[Solved for now] Help with Focusrite 18i8

[jeo49]

42 minutes ago, Chuck E Baby said:

I have to agree with these sentiments. I use a Focusrite 18i8 and it has been rock solid through Sonar and Bandlab (using Melodyne as well but there has been an issue with Melodyne 4.2 so im using a previous version).

I'm glad that you had a good experience.  Mine has not been quite as smooth.

[jeo49]

34 minutes ago, Variorum said:

Here's one more thing for everyone to add to their drop-out troubleshooting checklist... 

A few years ago when I started switching over to SSDs, I installed a third-party disk cache manager (inadvertently) called Crucial Storage Executive. After DAYS of trying to find the cause of sporadic drop-outs and glitches during playback and recording, LatencyMon hinted at a process related to that cache program. Once I disabled and removed it, my drop-out problem was gone forever.

Just something else to check for... 

That is a really good suggestion. Thank you.

[jeo49]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

Before you do that... just in case this works, try deleting AUD.INI from %APPDATA%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core

I found after changing settings, or re-installing drivers, this can get corrupted. 

CbB will recreate it the next time you launch.

Oh - and if you do upgrade your firmware/mix control to the beta version, you'll still want to delete AUD.INI, so that CbB can generate it with the new driver settings.

I have upgraded the mix control and drivers and deleted aud.ini.  About to give CbB a try again.  

Question - did the executable I downloaded for the Scarlett beta driver actually update the firmware on the interface?  After the upgrade the About tab on theScarlet MixControl says firmware is 6.08,  Scarlett MixControl is 1.10 and and Driver is 4.54.104-715.   

Is that where I should be?

Thanks ever so much for all your help. I really am impressed by how quickly and fully folks responded.  Much appreciated.  

Here's hoping things work better with CbB now.

 

[chuckebaby]

29 minutes ago, jeo49 said:

I'm glad that you had a good experience.  Mine has not been quite as smooth.

Have you tried uninstalling the drivers to the Focusrite and reinstalling them on a different USB port ? Its critical to use the same USB port you used when installing the drivers to (it asks to plug the device in before completing the driver install).

I wore a USB port out once from constant plugging/unplugging. Took me forever to figure out what was causing it.

[msmcleod]

26 minutes ago, jeo49 said:

I have upgraded the mix control and drivers and deleted aud.ini.  About to give CbB a try again.  

Question - did the executable I downloaded for the Scarlett beta driver actually update the firmware on the interface?  After the upgrade the About tab on theScarlet MixControl says firmware is 6.08,  Scarlett MixControl is 1.10 and and Driver is 4.54.104-715.   

Is that where I should be?

Thanks ever so much for all your help. I really am impressed by how quickly and fully folks responded.  Much appreciated.  

Here's hoping things work better with CbB now.

 

I'm not sure if it has to be honest. Although in saying that, I don't think that MixControl or the driver will work with the older firmware.

You should have had some sort of prompt when installing the drivers or starting MixControl that it was upgrading the firmware.

If not, you can run the firmware updater: C:\Program Files\FocusriteUSB\ScarlettDfu.exe

My firmware (on my 18i20 anyhow) is saying v1056.

I'll check the version on my 6i6 as soon as I can.

[EDIT] - my 6i6 is showing firmware version 1056 too.

Edited April 11, 2019 by msmcleod

[jeo49]

Thanks Mark

I just did a recording test with the new drivers and CbB    I put my mic in front of one monitor, plugged into Scarlett,  played some podcast and recorded it with CbB.   Simultaneously I ran LatencyMon.  I got 30 mins recording with no issues.  LatencyMon reports suitable for real-time audio with no drop outs,  I just listened to the entire recording and there were no drop outs.

Ok so that is definitely a significant step forward.   I am going to keep things just the way they are for now and try making some music with some synths, add some vocals by mic and use melodyne to correct my awful singing.  Here is hoping . I will update after a few days. 

Thanks so much Mark , I think you were the one with my solution.

cheers

Ted

[msmcleod]

6 minutes ago, jeo49 said:

Thanks Mark

I just did a recording test with the new drivers and CbB    I put my mic in front of one monitor, plugged into Scarlett,  played some podcast and recorded it with CbB.   Simultaneously I ran LatencyMon.  I got 30 mins recording with no issues.  LatencyMon reports suitable for real-time audio with no drop outs,  I just listened to the entire recording and there were no drop outs.

