Vista 64 bit and Tascam FW-1884?

[rayinstirling]

No sound only midi following loading Tascam's vista drivers.
No ASIO only WDM no use for Cubase 4.1
Any ideas

Ray

ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe
Pentium D 945 LGA775 3.4 Ghz
4 GB DDR2

PS I've given in Vista sucks I'll maybe look again next year

 

[rayinstirling]

OK I'm not giving up on this Vista 64 bit thing.
I sorted out a dual boot so I can work with pro audio in XP and do everything else in Vista.
Hopefully I'll edge towards Vista only over the next few months as drivers get posted.

Ray

 

[dr.funk]

Seeing that the 1884 has been out for a while, Im kinda suprised Tascam still supports it. They dropped the US-2400 like a hot potato and that thing had good potential, IF it had stable drivers.

Im awaiting M-Audio drivers, but I might go presonus or even rme if I save the money.

 

[rayinstirling]

Hi dr.funk
I've been in contact with Tascam both here in the UK and in the US.
Vista 64 drivers have been out for months but don't work on my system.
I'm also waiting on Delta LT1010 drivers which are being beta tested as we speak.
Another choice you didn't mention was the Focusrite Saffire Pro 20 or 26.
This unit would work for me as I don't intend having an array of slave PC's running lightpipe which would put RME top of the list.

 

[dr.funk]

I have an emu 0404, a focusrite saffire and 2 of the delta 1010lt's..

too much stuff! But im awaiting Vista 64 drivers for the deltas as well. The emu's have been giving me issues. Hopefully youll get the stuff resolved as I dont know enough of the inner workings of vista..even though I goofed with vista since Beta 2.

 

[ins0mniak]

Unit: Tascam FW-1884
Purchased: on eBay
My OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Business Ed - 64Bit
System: Intel Core2 Quad - Q6600 - 2.4GHz
Memory: 4GB
Drives: (x2) Seagate 400GB SATA - RAID0

Tascam Driver: 1.60 on Win Vista 64
Tascam Firmware: 1.83f

I installed the Tascam FW-1884 driver v1.60f on Windows XP w/ SP2 32Bit edition. Everything worked perfectly. I did that to confirm there was nothing wrong with the FW-1884 unit itself.

I installed the 1.60f latest driver for Windows Vista Business Ed. - 64 Bit. When the Soft LCD starts, it says connected to FW-1884. I hear the hardware connection sound on the computer when I turn the unit on and the Tascam config tool in the control panel activates all the fields in the GUI (formerly grayed out). The unit itself appears to be working and responding to buttons and faders pushed. My Kurzweil is connected to the FW-1884 by coaxial S/PDIF and the DIN LED flashes when it's on. Midi traffic triggers the MIDI LED too...


The problem Was:
The Firewire LED never lights or even flashes.
The inputs and outputs don't respond in any of my DAW apps even though the driver presents them.
The "Control Panel" button on the unit doesn’t bring up the FW-1884 config GUI.
None of the ASIO profilers successfully initialize or respond to buffer detection.
The control panel tool doesn't show a unit detected or a firmware version, just 0 in each field.
This unit can't be flashed because the buffer erase fails.
Ultimately, None of my DAW apps works with it.

This FIXED IT!!!
I got a shorter cable (not 10') and directly attached it to the 1394 port on the motherboard itself. I moved off of the extender that attached the second port on the motherboard to the PCI slot area... Then I got a Firewire LED light to finally come on. I know this means one of the following: that the cable was bad, the cable was too long or not shielded properly, the 1394 port extender in the PCI area was bad or not connected properly... Anyway it finally can communicate to the PC correctly so, moving on

I made sure I was using the latest firmware AND driver. Right now, that was driver v1.60, and firm 1.83. Then I opened the config panel for the FW-1884 and sure enough it was communicating correctly. all of the firmware driver versions showed up (instead of 0 in each field). I configured the control panel (read the manual) for my personal setup but I set all of my devices to 44.1KHz for now. I HEARD digital NOISE!!! It was horrible.

