Hi all,
I have a alesis io/14, firewire. i have a texas instruments firewire card and a reasonably fast computer. when I try to record, just a test with one mic, the recording starts, and within a second it stops, a split second later it starts, then a escond later it stops, and carries on like that. it has a rhythm to it, its not erratic. i have changed a few parameters on the alesis, and this problem was also the same on another alesis device that i connected, but i thought that alesis was faulty, so bought this other one, same problem. I did try to run the alesis on win10, but it was not recognised, so loaded win 7 and it loaded and all seemed good. I have searched google but can’t find an answer. Any help much appreciated.
Morning,
i was half way through this post and had a 5 second power cut, so think its been deleted and will start again.
WIN 7. pro. computer is Dell 3020. Audacity 2.4.2. interface is Alesis io/14. Firewire, using texas instruments firewire chip card. The Alesis has 4 phantom power inputs and 4 jack plug inputs plus midi, but is only capable of any combination of 4 at one time.
So, the initial problem has been overcome by changing the input/output drop down boxes to windows direct sound, the next drop down to the alesis microphone, the next to stereo recording channel, and the last to primary sound driver.
I want to record using 4 mics, one in each Alesis channel.
I cannot see any way in Audacity of setting it for 4 mono channel recordings??
I have been into “tracks” and added new, but whether it be mono or stereo that i add, it will only record on one stereo track, and to get that to work i have to change the parameters of the dropdown input boxes to a different input and output, as the ones that worked on one input will revert to the recording stopping every split second, then moving on for a second, then stopping again, and just continues like that for as long as you like.
I found a post where the contributor said to go to EDIT>PREFERENCES>DEVICES>CHANNELS.
and there would be an option to select record multiple channels, but all i have is either 1 mono or 2 stereo.
Thanks for your time, look forward to some ideas, have a good day.
This comes down to drivers.
Audacity cannot ship with ASIO support due to licensing issues. In order to be able to record 4 channels, there must be Windows drivers for the device that support 4 channel recording. Unfortunately it is quite common for manufacturers to only support 2 channels (stereo) with Windows drivers.
Check in the Windows Sound control panel to see if there is a recording device listed that supports 4 channel recording. If there is, then use that device in Audacity’s recording device selection. If there isn’t a 4 channel device, then you will need to use a different program for recording 4 channels simultaneously. (The Alesis io/14. Firewire normally ships with Cubase LE)
I cannot see any way in Audacity of setting it for 4 mono channel recordings??
Audacity will only record from one “thing” or device. Sometimes, if you have a well-behaved, multi-channel mixer or interface, you can coerce Audacity into recording more than stereo, but that’s not always possible.
You can get four independent channels with perfect reliability by using two stereo recorders. Each recorder has its Left and Right split so Left is one performance and Right is the other.
One of the recorders exports its stereo show as perfect quality WAV to the other for editing. The only technical problem with this is the possibility of the two sampling rates not matching. Match up the first words or sounds and roll to the end of the show and sort how far off they are. Effect > Change Speed to one of them. You only have to find the offset time once unless you change either recorder.
Koz
Match up the first words or sounds and roll to the end of the show and sort how far off they are.
You can make this process enormously easier by coordinating a clap. At the beginning of the show, everybody, in sync, yells “One Two Three” and claps their hands. This is the home version of the movie clapboard and for a lot of the same reasons.
For the first show ever, do it at the end, too, so you can get the speed change number. Do Not use Effect > Change Pitch or Effect > Change Tempo. Those can cause sound damage.
Koz
This may be easier than you think. It doesn’t have to be a fire-breathing gaming computer to record stereo sound. Many laptops should be able to handle it. A Stereo Line-Level connection can be done with one of the Behringer adapters. UCA-202 or its sisters.
These may be a little hard to come by depending on your location because of the sickness.
Borrowing a laptop and buying a simple adapter can be a lot easier than struggling with compiling the Audacity software or searching out a multi-channel machine or other software.
And wearing your Producer hat for a second. Is recording separate channels worth all the fuss as opposed to recording a mixed show?
Koz
There is one gotcha with this technique. There’s no shortage of “Stereo USB Adapters” on the market. Most of them support stereo headphones and mono microphone recording. They are designed to be a direct replacement for the headset connection on the side of many laptops. Those only record one channel.
Run away.
Koz
Hi all,
Thanks all for the varied input. I will explain the situation.
The band ; 3 guitars, drums, singer plus rhythm guitarist sings.
For the last six years i have ben recording our sessions on a 1980’s JVC ghetto blaster, which is stereo, so i used two mic’s, one i place in from of the PA speaker, the other in a corner out of direct line of any amps or drums. the recordings were later downloaded into Audacity, which gave me control over the stereo channel recordings, the result in most cases was pretty good.
Only downside with this method is that the tape is not playing back at precise speed, but not too noticeable, and I cannot control instrument volume, and our bass player likes to blow the speakers up, so if i could place four mics in front of the amps I could get much better results.