Ok so that is definitely a significant step forward.   I am going to keep things just the way they are for now and try making some music with some synths, add some vocals by mic and use melodyne to correct my awful singing.  Here is hoping . I will update after a few days. 

Thanks so much Mark , I think you were the one with my solution.

cheers

Ted

Fantastic - so glad it worked out for you.

[razor7music]

I think the moral to the story here is, don't ask Dell  for advice on pro-grade audio interfaces!

[jeo49]

38 minutes ago, razor7music said:

I think the moral to the story here is, don't ask Dell  for advice on pro-grade audio interfaces!

Seriously, I could not stop laughing with this comment.   It is so true! 

In my humble defense though I was trying to ensure that I did nothing to hamper my warranty with Dell and to make sure everything on this computer that I might add has been tested and is known to be compatible.  I would not do this for any external USB device, but since I was considering cracking the case and putting  a card in (until I was wisely advise herein not to)  I asked Dell about proven compatibility.    I own all of the software on my computer. 

But you are totally correct their technical knowledge does not extend to pro-grade interfaces, or software, or hardware or ...

To me the moral of the story is perseverance.   When I had the extensive talks/tests with Focusrite tech service a few months ago his parting advice was that I could try their beta drivers if all else failed.   I didn't but I should have. 

cheers and thanks for all the attention that this post got.  Much appreciated.

Ted 

Edited April 11, 2019 by jeo49

[John Vere]

If all else fails I would ditch the Dell and try a different computer. My son had issues with Dell's BIOS not performing smoothly at all with audio.  Off the shelf computers can sometimes be so full of weird bloatware that  gets in the way of using them for audio or video production

[RobertWS]

Another thumbs down on Sound Blaster.  They screw their customers.

[jeo49]

14 hours ago, Cactus Music said:

If all else fails I would ditch the Dell and try a different computer. My son had issues with Dell's BIOS not performing smoothly at all with audio.  Off the shelf computers can sometimes be so full of weird bloatware that  gets in the way of using them for audio or video production

You are probably correct.  My XPS 8930 is 9 months old and I have upgraded the bios 3 times already.  I think Dell issued these to address Intel chip vulnerabilities (Spectre, Meltdown, Foreshadow??)    Each time I update bios I have to re-authenticate some software, such as Melodyne.  In fact I ran out of authentications and they had to give me more!   

I am just an amateur and this computer is the best I could afford and a new one is not in the cards.  I can see someone in a professional environment would need better, more reliable hardware.   But yes, I strongly suspect something is going on deep inside the bios/hardware/Windows 10 complex that is messing up audio.

Good comment. 

Ted

[jeo49]

39 minutes ago, RobertWS said:

Another thumbs down on Sound Blaster.  They screw their customers.

Safe to say we can put the SB question to bed now.  

cheers

[mettelus]

You may want to consider editting the original post to something like "[Solved for now] Help with Focusrite 18i8"

Otherwise this thread will get SB comments till the cows come home... at that point GirlDairy's thread will come back to life.

Edited April 12, 2019 by mettelus

[CJ Jacobson]

Did someone say Sound-blaster? 

[jeo49]

27 minutes ago, mettelus said:

You may want to consider editting the original post to something like "[Solved for now] Help with Focusrite 18i8"

Otherwise this thread will get SB comments till the cows come home... at that point GirlDairy's thread will come back to life.

aha!  I did not know that.  I will do that.  Thanks

[Kev]

On 4/12/2019 at 1:26 AM, Byron Dickens said:

Why in God's name would you downgrade a Focusrite to a SoundBlaster?

On 4/12/2019 at 1:43 AM, msmcleod said:

I have to agree with Byron here.

I've got a 18i20, a 6i6 and a 2i2 - all 1st gen, and all working with CbL (on different PC's) with a latency of 1.5ms. I hardly get any dropouts, and if I do I just up the ASIO buffer size.

Definitely stick with your existing interface. I don't have any experience of Focusrite myself, but despite this I feel that I could confidently recommend Focusrite products for use with Sonar/CbB, based on what I have read on these forums over the last few years.

[James Argo]

Since BandLab also releases mobile audio interfaces- I realy hope BandLab will expand it's hardware department to make multi I/O PCIe interfaces. I found no simple multi I/O PCIe cards like we used to have on old PCI slot (like M-Audio Delta 1010 or Terratec Phase 88) for below $500. USB is fine, but most of our USB ports are used by other devices, while many PCIe slots left untouched on our motherboard.