Ableton Forum

is their any users on this forum that have got this going with live ???

for me the powercore only runs on sonar 4 with no hiccups. soon as i try opening poco plugs in live it all gets knocked out of sync, saying error synchronising.. and the plugs get disabled?????

anyone had these probs and fixed them??? would love some help..

cheers.

I really want to get a powercore, but only if I can use it with minimum hassle in Live...

hey Toneroll! I am finding excatly the same probs. Live4 no, Sonar4 yes.
At first I struggled finding a fw interface with the right chipset. TC recommends Texas Instruments. I have found the Via Fw chipset OK. then after thinking all was okay with Live4 and the Powercore compact the problems came back?! I had added a lot of new plugins (non TC) recently, and I chalked up the return of the reset problems to that, but maybe its not so anyway start with checking what kind of FW card youve got Via, Agere TI etc...then make sure you've got the most recent drivers for the Powercore
1.9.3 SR1 I think...contact TC support too ( the online support is a little slow- try and find a phone #) and also check out www.powercore.noheaven.com
I would think TC has got to try and make the two work. LIVE and the Powercore compact seem to go together so naturally....maybe the newer Live release will make a diff?....good luck....I'd be interested if you make progress...not a lot of Powercore posts here on Ableton.com

Oh! I just saw your post over at noheaven..

r u guys on Mac or Windows?

I'm on windows and really want some extra DSP power, love the sound of the UAD but i'm on a laptop so no go unless I get a v. expensive Magma cardbus to PCI adapter. Powercore looks v good for reverb and interesting fx, so been eyeing that but not if there are major probs.

I'm on a PC. I'm begining to think the plugins that cause the most problems are the one's that introduce the most plugin delay esp reverbs. I have almost given up on getting my Powercore compact to work properly with Live4.

I would have to say wait for a new driver from TC or Live's new release. (maybe PDC is in the works?) ....

yeah, i am waiting for an adaptec 4300 FW card. This is the card that was reccomended to me by the tech support at powercore...

I'll let you know if this works..... for now i am going to have to resort to arranging everything in live then just putting all the big fx on it in sonar..
i hope that its just a problem they have to iron out for the next update. (or that my new FW card will work !!!)


as for the plugs elemental they are top notch.... think native bundle 3 but way way nicer.. crispy EQ , 2 lovely reverbs , plus you can get roomverb by spin audio to work on a poco now... then charecter etc etc.. mastering plugs.. if you think about what you get for 600 pounds the dsp power is sort of free... im on windows by the way... maybe mac users won't have this prob too often coz the fw interface will probably be the best you can get... BUT a little annoying voice inthew back of my head is saying that it is probably a live/ poco compatibility prob. BUT there are users on the noheaven site that say they dont have any problems with it and live... sooooooooo im just gutted really... fingers crossed a new fw card or updates will sort it.

yeah i was thinkin that , coz sonars got pdc... tho i have tested by just putting a powercore01 running a one bar loop and this will disable on its own after a bit......

Hey Toneroll,
I just purchased an Adaptec fw4300 and it had an Agere chipset not a TI chipset.
...Agere is on the NO list with TCelectonics . I'm in the USA maybe adaptec uses a different supplier here- I hope you fare better in the UK.....cheers

Remix did a review of the Poco Compact using a 1GHz Powerbook and Live 4.04 and it worked fine (http://remixmag.com/mag/remix_tc_electronic_powercore/). I've been thinking about getting one for a while, but...can you power it off the FW bus? Or do you have to use the 5v adapter? Both the review and the TC site imply that you can't power it off the bus, but don't explicitly say that. If you can - providing a completely mobile solution - I'll definitely order it.

So...can you??? Would really appreciate it if someone could just let me know.

fraid you need to plug it in seperately with a 5v transformer....


i have got the powercore running now for anyone who is interseted, what i did was install the newe driver from the ser pck 1 (from powercore) then i put it into full resource mode and set the dma buffer setting (in the poco) to 2... this is all quite stable..... by quite i mean i havent loaded out both chips in a project yet , but i have had 5 plugs going with no hiccups whatsoever wahey!!!!!

also mruby, i cant belive they told me to get this card if its on their NO list........ thats a bit silly init? anyways it seems to be ok.. try those settings as well as reseting the powercore before you start a prioject with them.

Hi again I just found out the Adaptec FW4300 can ship with 3 possible chips?
so its maybe luck as to which one you get (best to avoid internet shopping on this one). In the meantime I found that I was getting the sync errors again because I had INCREASED the buffer setting on my soundcard (Motu 828MkII) to gain CPU power on larger projects. TC support reminded me that lower latency setting (opposite of common thinking) work better with Live4--- and sure enough at 6-24 ms my Powercore Compact is solid !? so I'm a happy camper...
Toneroll thanks for the info on the Pcore DMA setting.
Finally YAY! ...oh and TC support says a 1.9.4 driver IS coming...cheers everyone

Cool, might have to invest in a little PC compact soon...
would ideally like a firewire UAD but it dont exist!

i'd like to hear from more users about how the Compact works with Live4 on a TiBook 867. a guy with a similiar Powerbook tried the big-bro Firewire on his system, had some problems but that was a few months ago and they've since updated the drivers.

i'm especially interested to know how well the Virus works in Live4 - anyone tried that?

-=d=-

ok, now i've actually had a chance to try the Virus in Live4 - sort of. can't quite get the AudioUnit to install properly.

had the demo of it running at one point and that works better than the VST - the VST's arp won't sync properly after you hit play the first time, then when you hit stop again it sounds worse. AU version seemed to fix it, too bad TC's AU installer is convoluted.

and i guess the Virus really slams the CPU - despite the fact that whole point of the Powercore is to provide DSP. odd.

any other updates?
-=d=-

got anothe update here actually

i recently completly changed my system when i moved over to the old sunshine state.... its now a laptop , dell 9200 to be presise and i had all the same problems , including poco working flawlessly with sonar 4..

so i came back here to have another look and after reading mrruby's post , i went back and changed my 410's buffer to 63 samples , and then i put the asynchronus dma buffers to 4, and it seems pretty damn stable

i put a 01 on a track, repeating a 1 bar loop , then put x3 on the master out , mega reverb in one send , classic in the other , and slowly started adding plugs,

well i managed to overload the dsp's in the powercore , so this would indicate its pretty solid,. coz i have yet to do this in live.

still waiting on the 9.1.4 tho..............................