M-Audio Firewire 1814 Question

[jarmysz]

Howdy. I just got a Firewire M-Audio 1814 to be used with my laptop and with the PC workstation. The Workstation is an AMD Athlon XP computer with 1 GB of RAM and 2.13 Ghz CPU and Win XP SP2. Laptop is a Dell XPS M140 with 1 GB of RAM and 2.13 Pentium M. Both have plenty of drive space and run without additional background processes. Both use Serial ATA 7200 RPM drives.

To try the 1814 out, I got a pair of headphones and the Korg Triton plugged into the sound card inputs. Here's the problem. Whenever anything is plugged into the soundcard inputs, a noise is generated that you can hear through the headphones (and see in the control panel), noise is small, but is noticeable.

There are two types of noise getting generated:
1) Like a frying pan with the french fries or a rain hitting a glass
2) like a electric motor near a speaker (wheezing)

Notice, in order for noise to appear, something must be plugged in to the sound card inputs, regardless if that 'something' (korg triton or the outputs of Delta 1010) is ON or OFF. If I play an mp3 or a wav, no noise happens; the sound is clear. One thing I noticed (with the laptop) is the noise can be induced, for example, if I grab with the mouse the application window (window in which Ableton runs) and move it, then the wheezing noise will sound. Is this normal with this sound card? I never had this problem with Delta 1010. I could drag and application window in which Albeton ran and no wheezing sound got generated.

The 'frying pan' noise happens on the Workstation, when again, I have some exernal audio source plugged into the sound card, and the 1814 relies on power provided by the firewire. The noise is the cracking sound and is visible in the control panel - it disappears when I plug in the external power supply into 1814. Has anyone ran into this problem with M-Audio products? It seems that the power provided by the firewire is not enough.

Again, I havent had such issues with Delta 1010 and I'm thinking if returning this product.

Best Regards!
Jarek Myszewski
Buffalo, NY

[web01169]

ok let me see if i got this right ...you have the firewire 1814 in the laptop....well if that is the case you have to have the external power supply plugged in. and you kinda lost me on the souncard thing....why do you have your triton plugged into your soundcard and not into your firewire input port or your delta 1010 input port? and your fiewire 1814 has a headphone output also....use that.

[grand2gz]

i have been having the same problem with the 410 and it's driving me crazy. i run reason on my laptop and play the sounds out of the 410, but i get the same noisy interference.

[play4god]

I've been having a similar problem. My interface was working fine for a while, and it's been awhile since I used it-

Now, I get this cracking sound when I record audio always, and when I play audio and am doing something with another application that accesses the disk.

It's very bad. It just recently started happening.

Anyone else have this working fine, and then recently see it start having problems? I wonder if Microsoft installed an automatic update that broke anything?

[tech1]

There can be several thing going on here. The most likely cause is outdated drivers, followed by corrupted 1394 contollers (PC only), then defective hardware. Solutions, in order:
- Install update drivers, available at: http://www.m-audio.com/
- PC only: refresh your 1394 drivers: http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/csresources/tutorials.php
- Try a different Firewire port and/or cable.

[dgelting]

When I first got my 1814, I was using a 3rd party firewire cable and was getting all sorts of clicks in my recordings. Turns out it was the cable, I switched to the included cable and all was fine.
I'm having all sorts of other problems with the unit, but that will be for another thread, after I exhaust the M-Audio tech support.