit i used to have an asus (L2000B?) and i ran a firewire soundcard off of that with no issues for over twelve months before the HDD gave up, which was, of course 3 months past the machines warranty... DOH!

deepmarine · Post by **deepmarine** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 1:55 pm

I've got a Toshiba Qosmio F10 as well.

Running a M-Audio 1814 off its built in firewire port.

Got the sound card only 2 weeks ago, was extremely nervous considering all the problems I'd been reading about with M-Audio sound cards, but its working without a glitch.

Running off the internal firewire port of the Toshiba.

tokyojoe · Post by **tokyojoe** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 4:24 pm

I have a recent model Asus W3V. I have been using an Echo Indigo DJ for a month now with no major problems. After seeing this thread I tried hooking up my 828mkII to the internal 4pin FW port but I am getting drop outs in Live even with high buffers. Playback through WMP is smooth though. I may try a FW PC card to see if this improves the situation.

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 6:11 pm

Check the IRQ, sometimes it is better to use the small internal FW rather then PCMCIA. Seems by Sony Vaio the FW is reserved while any PCMCIA checks into IRQ 16 with Graphic and couple of other things. I had problems with Ozonic using PCMCIA and than checked the IRQ as adviced by Maudio UK support., no problems since then.