hello everyone, i have been beating my head against the wall for two months tryin to get cubase le4, m-audio axiom 25 keyboard,and wav files to all come together and create music. after loading every driver available , changing sound cards, adjusting settings, reading forums till 3 in the morning, and installing and uninstalling programs, im still kinda at ground zero. cubase works then it malfunctions. try this setting, then this doesnt work. im exhausted. i HATE pc. im done with pc. my computer is brand new and its still lame. everything is just so difficult. (sorry to rant) my friend has a mac running his recording studio with no hair pulling or screaming. i dont need the big interfaces he has.
i know mac computers have problems too, but after ready 50,000 pages of forums, there arent to many ques or problems with mac. i am buying a 2 year old imac with 2.4G , dual processor, 320 G hard drive, and 2 G of memory. thats what i know so far. my question is what audio interface should i buy. i want to enter midi notes and play guitar and enter it into either cubase or reaper. i want to run a couple vst’s like ez drummer or addictive drums. i have seen recommendations on the m audio fw solo and also the presonus firebox 6x10 firewire.
please someone give me a clue on what i should buy so i can stop wasting valuable time and start making badass music again. thank you for you time
First, it would be wrong to blame “pc” for not being able to get your rig running. It’s not a mac vs. pc thing. I’ve personally seen plenty of mac users struggling when they start off. It is possible you have a hardware issue that is in fact happening inside the PC, but equally likely something else is going on.
When you say “it malfunctions”, what’s going on? No sound out of Cubase…or no sound from the Axiom driving a VSTi in Cubase?
OK, found your other post. It seems you have 2 problems. Neither your soundcard nor your MIDI keyboard is set up properly in Cubase (my best guess, not being there). What’s your soundcard/interface?
soundcard is set up correctly cause it works for couple hours. all the midi keyboard problems were mostly turning it on BEFORE you open cubase and programing the keyboard itself
OK, works for a couple hours, and then what behavior? What is the name of the soundcard? What’s the name of the driver you have chosen in Cubase?
It makes sense that you would have to turn on your keyboard before Cubase starts up, so that it can see it, otherwise Cubase would have to spend a lot of time checking to see if you’ve plugged something new in. We don’t want that…we want Cubase to be processing audio. At this point, I assume your problem is just between Cubase and the Soundcard and the driver.
it started with the keyboard issue. fixed that. tried to used the default driver. major latency. tried to download asio4all. no audio would play. just midi notes. back and forth between the two drivers until no sound on either driver. trash the prefs in cubase. now i have sound with default driver. still have latency. buy the creative card , install it , select it under drivers. as soon as i click switch, it freezes. try again , freezes. go back to default driver and adjust the buffer and timestamp. fixed latency prob. now the audio is cracking and poppin like the driver cant handle it. search 500 more youtube videos on asio4all and findone that says to turn off the wavetable or something. that works , got sound. no latency with keyboard. go to play previously recorded midi tracks , the timing is all wrong. try to adjust position. dont work. try the creative driver since i turned the other thing off. it works . no latency. still wont play the notes right. so i re=record the midi tracks with the creative driver. (3 hours on the first song) all good. almost done with the second song and when i stopped the midi track after recording a small section , the notes disappeared. cubase edit would let me undo record, but i couldnt see them. tried couple more times, different tracks same thing. now the meters for the sound referring to the wav files playing are movin slow and off time. the midi notes are all over the place now too. restart program. thought it just got overloaded with processing or something. still all over the place. check my other recorded song, all messed up too. hours and hours of playing gone. i know i am new to cubase and daw in general. including the software . but im not retarded. this is insanity. nothing is compatible, nothing works. this is why i hate pc and im giving up on them. proffessional creating music and video use mac. pc is for word processing. i honestly dont think its a setting cause it worked. then with out chage it just malfuntioned. my computer is fast as hell. it loads fast. never have issues. untill i try to run something besides typing a letter. i realize i with have issues with mac, but they will be a breeze after dealing with this nightmare of a pc.
Throw away or sell that creative card. Your PC is fine. Get a used M-Audio 2496 for maybe a little over $50.
You need something with real, actual, supported ASIO drivers. I haven’t used a Soundblaster or Audigy on a music computer for nearly 10 years. It’s a toy.
PC’s are excellent music computers, as are macs. They simply are. You wouldn’t put that creative card in a mac, would you?
