Presonus Firepod on Vegas

Steve Mann wrote on 1/23/2006, 1:11 AM
Due to Spot's advice, I bought a new Firepod to turn my laptop into a multi-track recorder. It works, sort of OK, but it was horribly noisy. I later discovered that it was because the laptop uses a Radeon sound chip that does not work with Firepod.
(I found this information in the Presonus FAQs, after the purchase).

Here's my delimna. I can't afford a new laptop, but I don't want to give up my plans for multi-track recording.

Does anyone have experience of using the Firepod on a 1GHz laptop? I can buy any of several models of 1- to 2GHz laptops for around $600.

Any input would be appreciated.


Steve Mann

Comments

farss wrote on 1/23/2006, 7:12 PM
Pardon my ignorance but how in the heck has the sound card in the laptop entering into the equation, doesn't the Firepod have its own mic pres and A->D converters with the data going stright into the laptop via 1394?

I run a M-Audio Firewire 410 on an old Sony laptop and a desktop and I can assure you the soundcard in niether of those has an influence. You did disable the existing soundcard in the laptop?

Bob.
drbam wrote on 1/23/2006, 8:43 PM
Yes, make sure to disable the onboard soundcard. . . permanently!

drbam
Steve Mann wrote on 1/23/2006, 9:46 PM
It's my wife's laptop, so I can't apply surgery. I will try to disable the on-board chip in the BIOS. Actually, I am looking at building a rack-mount PC so that I can assemble the PC and two Presonus boxes in a single travel case.

I didn't believe it either, but when I went to the Presonus web site, support, faqs, and there it is:

"Laptops with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000/9100 IGP chipset have shown consistent problems with pops/clicks on playback. You can check for this chipset in the Device Manager/Display Adapters. We strongly recommend that you do not get a system with this chipset, as there is not currently a workaround for this incompatibility."

When I ran Belarc's Advisor (great freeware program that tells you everything about your PC and the installed software), and the Radeon AGP 9100 shows up under the Audio Hardware tab.


So, who else is running the Firepod? The specs recommend a 3GHz motherboard, but all I can afford now is a 2GHz. Will I run into problems?

Steve

Steve Mann