We have been into a recording studio, and they had the drummer in a room on his own, and the rest of us had a mic in front of each amp, and the result was pretty good, except the singer had to sing to the backing afterwards wearing earphones, and having never done that before, it was pretty much a disaster.
So, thats the intention, which leads me to wonder what happens if the interface had 12 inputs for recording? I thought the idea of a firewire card is that its powerful enough to carry a very large amount of information. Any suggestions?
It’s not a problem of getting the information into the machine, it’s getting Audacity to “know” what it is once it gets there. That’s what the driver software does. Since everybody knows what stereo is, the default on a lot of multi-channel interfaces is to present in groups of two. Channels 1 and 2 show up as Stereo A. Channels 3 and 4 show up as Stereo B. You get to choose one Stereo.
The work is presented as many different stereo devices and Audacity will record from one device.
If you need all the channels at once, that’s when you get the special software that knows what the interface is presenting and what the recording software is expecting. Everybody has to hold hands.
This is a larger Alesis (the instruction book is for several units), but looking at group 2, do you really have two connections there instead of eight?
Koz
hi kozikowski,
Thanks for the input. I just downloaded cakewalk, quite an inferior programme compared to audacity, but i had the same problem, would only let me record on two channels no matter what I tried, so there is a common denominator in there somewhere. If its sound card drivers, can this problem be overcome? I have another audio interface that has 12 inputs, how does the manufacturer expect you to use them if i can’t even get 4 channels to work.
Do you think there’s a way out or should I stick to the 40 year old tape recorder.
thanks for your help.
Do you think there’s a way out or should I stick to the 40 year old tape recorder.
Probably not. Your regular soundcard should work better than a cassette recorder (if you can get your soundcard to work) but neither one has a proper balanced (3-wire) microphone input for a stage/studio mic…
There can be advantages to recording without a computer but you’ll generally want to edit on a computer and I’m sure you’d want to digitize the tape. A [u]digital “portaStudio”[/u] might be a good option.
the recording starts, and within a second it stops, a split second later it starts, then a escond later it stops, and carries on like that. it has a rhythm to it, its not erratic. i have changed a few parameters on the alesis,
Often it’s “something else” related to multitasking that’s interrupting the audio. Multitasking is at the root of most “recording problems”, and your computer is always multitasking even if you are running only one application. …And whatever’s interrupting doesn’t have to be using a lot of CPU power… It just has to hog the system for a few milliseconds too long and you get buffer overflow and a dropout/glitch.
There is a FREE online book about optimizing your computer for audio called [u]Glitch Free[/u]
I just downloaded cakewalk, quite an inferior programme compared to audacity
Your interface should have come with Cubase which is a competitor to Cakewalk. Cuebase or Cakewalk should be better than Audacity for multitrack recording & mixing but Cakewalk seems to be “weird” since Bandcamp took over and made it free. There are several other multitracking [u]DAWs[/u] and I believe they all support ASIO drivers, but most are not free and they won’t help if you have a driver problem or a Firewire problem. (And a full DAW is quite a bit more complex than a “simple” audio editor like Audacity.
This is a larger Alesis (the instruction book is for several units), but looking at group 2, do you really have two connections there instead of eight?
Do you have an answer to that up the thread?
Koz
Hi Koz,
Sorry, I didn’t quite understand the question, but on my alesis, they are saying it has 14 outputs, but what that actually means is they are counting all the inputs, which are:
channel one and two have a XLR and one 1/4" jack input each, with switching from mic to guitar. channels 3 and 4 have XLR and 1/4" jack inputs with no switch, and say “mic/line”. there are also two switches to apply phantom power, to either 1 and 2, or 3 and 4. so that is 8 inputs. on the rear are two headphone jack sockets, next to another two jack sockets marked “outs 1 and 2”, so we are now up to 12 . then we have midi in and out, a ADAT in, and two other inputs marked S/PDIF. so, I think i have only 4 actual channels to tecord from?
Thanks for taking an interest, all help is much appreciated as I was just expecting to plug 4 mics in, do a dummy run, and that was it. I also have a firewire edirol 101, which was purchased from new, used only 3 or 4 times through a laptop with a firewire port, put in its box with the power adaptor and shoved in a cupboard. I got it out a month ago, I purchased a firewirecard, (TI) fitted it into my desktop computer,then spent days trying to get it to work, the computer would not recognise it on win. 10 or 7. or 8.
The device manager showed the Texas instruments card and i tried downloading all different drivers, but it never worked although all the lights lit up when it was plugged into the firewire port. so I then purchased a second hand alesis , the one that looks like two of my models stuck together, that only half functioned, so i opened it up and one half had burnt out, so that was returned to the seller. This has been a nightmare from start to finish. I saw one of the adverts for cakewalk that was saying that cakewalk is ideal for studio style recordings, 3 or 4 mic’s for the drums, other mic’s for vocals, and others for instruments, which lead me to think it was definitely going to work with just four mic’s…
Hi Koz,
I just looked at my posts and it seems i didn’t send my reply to you, or would it be held up by the mediators? I won’t retype it for a while, as it was quite a long answer.
thanks.
or would it be held up by the mediators?