Another thing…never choose a driver in Cubase with the word “generic” in it. That one will cause nothing but problems.
i also tried to play the midi notes thru ezdrummer. sometimes when i open a song up open the instrument track, i hear drum sounds. other times i open it all up ,no drum sounds. hit or mis. i change nothing, but it still decides to work or not work. lame
i wouldnt put a creative card i a mac . no. but i would buy an imac so i dont ever have to try to make this pc work. why would a sound card cause a midi track to malfunction. and then rearrange placement of a track.
How is your track being rearranged? That’s either you, inadvertently moving stuff, or a bug in Cubase. Windows is not moving stuff around in Cubase MIDI tracks behind your back.
i thought it was me at first. so i realigned the track with the started point of the audio track. as it plays , the drum beat just slowly changes and is off time and position. it was recording perfect. i listened to it multiple times. after that little insident with the disappearing midi notes its just all wrong now.
i see u have cubase 6. i have cubase le4 . i know its limited in some ways but it should still funtion at a high level.
i am getting that imac for 300 bucks. thats a $1500 dollar computer. im ready to start freshwith a computer with twice the capabilities as my pc. just need some advice on what interface i need. im afraid to dump another penny into this pc.
Are the MIDI notes moving in the clip, or is the playback timing of them off or inconsistent? I suspect the latter. Notes rearranging themselves in a MIDI clip would be a fairly noticeable bug and wouldn’t likely make it too far in testing.
To be clear, you’re saying the drums sound fine on one playback pass, but later the notes are out of place?
If you get a mac, you’re going to have to get a real interface anyway…might as well get the interface first and try it in your PC. The mac specs you’re quoting me don’t sound really that fast for a modern DAW. It’s especially light on RAM, but that’s fairly easy to upgrade. You absolutely will need more than 2GB, especially if you’re going to use EZDrummer, Addictive drums (your quote), or many other instruments. Sounds like you’re leaning towards samples.
notes are not moving. they were just off time like if you changed the BPM by 1 or 2 . they are never fine now . everything is wrong that was good earlier . i realize i have to get a real interface. im prepared to buy something for like 2 or 3 hundred. i may have transferred the mac details incorrectly. the mac was previously used for generating computer animation. which i know uses way more processing power than audio. the IT guy im getting it from is aware of what i want to use it for and said it was more than enough .
i dont want to sample, like drag and drop, i want to use the vst’s for the sound of the midi notes i punch it .
Fizbin is talking sence…at least try a decent card/interface for your pc before you buy the mac…
As for pc’s and using them as a daw they can be just as good as a mac.all comes down to spec and how much your prepared to spend.
lots of people record on quite simple pc’s quite smoothly its just a case of setting it up for audio correctly and via the web the info is out their for everyone.
I had cubse sx3 running on xp a shuttle with a pentium 4 one gig of ram and onboard graphics for 5 years recorded basic tracks ezdrummer,bass guitar,acoustics,electric guitars,synth’s
along with with two firewire hardware devices connected tcpowercore and an old edirol fa66 it handled plenty of vst’s groups,audio tracks and effects…good little home project putter.
Somewhere in your post’s you mention your new to Daw’s and pc recording
Do some reading the internet is full of helpfull info on how to set up a pc with whatever os you have on it.if your going to be using a pc to record on you should know how to set it up correctly and learn as much as you can about them.
Just last November I built a new pc for recording only problem with building my own putter i picked the wrong mother board so after changing that…installed windows and drivers and updates ect I put on cubase 6 and fired it up…wasn’t great!
it wasn’t a problem because I knew after I had configured windows 7 for audio turned off unwanted anti virus and set my own personal services installed my pro 40 and its drivers it would make the difference…and difference it was I hammered it with plugins recorded plenty of audio and put stupid amounts of stereo verbs/fx on and vst instuments it just took it in its stride.
The point is this…dont expect to just put cubase on a pc no matter how good it is…with no decent audio card/interface your going to have problems…get it set up correctly windows tweeks services you dont need off and all the uptodate drivers for your main board and all your hardware should be installed.ditch your cubase prefs and get your windows running sweet with a nice new audio card and it should be much better…
if it were me i would want to do a fresh install of cubase just incase.
you can use a program removal tool revos good the demo works fine! you would be suprised whats left behind with the standard uninstall.
macs are great!! they are indeed industry standard i would love one but my pc works great and if something goes wrong with it i would not be afraid to get the screwdriver out and repair it…they are quite cheep to get parts depending what you want. and in my opinion easy to fix…i would be scared of an imac breaking if i had one end of the day its a screen!
