Presonus Firepod Troubleshoot and Setup Tips!

I received this document from a guy in the Presonus tech dept, but he has since moved on.  Last couple of times I have talked to the tech folks, they had no idea about many of the things on this document, so keep this close to you at all times!  :)

Props to Jason Moore, formerly of Personus Tech Support for this document!

If you are on windows service pack 2, download and install this patch, then restart.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222

Few optimization settings I can suggest.

1.  Right click on your FirePod/Box icon in your system tray just to the left of the time.  Set the CPU setting to HIGH.  If HIGH setting does not work, try LOW.

 2.  Right click on your My Computer icon and select Properties.  click the Advanced tab, click the Settings button under Performance, click Advanced tab, then set to Background Services under Processor Scheduling.

 3.  If you have Service Pack 2 installed:  Click Start menu, Control Panel, Windows FireWall, click the Advanced tab and 'uncheck' the 1394 Connection and click OK.

 4.  click Start menu, Control Panel, double click into Power Options and set the Power Scheme to Always On and set the other stuff to NEVER, click APPLY, then click Hibernate tab and 'uncheck' hibernate, then click APPLY and OK.

 5.  click Start menu, Control Panel and double click into Network Connections, if you have a Wireless Network Connection, right click and 'disable' this while you are running the FirePod/Box.

 6.  Within Cubase, click Devices menu, select Device Setup, and select VST MULTITRACK.  There you have "number of disk buffers", set this to 10 and click APPLY.  Also make sure you are set to the Presonus ASIO FirePod/Box drivers.  You may also want to increase any related settings within other recording softwares.

 7.  Lastly, right click on My Computer icon, select Properties, click Hardware tab, click Device Manager button.  In here, extend the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, double click on the Primary and Secondary IDE Channels, click Advanced Settings.  Here you will see Device 0 and Device 1, you'll see "Transfer Mode" (which is usually set to DMA if available) and you will see "Current Transfer Mode".  Current Transfer needs to be set to UDMA (Ultra DMA) mode.  If either Device on the Primary or Secondary Channels are set to PIO mode, this could be your problem.  PIO mode is a older legacy and slower transfer mode for older HD's.  If either are set to PIO mode, you can change this by either entering BIOS and setting the IDE Controllers to 'Auto' and as long as the 'Transfer Mode" is set to DMA if available, the Current Transfer Mode should change.  If not, in the Device Manager, as long as the "Transfer Mode" is set to DMA if available, you can right click on the Primary/Secondary IDE Channel listed and 'uninstall' it.  Once 'uninstalled', reboot your computer and it will refresh.