Yes. To prevent spam posts by new forum members have to be approved by a human. After some number of legitimate posts they will show-up immediately.
Also, there was a brief outage of the forum due to essential maintenance work (now completed).
I think the answer is in there somewhere.
With respect to this.
In group 2, you only have two connections, right, not eight? If so, then that’s the end of the world for the desperation method. I wonder why they did that. The picture is of the larger Alesis (one manual) which had one analog out for every one XLR microphone connection. You could use it as a Mic Pre Strip and do the digitizing somewhere else. Can’t do that with yours if only two XLR microphones are presented on the back.
Your interface should have come with Cubase which is a competitor to Cakewalk. Cuebase or Cakewalk should be better than Audacity for multitrack recording & mixing but Cakewalk seems to be “weird” since Bandcamp took over and made it free.
Cakewalk is, or was, a MIDI sequencer and editor and used to be free in the fourteenth century. That’s how I found out what MIDI was and I could, if I wanted to, play a MIDI piano concerto on a sackbut. It’s possible they’re trying to return it to its roots.
Cuebase on the other hand might work well enough to get you going if you still have the floppies around and still have a machine that can play and install them.
We’ve been dancing around this, but that Alesis is no longer supported or offered for sale new (that I can find).
Back to the closet and back to the tape.
Voice recording with mixer console foldback in your headphones takes getting used to. There are voice performers that only use one muff because it throws them off so badly.
That’s from the recording session for “Lilo and Stitch.”
Koz
Hi koz,
So it looks like I am pretty much not going to get more than two mic’s to record at the same time, which pretty much defeats my project. The Edirol is an old model, we bought it about 10 years ago, then it was put in a cupboard and forgotten, but why it didn’t work is a mystery, unless the drivers were incorrect.
I do know someone that writes programmes for a job, but also writes programmes for his own projects, so I will see what info he can get about asio drivers. We also phoned a behringer outlet and enquired whether a certain model would record from all 6 mic inputs at once, the salesman got a technical chap to get in touch, and he said " yes, no problem". So, I will ask my friend who it was that we phoned, and ask them again, but this time see what, apart from the behringer interface, we need for it to work, and what DAW it would work with, but I’m sure he said it would work with audacity.
I will keep you up to date with what i find out, as no doubt its of interest to anyone thinking of trying to achieve the same as me.
thanks again. 
I you use a DAW that supports ASIO, I think ASIO drivers don’t care about the Windows version (except it probably has to match 32-bits or 64-bits) so I assume as long as your hardware is working the ASIO drivers should work with an ASIO application. But at this point, we don’t know if your interface and/or Firewire are working properly (or if they are “working together” properly).
but why it didn’t work is a mystery, unless the drivers were incorrect.
I do know someone that writes programmes for a job, but also writes programmes for his own projects, so I will see what info he can get about asio drivers.
It wouldn’t hurt to ask him but in general you have to know “everything” about the hardware to write a driver so drivers are usually written & supplied for the specific hardware (and the specific operating system) by the hardware manufacturer.* I think the Linux guys sometimes write their own drivers and maybe they get some information from the chip manufacturer so it’s not always impossible but it is a “big job”.
Or, there are standard Microsoft-supplied drivers so sometimes the hardware is designed to work with those. For example most “cheap” USB audio devices are “class compliant” so they are plug-and-play with the standard Microsoft supplied drivers.
but this time see what, apart from the behringer interface, we need for it to work, and what DAW it would work with, but I’m sure he said it would work with audacity.
It might work but I wouldn’t count-on Audacity working as a multi-track recorder. 
A full-DAW will multitrack record so if you buy another interface include the cost of a DAW into your budget (if the interface doesn’t come with software). PreSonus makes the Studio One DAW so probably all of their interfaces come with a (limited) version of Studio One.**
Any multi-channel interface should work with any multitracking DAW as long as you have the “right” drivers. Most DAWs support both ASIO & Windows drivers but some interfaces only come with Windows and OS X drivers so there’s usually no problem getting the hardware & software to work together (as long as the DAW is designed for multitracking).
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- There is a “universal” ASIO4ALL driver that allows an ASIO application to work with hardware that doesn’t have real ASIO drivers. It acts like a “translator”, replacing part of the “driver stack” so there are still Windows drivers communicating directly with the hardware. It does NOT work the other way around… It won’t make a non-ASIO application like Audacity work with ASIO hardware/drivers.
** I don’t own any PreSonus stuff but I like the way they integrate the hardware & software. They make some (not cheap) mixers that double as multi-channel interfaces and/or as a control surface for Studio One.