Firebox clicking suggestions? General Stability Philosophy..

fossilfool · Post by **fossilfool** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 8:12 pm

Could you please help me pin down some clicking and instability?

I get clicking when recording and playing back audio and MIDI. Also, Live crashes unpredictably. It doesn't seem to matter whether it is a complicated Live Set or a new one.

What are some general suggestions for ensuring a stable implementation of Live?

Here's my setup

I'm using Firebox and a E-MU 49-key USB keyboard.

Live 5.0
Pentium M 1.4Gig
1.25 Gigs of RAM

Firebox latency set at 18ms. Firebox CPU speed set at low.

I did disable my wireless network.
I do run Live after restarting my machine.

With ASIO4ALL, I was able to alter the buffer size. With Firebox, I don't see any way to do that. The only thing I can alter is the Latency.

Is there anything obvious I should try?

Thanks a lot,

Paul

lorenzen · Post by **lorenzen** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:37 pm

Be sure to get winxp optimized for Audio
(performances should be set not for the programs but for the "services d'arrère plane" in french, Idon't know how it is called in english)

You can get switchxp, a freeware that forces the centrino to
run at its higher frequency....very usefull on stage

How do you set the firebox CPU ?

4ace · Post by **4ace** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:18 pm

I had so many problems with that freakin' firebox i brought it back.

S/P DIF would never work,even after calling tech support over 2 dozen times and half a dozen firmware updates they never could get the damn thing to work right.

Then finally after 3 days it worked,except for the loud and steady clicking and poping it was puting into the audio.So did they really fix it?NO!

I was very dissappointed in Presonus.

The tech support was there but it wasn't worth a crap.They could never get it fixed properly.

That's my experience with the firebox and presonus.
Sorry if it dosen't help but i like to let people know about the crappy gear out there along with the good stuff.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:39 am

Apparently Live only likes audio buffer settings that are multiples of 64. The problem with the Firebox, in this regard, is the way they have chosen to implement audio latency/buffer size. Because you must choose your buffer size in terms of ms, you are severely limited in the combinations of sample rate and latency you can use in Live. In my experience, if I set the sample rate to 48 kHz, and choose latency settings of 4ms, 8ms, 12ms (or similar values at 96 kHz), i can achieve a buffer size of 192ms, 384ms. If I use this setting I have no problems at all between Live and the Firebox. There may be other settings that achieve the x*64 result; I haven't done a thorough check of 44.1...
Another problem is that messing with the Firebox's control panel application while Live is running will cause Live to crash soon after, in my experience.
I have had email contact with Presonus on this issue. They know that Ableton Live users are going to be a major part of their consumer base for the Firebox, and so they are willing to change up the drivers for better compatibility with Live. What they need is to know that there are a lot of us out there that would like to see this issue resolved...email them requesting that they change their drivers to allow manually setting the buffer size.
The Firebox is a great unit, if they would just get the damn drivers up to par!! I still feel its the best interface in it's pricerange, even with crappy drivers!