How does thing work with a computer?!

[sven karma]

Hello all. I bought a SonicCell off eBay earlier this week, and I cannot get it to work with either of my computers! I can play it off a midi keyboard happily enough, but when I attach it to them, whatever I do, I just get either "Unable to read/write data" and the very helpful section 7 of the manual - "the SonicCell and the computer are not connected properly" - well, duh. Or, on trying to run it as a plug-in (don't have the Sonar le disk) in Fruity Loops 8 or 9, Reaper, or ProTools 7.12, I get the message "Not enough Asio channels available. At least 2 channels are needed". The editor will start syncronizing data, but then stops when it comes to reading any. I've restored the SonicCell to its factory state, tried the v.1 editor as opposed to the v1.2. No joy. I've tried a different USB cable. Different midi cables (1 midi, 1 edirol usb). I've uninstalled the ASIO4ALL drivers. Nothing works! It'll play midi files off a dongle, and the audio input works, so I don't think the SonicCell itself is faulty. But that's it. I've followed the instructions in the manual on 2 computers tiill I'm blue in the face. When the midi thru is off, fine, tinkle tinkle. Turn it on, and silence falls. Does anyone have a clue where I may be going wrong?!

[Artemiy]

I assume you did install the SonicCell USB driver?

[sven karma]

Yes, I have installed the usb driver. I also just now tried installing SonicCell on a very old laptop, and got the same asio channels message. On the reaper audio devices page, it will show SonicCell as an Asio driver, but the inputs and outputs are empty. In Fruity Loops it's just automatically disabled. I also tried disabling the new laptop's onboard audio card, but that didn't make any difference.

[avogra]

i just stumbled across your "When the midi thru is off, fine, tinkle tinkle." You mean "USB-MIDI Thru" in the systems settings of the SC, right? also look at "Soft Through" in the midi sub-menu. as far as i got it, if you turn this on, everything sent from your pc to the SC over usb won't be processed but instead forwarded to the midi-out connector. the manual doesn't describe this exactly, omitting the three letters "USB"-midi-in.
if this is turned on, the SC won't react to the requests from your pc. Maybe that's it.

Good luck!
Avogra

[sven karma]

Thanks Avogra, I've just checked and that soft thru is off (tho I remember I did turn it on at one point to see if that worked - at least I know now not to bother again). I have noticed the SonicCell freezing a lot while I've been trying to pc it up, maybe there's some other midi filter i need to turn on? Anyway, I've just uninstalled all the software and its registry references so I'm gonna start again with a clean slate and see what happens. If I could even get the standalone editor to run!

[sven karma]

Ok, if I forget about the USB thing, run mBox midi in n outs into the sonic cell in n outs and use the usb midi cable with my keyboard, i can get the standalone editor to work and run fruity loops, so that's a start.

What seems to happen is that after installing the sonic Cell, the Xp Controls panel pages in System & sound/audio devices don't allow me to set the sonic Cell as a playback source, i.e what happens on page 12/13 of the "Using SonicCell with a DAW" workshop pdf ain't happening. So I can't set Windows Media Player (or anything else) to play through the Sonic cell.

Is it not working just because neither of my computers has the recommended Intel chipset? One's Via, the other's Sis. I tried the demo of the Proytec usb/asio drivers, but that wouldn't connect with sonic cell either.