I can't get my Alesis IO26 to work with my laptop!!

[Amberience]

Hi all. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1501. I recieved it today. My Alesis works well with my desktop machine, albeit with a few glitches here and there in the audio stream.

But all I'm getting with my laptop is an irregular clicking noise, very faintly too.

I'm connected to the laptop via a SIIG (texas instruments chipset) firewire express card - not a cardbus, but an express card.

The laptop has built in SigmaTel audio. Disabling this doesn't do anything. The Alesis installs perfectly, no driver issues, and the system and Reaper even recognise it.

I'm at a loss as to what is causing this. I would really appreciate some help!

[Amberience]

The glitch disapears when the laptop runs on its batteries. But the audio signal is really really glitchy, full of dropouts, and generally unlistenable.

[Diogenes]

Just curious... you are not trying to run the Alesis on FW buss power are you? If so, try the wall wart power supply. Also, Dell laptops are notorious for having grounding issues. Google around and see if you can find someone who has found the solution.

D

[Diogenes]

Actually, it's the Dell power supply for the laptop that may have the grounding problem! The battery comment you made above was a clue...

D

[Amberience]

My friends Emu-0404 usb2.0 card worked fine just now. And my Layla worked fine on his mac g4 laptop.

[Diogenes]

See if this thread sheds any light...

http://audiominds.com/forums/index.p...hl=dell+laptop

There's another thing somewhere about Firewire devices specifically... if I run up on it, I'll be back...

D

[Amberience]

Mate, that doesn't seem like my problem at all. With the adaptor, I get no sound except for a click every so often. Without the adaptor I get sound, but it is broken up and drops out constantly.

The soundcard wont power up from the FW express card, so I've used the adaptor for the soundcard.

And if it was a grounding problem, surely USB devices would be affected to? My friends Emu worked fine... and... *goes away to check his PodXTLive's USB asio ability* .... yep, as I suspected... works fine. Perfectly fine. No drop outs, no clicks, no groundloop humming or anything of that ilk. Perfectly fine with the AC adaptor plugged into the laptop, and without it plugged into the laptop. Same as the Emu 0404.

The guy in the thread you linked me too, his soundcard seemed to be working fine. He was just getting noisy recordings from what I can tell. My soundcard with the laptop is nowhere near as successful as that! lmao. I appreciate your help though, any more ideas?

[Amberience]

The alesis is going back. Piss poor drivers make it a pain in the arse to use on my desktop, and because of the lack of a dedicated firewire interface on my laptop, I cannot use it for the mobility that I wanted.

The mobile factor was the only reason I bought it. I'm now considering a MOTU 828mkII USB2.0 - I know USB2.0 is fast enough to be able to do the work I want it to, and I know USB2.0 devices work fine with my laptop.

At this point, because of the drivers, I don't recommend the Alesis IO26. Very frequent dropouts in the audio signal on my desktop machine. Very sloppy implementation with non-asio programs (winamp, windows media player, etc..) and the direct monitoring program uses a shedload of CPU - not acceptable for professional recording.

[Diogenes]

Bummer. Looks like I can scratch that one off the list. Laptops are weird man. I have a Compaq V2508 laptop and I bought a Presonus FireBOX to use with it for portable recording. A month of trying, emailing, phoning Presonus and doing what they suggested... no go. The thing works GREAT on my work laptop, my wifes laptop, my friends... etc... just not THIS laptop. Frustrating eh? I kept it and gave it to my son to use for his musical adventures. He has been extremely pleased with it.

I also have an older Tascam US-122 that works perfectly with my Compaq lappy... so I use it even though it does not sound as good as the Presonus.

Good luck!

D

[norbury brook]

I've just sent my alesis 26 io back,the drivers for xp were dreadful,lots of dropouts. As I use a MacBookPro with boot camp i tried using cubase 4 under osx and it worked fine on the mac side.

FYI the fireface 800 works great with xp/Reaper.

MC

[Amberience]

My budget is very limited now. I can just about stretch to afford the MOTU usb2.0

[Gerry G]

You are probably well aware of what you wish to do but do not overlook the MOTU 8Pre. The limitiation is that it has only two analogue outs.

I considered the Alesis io26 and settled on a MOTU Traveller as I want the upgradeability of the pres and clock that Black something or other company can modify. Also it has an ok clock.

Other than that I did closely consider the 8 pre and only excluded it because I need a lot of flexibility in a live situation which the Traveller gives.

[Amberience]

Most of the MOTU stuff is far out of my price range though, I can only really afford £330.

Also, because my laptop doesn't have a firewire input and only has an expresscard input, I'm pretty sure that any firewire card would not work with the expresscard. Thus my resolve to get a usb2.0 one.

Which is kinda hard, because what I liked about the IO26 was that each input had its own gain control.

[Amberience]

One idea lurking around in my head is to:

1. Return and get refund for Alesis soundcard. £270.
2. Return and get refund for Dell laptop. £470.
3. Buy Mac-mini. £450.
4. Buy tft monitor that is still light and portable. £???.

But then I'm stuck on what interface to get. Basically I could afford £300 for an interface if I got the Mac-mini. I'd want 8 analog inputs, each with a trim/gain control.

Any ideas?