After reading further on the forums (I'll let you do that yourself if you are curious WHY this happens) I found that if you have a 64Bit OS and you have more than 2GB of memory this is going to happen. 64-bit system not recognizing all memory.

Anyway I reboot and entered the CMOS/BIOS and disabled memory mapping. This reduced the memory to less than 4GB but the noise went away! I'm good to go until proper drivers are created!

I hope that helps.

 

[rayinstirling]

Unit: Tascam FW-1884
Purchased: on eBay
My OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Business Ed - 64Bit
System: Intel Core2 Quad - Q6600 - 2.4GHz
Memory: 4GB
Drives: (x2) Seagate 400GB SATA - RAID0

Tascam Driver: 1.60 on Win Vista 64
Tascam Firmware: 1.83f

I installed the Tascam FW-1884 driver v1.60f on Windows XP w/ SP2 32Bit edition. Everything worked perfectly. I did that to confirm there was nothing wrong with the FW-1884 unit itself.

I installed the 1.60f latest driver for Windows Vista Business Ed. - 64 Bit. When the Soft LCD starts, it says connected to FW-1884. I hear the hardware connection sound on the computer when I turn the unit on and the Tascam config tool in the control panel activates all the fields in the GUI (formerly grayed out). The unit itself appears to be working and responding to buttons and faders pushed. My Kurzweil is connected to the FW-1884 by coaxial S/PDIF and the DIN LED flashes when it's on. Midi traffic triggers the MIDI LED too...


The problem Was:
The Firewire LED never lights or even flashes.
The inputs and outputs don't respond in any of my DAW apps even though the driver presents them.
The "Control Panel" button on the unit doesn’t bring up the FW-1884 config GUI.
None of the ASIO profilers successfully initialize or respond to buffer detection.
The control panel tool doesn't show a unit detected or a firmware version, just 0 in each field.
This unit can't be flashed because the buffer erase fails.
Ultimately, None of my DAW apps works with it.

This FIXED IT!!!
I got a shorter cable (not 10') and directly attached it to the 1394 port on the motherboard itself. I moved off of the extender that attached the second port on the motherboard to the PCI slot area... Then I got a Firewire LED light to finally come on. I know this means one of the following: that the cable was bad, the cable was too long or not shielded properly, the 1394 port extender in the PCI area was bad or not connected properly... Anyway it finally can communicate to the PC correctly so, moving on

I made sure I was using the latest firmware AND driver. Right now, that was driver v1.60, and firm 1.83. Then I opened the config panel for the FW-1884 and sure enough it was communicating correctly. all of the firmware driver versions showed up (instead of 0 in each field). I configured the control panel (read the manual) for my personal setup but I set all of my devices to 44.1KHz for now. I HEARD digital NOISE!!! It was horrible.

After reading further on the forums (I'll let you do that yourself if you are curious WHY this happens) I found that if you have a 64Bit OS and you have more than 2GB of memory this is going to happen. 64-bit system not recognizing all memory.

Anyway I reboot and entered the CMOS/BIOS and disabled memory mapping. This reduced the memory to less than 4GB but the noise went away! I'm good to go until proper drivers are created!

I hope that helps.

ins0mniak

thanks for the run-down on your experience with vista x64 and Tascam FW-1884.
"I Heard digital noise!!!" an understatement. Well my new ASUS P5K Pro motherboard is liking Vista x64 very much. So to update my observations Vista doesn't suck but the old motherboard wasn't up to the job!!!
I am now a Vista x64 fan. I don't see the point in not addressing all the ram you have. In fact the whole point of moving on from XP 32 bit is to get more from the PC so with 6 GB ram now and Cubase 4.1 x64 beta testing I'm relatively happy.
The FW series vista drivers 1.60 have only WDM audio NOT asio. I would suggest that is the digital noise problem not the amount of ram. So I have full control of all the fuctions on FW-1884 except audio which I now patch to it from an E-MU 0404 card which I had sitting on a shelf thinking it had passed it's sell by date but no!! creative labs are on the ball with their Vista x64 asio drivers.
As I type this I am running a full EWQLSOrchestra setup from piccolo to double bass on Steinberg Cubase 4.1 x64 memory used 2.94 GB. Reduce my ram to 2 GB? I don't think so. More like get another two 2 GB sticks and have 8 GB
It is slightly annoying having to use a separate pci audio card but having the FW-1884 as a motorized fader mixing desk + the midi in/outs one of which is connected to this slave PC I'm using for the net on which I have various virtual instruments to add to my system is OK. Boy that was a long sentence.

