I recently purchased a presonus firepod second hand. I’m running windows 10 32 bit with audacity 2.2.1. I want to be able to record multiple microphones (ideally up to 7) at once. I have looked a lot online and can’t seem to find any help other than building my own audacity build with ASIO. I know the firepod works as I have been able to record into audacity with it, however I can get at most 2 channels right now. Any advice is appreciated, thank you.
I’ve never done multi-track recording, but I think you are better-off using a “real” multi-track DAW. You interface may have come with Cubase. Did you get any software with yours? Does it run on Windows 10?
Although a DAW is quite a bit more complex than an audio editor like Audacity, it’s also a lot more powerful and the whole multi-track recording & mixing process should be easier (once you’ve got it set-up and figured-out).
[u]Here is some information on multi-channel recording with Audacity[/u] (if you haven’t found it already).
Did you Google it before you bought it?
Windows 10 demands software drivers written for it. Older drivers will be unstable or just fail.
I normally don’t pay any attention to reviews but these were interesting. One bad review had it back to Presonus multiple times and then just finally gave up. One of the good reviews praised Presonus’s return policy when they sent it back. One reviewer claimed it worked OK with Windows XP or before. Windows 3.1??
Having a multi-track interface arrive as stereo isn’t unusual. I suspect if you did it right, you should be able to get any two adjacent channels to do that. The desperation method for multi-channel if you can’t get it to work any other way is to mount it Stereo.
Audacity does support multi-channel recording, but it’s not easy.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/multi-channel-recording-in-audacity/15644/1
Some of these were written before Win10, so may not work right, either.
Bottom line, if you can’t find Windows 10 drivers for it, see if you can get your money back.
Koz
I have looked at the wiki, which is why I thought a firepod may work. Unfortunately it was a craigslist purchase so I don’t have the cubase cd or a feasible return. Is it possible it could be the sound card?
Apologies if this is a double post.
Unfortunately it was a craigslist purchase so no cubase CD and no real return option. I had read the wiki before and based on that assumed the firepod would work. Is it possible it is a soundcard issue? I installed drivers under windows 7 compatibility as they wouldn’t install with windows 10. Maybe there is an unofficial version I can find? Just spitballing.
Thanks for your help so far.
Is it possible it is a soundcard issue?
No. You’re holding the soundcard. USB or FireWire connections go around the built-in soundcard. There was a recent post from someone who exclusively used external devices because his built-in hadn’t worked in years
So not only does it have to announce itself to the operating system but it has to build the connections for multi-channel. This is also the software that can make the operating system fall over if you do it wrong. These drivers go way inside the OS.
Audacity gets the sound from Windows, not the device, so there’s no good way around it.
Are you going to be calling in and out of Skype? So everybody’s going to be on headphones, right? If you don’t do that, a little bit of the Skype sound is going to appear on everybody’s track, making it impossible to mix or correct it. If you really upset the sound gods, it will have an echo in it.
Where are you going to plug the headphones in?
If you don’t have an external connection, then you can have a multi-track show with relatively no trouble. Assuming you have a quiet room.
Koz
Going to be individual microphones in the same room sorry for brevity on phone
The presonus firepod’s main problem is that it’s not 64 bit capable. Even if presonus would want to make a new driver, they couldn’t make one for modern computers.
Unfortunately it was a craigslist purchase so no cubase CD
You can buy Cubase (looks like $100 USD for the basic version) and you can download a free trial first. Or, there are several other [u]DAWs[/u] to choose from. Just about all Windows DAWs support ASIO drivers (or standard Windows drivers) so if your drivers work with Win10, you should be OK. REAPER is probably the best bargain. It’s $60 for home & small business use. That’s the full version… There’s no “lite” version.
Since you are able to record 2-channels with Audacity, obviously the Windows drivers are working (at least to some extent).
If you buy a new interface it may, or may not, come with software. (PreSonus now has their own DAW called Studio One.)