Topic: FW410 newbie needs help

[silverbullet]

Just got a laptop and 410 recently and wanted to test it out in the living room first beforet the weekend.

Have Win XP operating system and WavLab 5.0a. I also updated with the lastest 410 driver (from July) from m-audio's website.

I can't seem to get any signal from the 410. I think I don't have the setting correct on the 410. V3 is working fine. I tried the TOS link and coaxial digital connections and neither seem to help much. The only light I'm getting on the 410 is the blue light. No green signal lights and nothing coming from the headphone jack on the 410 as well.

What buttons exactly should be pressed on the 410? The thin instruction manual is no use to me. I worked on this for hours today. I'll continue tomorrow morning.

[caymanreview]

use the menu for the 410 on your pc, and choose what signal you want, and mute the rest

[silverbullet]

K, I'll try that after work. I wasn't even aware of a firewire 410 menu but I remember seeing the icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen. think that will pull it up.

I did find under the Wave Lab recording menu about three M-audio card options and none of them seemed to have worked. +T

[caymanreview]

that should solve your problem i would assume

does the light that indicates digital input light up when you feed it a coax/optical signal?

im not sure what works by default with the basic menu in default. i know the mic inputs are set correctly to use while it is in default

im running a oade warm mod 410 > lappy @ 24/96 with XP pro

[silverbullet]

I am making progess. The firewire menu did the trick. I muted all but the S/PDIF. I think I also had to choose the correct sync source from the menu as well. The menu displays the correct sample rate 44.1 vs 96 etc... I was able to record a few seconds just for starters. Seems that sometimes the computer can't find the correct sound card but it usually comes around. I did go under my windows control panel and choose the 410 S/PDIF as my default recorder in a couple of spots. Hope that helps. It's all good and fun. I'll try some 3hr plus recordings with the split feature at 1900MB and review for gaps and crackles that some have reported.

thanks for the help. Now I can move onto some other projects for my stand. Maybe I can get that done today (wishful thinking) and upload some photos.

oh btw: when recording 24/96 i get a comment that my 80 GB HD can only hold a little more than 4 hrs. Damn, that's a lot of freakn memory. What do tapers do at festivals. Bring an external hard drive and somehow record to that? I just noticed my lappie came with my hard drive partitioned into two sections. The main section was only 9GB and the othe was about 55GB. I changed my save file to drive D and the comment came up "28hr of recording time"

My gear bag is getting heavy as is. I seem to remember a PC card that had a bunch of audio wires, one being a coaxial input. Wouldn't that make a lot more sense to use than bringing the FW 410?

Also, is it ok or normal to keep my 80GB hard drive into two partitions? There must be some effecient reason why a new computer comes this way. The bulk of the space is empty with two folders for images and media.

[caymanreview]

i have heard of several people having problems when using 2 or more partitions. i myself had problems with my newest lappy when it had 2 partitions. first thing i did was lay down a fresh clean install of xp pro w/out partitions

the pc card you were talking about is the vx pocket, there are a couple variations, vx pocket v2 and the vx pocket 440, both can be had on ebay. the 440 is capable of multitracking like 4 tracks but only one digital at a time i believe. these cards are great, i ran one for quite some time with my picturebook, wish i had never sold it. BUT the kicker is they have HUGE dongles with all the inputs/outputs for the card. such a hassle in the field and causes alot of problems when the weight of the dongle pulls it out of the card slightly. i had a custom made cable with only s/pdif in/out. that was sweet!

try this to customize XP for audio:
http://www.musicxp.net/
there are definantly some good things in there for us

what kind of batteries are you using for the 410?

[silverbullet]

The vx pocket still allowed 24/96 recording?

I was afraid I might need to format and reinstall Windows XP again. I'm kind of hesitant because the new lappie came with no installation disks. Instead, I made recovery discs, 2 dvdr's and 1 cdr so I should be able to format and use them to reinstall everything. I'm used to having a win xp installation disc tough. Sucks, cause I know it will take me a day to do it all. I'm taping the next two nights. Any idea what the reported problems were and if they were on a fairly new computer? I have a 1.5 centrino chip in mine with 512RAM. CPU usage doesn't appear excessive  +T

[caymanreview]

you should be allright, ive recorded with both one partition and multiple partitions. just test and see

i have the install disc for XP pro, thats why i went that way. my new home pc had the deal with making my own restore discs with a dvd and a cdr, kinda wierd

vx-pocket is limited to 24/48, that is one thing that i left out. that is the single reason i ditched mine.

[silverbullet]

you should be allright, ive recorded with both one partition and multiple partitions. just test and see

i have the install disc for XP pro, thats why i went that way. my new home pc had the deal with making my own restore discs with a dvd and a cdr, kinda wierd

vx-pocket is limited to 24/48, that is one thing that i left out. that is the single reason i ditched mine.

Good reason to ditch it. It's only a matter of time before Grace makes a V3 with a firewire output (I hope). Grace, you hear this?

I'll test out the two partion hard drive. I don't foresee problems. I'll ask my computer know it all friend in NYC. Still, I wish I had all the installation disks instead of the recovery discs I made. Do I need to boot up in DOS mode or something to do a complete format? btw: setup image

[caymanreview]

you shouldnt have to boot up in DOS. i know quite a bit about pc's but nothing extraordinary

im not sure you can even choose to use one partition with a restore disc. i couldnt with mine for my sony laptop. it just does 2 partitions automatically. i had to use the xp pro install disc to format the drive and then chose specifically in the install to only have the one partition

[silverbullet]

I was afraid of that

I do have a win xp install disk that came with last Dell home computer. It should work. I've had to format my home computer a few times so I'm familar with all the steps. I think my lappie win xp might be a bit different. Not sure it's worth the risk right now for me to format everything just to have one partition. I'll wait and watch for problems at this point. Then format if I have to.

[caymanreview]

an xp install disc can only be activated once, so call microsoft, tell them you had a hard drive crash & had to replace it, they will ask you what your key is and let you activate it again

[John Kelly]

It's only a matter of time before Grace makes a V3 with a firewire output (I hope). Grace, you hear this?

Don't hold your breath.

[caymanreview]

that would be pretty sweet though, we can always hope the V4 will ahve firewire