Alesis MultiMix firewire with Logic Express

[createdculture]

Recently I moved in with my band and we have started to record using Logic Express 7.2 with an Alesis MultiMix firewire mixer. There have been a number of problems...maybe someone can help me out.

We tracked the drums first with no real problem. 2 overheads, 1 snare and 1 kick. Pretty straight-forward. When it came time to track guitars, the problems started. First, there was bad latency so we began to adjust the buffer settings to eliminate that. We got rid of the latency and tracked the guitars and everything sounded fine....or so we thought. There seems to be static on one of the guitar tracks during playback. If you take that guitar track and pan it to the left, it cleans up. Pan it back right? Static! Everything else sounds clean, so it's really a puzzling situation. The real ticker is that you can take the other guitar track (it's a stereo track) and pan the left guitar (nice and clean) over to the right and then it produces static as well! Any ideas what's going on with this right channel? It's not a bad cable or a setting because it's only on this one guitar track. Retracking is not a problem but it's just puzzling.

My main question is about buffer settings. Using the buffer setting that eliminates the recording latency seems to throw off playback. I opened up iTunes last night to listen to a track and it was nothing but static. I adjusted the buffer and it cleaned it back up. Is there an "average" buffer setting or is it entirely system dependent? We're using a pmac g4 1gig -- not the fasetest system out there but we're not recording 10 tracks at once.

Also, is it possible to have to use more than one buffer setting? One for recording and then one for playback, or should there be "the right one" that works for both?

The MultiMix has it's own control panel with buffer settings and Logic has a control panel with buffer settings so I'm not sure which one to be adjusting the most. I assume adjust logic's buffer to get rid of recording latency, and adjust the MultiMix's buffer if I have system audio playback issues.

Sorry for the redundant questions, I've always had a pretty simple setup (m-box) so using two pieces of non-proprietary gear has been difficult to troubleshoot.

Thanks for the help!!

 

[zimv20]

is it possible to have to use more than one buffer setting? One for recording and then one for playback, or should there be "the right one" that works for both?

generally, you use a smaller buffer for recording to reduce latency, and a larger one at mixtime to handle all the calculations. there's no standard value, it's whatever works. it also doesn't affect what gets recorded, so you can record different parts at different latencies.

regarding your mixer and its panning weirdness, seems like the mixer is faulty.

 

[createdculture]

generally, you use a smaller buffer for recording to reduce latency, and a larger one at mixtime to handle all the calculations. there's no standard value, it's whatever works. it also doesn't affect what gets recorded, so you can record different parts at different latencies.

regarding your mixer and its panning weirdness, seems like the mixer is faulty.

I should have mentioned that, regarding the panning issue, that I am using Logic to pan the tracks left and right - not the mixer.

I guess I'll try to get Alesis on the phone because now whenever I try to record a track there is static when checking levels. It looks like the levels are clipping but there's no reason why they should be. I'm pretty stumped.

 

[zimv20]

I should have mentioned that, regarding the panning issue, that I am using Logic to pan the tracks left and right - not the mixer.

are you monitoring through the mixer?

do you get this issue when you listen through headphones, and have you tried the headphone outputs on both the mixer and mac?

 

[createdculture]

are you monitoring through the mixer?

do you get this issue when you listen through headphones, and have you tried the headphone outputs on both the mixer and mac?

I am monitoring through Logic but the mix is running back from the computer through the mixer and into my studio monitors.

You know, I DID listen through both the headphone outs on the mixer and on the mac and the mixer gives static while the mac does not. That means everything is recording fine, but playback has static. Any ideas?

Also, when I try to DI guitars using the amp's direct out (tech 21 and line 6 amp's that are balanced and meant for this) I get static when trying to set levels on the guitars. I even unplugged the firewire cable and still had static so it can't be a buffer setting! Faulty mixer, right? Well, get this...when I plug in a microphone (dynamic or condenser) the sound is perfect! Easy fix is to mic the amps but still--I'd like the option of DI if I'd like, as I know it's possible.

This situation seems to defy logic, or maybe it just exceeds my ability to troubleshoot.

 

[john82]

i'm not a big expert in logicpro, but it looks to me like your computer just isn't powerful enough to deal with a heavy program like logic...

i think that might explain some of the problems you encountered.

anyway i would recommend switching logic to other recording software like cubase, there's alot less trouble and bugs with cubase in my experience!

Johnny from guitars101