[Amberience]

Originally Posted by Amberience

One idea lurking around in my head is to:

1. Return and get refund for Alesis soundcard. £270.
2. Return and get refund for Dell laptop. £470.
3. Buy Mac-mini. £450.
4. Buy tft monitor that is still light and portable. £???.

But then I'm stuck on what interface to get. Basically I could afford £300 for an interface if I got the Mac-mini. I'd want 8 analog inputs, each with a trim/gain control.

Any ideas?

So this settles it... our guitarist has a friend who works at an Apple store. He can get 15% discount. So I'm definitely going to consider the apple mac-mini route.. in fact, its almost a certainty.

Dell said its fine to get a refund for the laptop. I'll get that by the end of next week. I'll get a refund for the Alesis, and a refund for the firewire express card. This gives me a total of: £799 to work with.

I would even consider selling my AMD desktop machine for a few hundred pounds, because the mac-mini could easily replace it:

* 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo
* 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512MB
* 80GB Serial ATA drive
* Mac OS X (British)

Best thing being, I'll be able to run windows and OSX.

[Gerry G]

I have decided to get the interface first. Still waiting for it to come but the guy at Sweetwater was fantastic with it.

I have Nicholas to thank for putting me onto Paul Allen at Sweetwater who listened (well read) very carefully about my concerns regarding the Firestudio in re both latency and hardware compatability.

My solution was to get the Traveler and take to to my friend's computer shop in Prahran. We play at his cafe so he is helpful. I will try it on his cheap but interesting duo core chinese laptops but these only have 4 pin firewire. That is ok as the six pins are for power and (I think the nine pins too). Trying to run 48v phantom power from a laptop battery would be very problematic anyway. I will get an external battery pack later for outdoor recording and recording in the bush away from mains power.

Not sure how Art got his mains power to work as the adapter seems to go up to 230v and we have 240v mains in Australia.

From what I gather both MOTU and RME stuff has very low latency but others are possible too. Of course if you just want to record and not use it in a live situation then it may be pretty easy to get an interface and just test it with laptops until you find one that works seamlessly.

Anyway my point was meant to be to use a simple solution and test the interface if possible first then load reaper on a USB key with a torture test project. Anyone able to suggest a suitable torture test project?

Then make sure it works from the key on the home or work system before taking the key and interface to a friendy laptop dealer and testing that it all works together on a damanding project.

As my friend owns the computer shop I will be testing the phantom power on a cardbus too just to see if it works but I think that will be too much to ask for.

I do like your Mac idea as some of my researches have ended up looking in that direction too.

Also Sweetwater and some other dealers have laptops dedicated to music so you could ask them to check it with the same sort of interface you are getting before ordering a laptop from them but their laptops are a bit more pricy than you may get in the 'garden variety' local stores.

Good luck. We are lucky that Reaper can install so easily that we can do these tests without having to take a laptop home to instal the software.

[sankoboy]

Latency is caused by the DVD/CD-ROM driver.
After you disable it you can see that latency problems will dissapear.
One more thing! IMPORTANT

Windows XP:
- the real time audio streaming works well, setting the audio driver to 1ms latency!!!
Windows Vista:
- Doesn't work to well. Your audio driver wont work with latency settings lower than 16ms.

==========
=SOLUTION=
==========
1) Download http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe wich is a latency meter (simple program).
2) Go to MyComputer -> Propperties -> Hardware -> Device Manager
3) Disable your DVD/CD-ROM drive.

[pipelineaudio]

Is the IO26 another DICE2 set?

[simpsongb]

OK...so I have had an IO26 for three months...and it works fine. My son uses a MacBook with PT 7.3...I use a Lenovo laptop with Reaper and a generic firewire card...and its all good.......for what its worth, the PCMCIA card for the laptop is a VIA chipset implementation of firewire....

SO I guess I don't get the problems with the IO26. I and my son can access all 8 inputs...all of the outputs...MIDI in and out work fine. We even have a firewire drive chained off the back of the IO26.

For my money, its a lovely interface. Quiet mic pre-amps..lots of flexibility.....go figure....

[Baer]

I've been using an iO26 with a nearly-four-year-old Dell Inspiron 5100 with excellent results. It won't replace my FF800, but for the price, I think it's great -- reasonably quiet, portable, great input and output configuration. My only problem has been with the level meter lights. I'm returning my second unit because the lights for channels 5 through 8 don't work. (On the first unit, it was only channel 5.) But I am returning it for another iO26 because I really do like the unit.

[Amberience]

So for anyone that cares... it seems that Alesis have updated the drivers, because people are now using these units with no problems.

I wish I had stuck with it for a while instead of getting my Tascam unit. The Tascam is good, but it doesn't have lots of outputs. It has ADAT connectivity, but I don't want yet another hunk of equipment taking up space.

The IO26 for the price was brilliant. Lots of inputs and outputs. All the inputs were XLR, so you could mic up an entire drumkit if you wanted. You could send out a bunch of monitoring mixes - with the Tascam I can only monitor the main output, kinda blows.

So in the future when I get some cash, I may end up selling the Tascam unit and getting the Alesis one again.

[Baer]

I remain pleased with my iO26 as a good, easily portable unit for the money. And after returning the first two units to MusiciansFriend, I finally got one that didn’t have the level meter light problem. Turns out the first two were UK units, not USA units, and that appears to have been the source of the problem. Why they were sending UK units to San Francisco, I’ll never know.