if your looking to spend 300 on your audio card get it before you buy the two year old imac at least try out what i have sugested with your pc.
by the way the pc…unless i missed it you havent put down the spec for it?
i think i know what you going to say you wont have to do any of the messing around with the imac…fair do’s
whatever you decide hope it works out and you can get back to the music instead of problem solving
sorry i never listed my spec because i was done with pc. i wanted to try a different route. i have ASUS ,pentium 4, win 7 64 bit, 4 G of ram, you know about the lame soundcard. you said about there being info on the web about setting up the right config. i have read so many forums im braindead. when i bought that card, i thought it was gonna work. after doing another 50 hours of read and research it was probally not the best choice. it just seams like an unbelievable amount of configuring to get anything to work. the one thing that causes me to run away from pc is the fact thats its config right and it works. flawless. with that poop soundcard. then for no reasons other that stopping a recording, the whole program goes crazy. believe me when i say i did alot a research. it always seemed like one of the componants what different. so it would never be a complete walk thru.
there are other factors thay are also affecting my decision. the pc is not dedicated to making music. it is used for surfing the web, email, college papers, streaming internet radio.
right now i record my guitar into a boss br-532 8 track recorder, then pull the card, transfer the file via usb, then load the wav file into cubase. alot of moves. having the imac with a interface will hopefully allow me to have the computer right there,(because of its size) in my wanna be studio. play guitar right into cubase or reaper for that matter. the price was nice on the mac. its hard to pass up. i used to rely on my buddy and his studio to do all this. i have the talent to do it myself , on my time.
besides the fact that i could eventually fix the pc and have it working, does owning an imac set up the RIGHT way sound like a bad idea? thats why i came to this forum , to ask what a good set up would be. besides playing guitar directly into cubase, my only other request is to enter midi notes and have them work as an instrument. i appriate your response and i value ur opinion. just seems like a good time to switch.
I hear ya im sure you will get what you want with the mac it should do the job well bit more ram maybe…as for the pc running 64 bit windows on a pentium 4 may you just be pushing it a bit their with audio too especially if you havent turned off firewalls and things like that…
Prob best to go down the mac road then it sounds like you have already made your own mind up…
You can get plenty of good interfaces for it I like the focusrite stuff myself for the money they are great the Mic pre’s are very clean if thats your thing…they have midi ins and outs always good drivers from them aswell…thats just my personal choice their are so many others to choose from out their…
let us know what you get and how you get on with it all.
ok so I’m back for an update. i got my iMac .upgraded the RAM to 4GHz , updated the hard drive to a terabyte, updated to the newest OS X I0.7 . I bought a Focusrite scarlett 2i2 and installed logic pro 9. it took me a total of 5 min to get the normal computer stuff like email and stuff setup. ten times easier than on a pc. bought addictive drummer and it worked instantly. plugins were right there were they were supposed to be. focusrite showed up today and within ten minutes it was installed and making sound within logic. unbelievable how easy it was to get it up and running. its crazy how much easier it is to navigate around a mac than a pc. the mac u just use common sense to solve problems. pc , u have to be an IT guy or think like a programmer. i hate pc now more than i ever did. anyone still using a pc to make music is crazy ! my axiom 25 keyboard worked without any issues. easy to find the plugins. everything automatically goes were its supposed to go. pc u gotta find it and then tell it what to do . lame.
i know this is a "cubase " forum , but Logic pro 9 is WAY better than any cubase program. in my opinion of course. my first DAW was cubase so i thought thats how they were. logic is just really easy to navigate and preform tasks. i get twice the work done in the same amount of time. plus logic has flex time…sweet.
i know even if i would have tried to use this focusrite interface with windows , it would have fought me the whole time. i would have needed updates, new drivers, it wouldnt be compatible…it never ends. and for that matter, updating the whole computer and everything in it , it still wouldn’t work.
this was by far the best decision i ever made in makin music besides makin my 62’ gibson SJ6 acoustic/electric. i ordered all my stuff from sweetwater.com. the staff was awesome. very knowledgeable . prices were there too! farewell and good luck. thanks for everyones advice and time. it was greatly appreciated . i won’t be needing forums anymore…i got a MAC.
im sure you will get what you want with the mac it should do the job well bit more ram maybe…as for the pc running 64 bit windows on a pentium 4 may you just be pushing it a bit their with audio too especially if you havent turned off firewalls and things like that… 
!
.