Ableton Forum

Ok, ok, first off, I am really sorry to be beating the crap out of this dead horse, but I've lived with this stupid audio interface for too long. I'm selling it soon because I can't seem to get it configured properly to my needs. Anyway, here is another problem I'm having with it that I don't know how to fix.

When running lots of MIDI tracks to my external synths, I'll get lots of "clicks and pops" (dropouts if you will) every so often. They exist on each channel, and happen especially when running lots of MIDI. It doesn't happen with software synths though, only with external MIDI gear. I'm pretty sure the weird staticy glitches have to do with the inputs on my 1814, because the synths don't produce them at all.

I highly doubt it's a problem with Live, but I wanted to post this here in case any other users of this interface are experiencing a similar problem. I've adjusted the latency settings up and down, to no avail. They still happen. I suspect it may be a RAM or a CPU issue, but I am unable to test another interface at this point.

I glanced through the FAQs on M-Audio's site, and a few articles discuss CPU throttling. I switched my computer to "Full Performance" to no avail. The clicks and pops are less frequent, but are still there. It is strange because according to Live, my CPU never goes above 30 percent on average. Also, I'm not running any software instruments, only sending MIDI out to external synths. Does sending MIDI out through my interface take up more CPU than running software synths? I doubt it.

However, this stuff only happens when I am monitoring through Live... One MIDI track, and one Audio track per instrument. When I'm going directly through the interface, it works okay. I can do it this way easily, but I just love having volume controls and stuff assignable within Live to my audio tracks.

Any suggestions? I'm using a 1ghz iBook with 256 megs of ram, system 10.3. My CPU meter usually runs around 20-30 percent with 3-4 MIDI tracks going at the same time.

You know, come to think of it, this really isn't much of a problem. I can find ways around this farily easily. Nevermind. Hahahaha...

i was wondering if this interface is worth purchasing ...
any satisfied users here?

I use it and it works great!! I highly reccomend the Gateway laptops from Best Buy that are the Athlon 64. I use this combo and love it. The mac driver for it might be a little shotty though.

i use it with a 12" 1.0gHz ibook on os x and it works great, no problems here.

hey m8s!

I was a FW410 user for quite a lot of time.... not really happy with it, but for the money I paid it was OK. Then I upgraded to the (more expensive) FW1814... After 1 week use I decided to pay an extra euro-150 and change to MOTU 828MK2....

It is another world. All my problems vanished.

mark me down as pretty dissatisfied with the 1814.

stability wise i've had a few situations where i had no choice but to reboot the pc. occasional odd noises, occasional hiss.

not too much instability to deal with, but not reliable enough to give me the comfort level i need from this key piece of gear.

also - they put the fear of god in you re: turning it on/off while the pc is running. i can only assume that this is because something can get fried. i don't need that. power is unreliable, what if your interface loses power on a blown circuit? will that blow its firewire port? they aren't clear about it but they warn you not to turn it off all over the place.

plus, i find that i will need more outs.

i'm returning it and i'm going to try the edirol fa-101.

i have been using my 1814 in gig situations for a good while now and am very happy with it. (with a toshiba laptop). for MIDI i use seperate USB interfaces (MIDIsport 2x2 and BCF2000), so perhaps that avoids the click problem...

i've had no problems recording multi-track audio or playing a bunch of VST instruments and controlling the lot through a couple of keyboards and the BCF2000

the only down side for me is that you can't adjust the sensitivity of the inputs, and sometimes the direct outs from mixing desks are way to hot. i got round this by building a box full of potentiometers and slipping that in before the 1814 inputs. it wouldn't be a problem in most cases, but PA guy's rarely take the time to set me up with a more suitable set of feeds.

the_planet, do you have the airport installed on your machine? I got glitches on my ibm machine whenever my wireless was on. I turned it off, and all of a sudden there were no problems at all.

definately disable the wireless 802.11 adapter. I get all kinds of glitches when it is enabled

Thanks for the input my wonderful colleagues. I have figured out a solution to my problem.

Before, I was running two channels for each instrument: One MIDI to control it, and one audio to monitor the sound. My 1814 wasn't set up properly for some reason, and I had to do all the routing in Live.

Well I hit the magic "reset" button in the 1814's mixer app, and magically all my synths started making noise without the need for an audio channel in Live. Not only that, but because the 1814 was monitoring the sound directly, my 25ms of latency vanished with the audio glitches and CPU hang-ups.

However, I am unable to use any audio effects in Live without an audio channel for the particular instrument. Luckily, two of my synths have effects built in. I'll probably pick up a cheap rackmount multi-effects unit for the effect-less synth at some point.

I'm a happy camper now, and I owe it all to the magic "reset" button.

I still want to pick up the Alesis MultiMix Firewire when it comes out. Having hardware knobs, a built-in EQ, and hardware sends will make it a lot easier to make quick adjustments. Plus, the 12 channel is only $400. Deal of the century for a hardware mixer/12 channel firewire audio interface. woo woo.

the stupid thing of *all* these digitally connected mixers is that they only support 1 stereo stream from the computer to the mixer! exactly the hands-on approach of a hardware mixer would be very usefull to do some analogue summing and hands-on mixing with several seperate audio streams coming back from your DAW into the mixer... the way these mixers are implemented right now makes em basically useless for people that are using a lot of plugin-instruments and in the box mixing...

Olaf

I was told that if I used an FW interface instead of my 2496 PCI card, it would be a downgrade in terms of latency, is this true?