Cheers

Ray

 

[ins0mniak]

Just so you know, I have no intention of dealing with this for very long. This is the equivalent to Roland, Korg, or Yamaha selling a new Keyboard, and then releasing it with only one octave. Then saying "Oh you're one of those musicians that needs the full set of keys instead of a short trigger pad? Well we'll send you the other 6 octaves later".

It would be different if we were just trying to get a fad OS working. As your example states, we are the types of users that REQUIRE as much memory as possible. The more the better because it improves the performance of what we're doing here. Obviously if we calculate a need for more than 4GB, we're going to be using a 64Bit OS.

I'm giving them two more months. Then I'm selling this unit and never buying or supporting another device from Tascam. I was already upset with their discontinuing the FE-8 extender. I read the forums that stretch back to a year and a half ago, looking for answers. People have been frustrated for a long time. I finally got a reply from their technical support department saying:

"At this time there is an incompatibility with the FW1884 and Windows Vista 64 with 4GB or more of RAM. We are currently working on a fix which will be available shortly. However, your unit should still install properly and have a solidly lit FireWire light. The issue relates to audio distortion. Since your unit was purchased from eBay we would recommend testing it on another computer with a different operating system to verify its functionality if possible. Thank you for your interest in TASCAM products!" WHAT!?!?

So they didn't even give me the suggestion to disable re-mapping memory. I had to find it for myself?!

Caring this little is a sign that the company is beyond struggling. In two months I go to M-Audio, Mackie, or EuPhonix.

 

[rayinstirling]

Hello again ins0mniak,
The head of marketing for Tascam has promised me they are looking into the asio driver problem. WDM drivers are no use to me, but, the reason I bought the FW-1884 was mostly for the motorized control surface and the in/outs. Relatively speaking the audio was a bonus (no audio from the Mackie unit). At this time I wouldn't bank on other sound card manufacturers being any further on. RME, PreSonus and Focusrite seem to be the best bet at the moment but the situation will change from month to month. It is all down to how much money you want to throw at it.
Probably it's best to have a separate audio card and still have the control surface.
Anyway good luck in your search for your idea of the best setup.

Ray

 

[dkaleita]

I don't know what is taking Tascam so long to fix this, but I just got the email below that indicates they are indeed still planning to deal with it:
-----Original Message-----
From: CUSTSER [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 4:20 PM
To: Dave K
Subject: Re: FW-1884 Problems with Vista 64, Q6600, 8GB RAM
Dear Dave,
We are working on an update to correct this issue. If you have 4 GB or more of ram installed on a 64 bit OS you will get distortion. We will post an update to correct this issue on our website as soon as it is available.
Thank you for your interest in TASCAM products!

 

[dkaleita]

Without any announcement, Tascam appears to have just posted a new v1.70 driver on their web site. A message from another user on the Cakewalk Forum claims that this latest driver solves the problem with Vista 64 and >2GB RAM. But I have not yet personally tried this myself.

The link to download the v1.70 driver is here: http://www.tascam.com/i-440-232-128-9-767B5A07.zip

 

[ins0mniak]

I see that!

I wish I could say thanks but 1 and a half years is just too long for this "promise"!

OK... OK... thanks! :huh:

 

[ins0mniak]

I tried the driver. It was good. It was a bit noisy at 98KHz samplerate but everything else was great. This is the part where I thank them and cheer but this long... I'm over this.

 

[nsp]

Thank you so much to everyone who posted a reply and offered advice and feedback in this thread. I too, was at my wits end regarding this issue for quite some time. It's been a very long wait for Tascam to get this fixed. Hmph.
Special thanks dkaleita for letting us know when the new patch finally came out! I had given up checking Tascam's sites.