Multimix 16 FireWire

[April 23, 2007]



[December 09, 2009]
Adi reports this device is working.

Support Status: 
Reported to work


Good news!
Ubuntu 11.04 works right out of the box with my Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire.
All you need to do is goto "System Settings" then "Users and Groups" then "Advanced Settings" then the "User Privileges" Tab and check the "Use Audio Devices" tab. I check all the tabs just because I can. LOL.

Next goto the new "Ubuntu Software Center" and search "ffado" and install the FFADO-Mixer. You may also want to install Ardour and any other apps you need. To install everything you'll ever need for audio recording goto the "Synaptec Package Manager" and search for "Ubuntu-Studio" and install all the audio related packages.

Three Steps
1.Enabled "Use Audio Devices"
2.Install "FFADO-Mixer"
3.Reboot or logout then back in.

I have tried it on both 32 bit and 64 bit setups.

Great Job FFADO Developers!

I know I was wrong when installing Ubuntu Studio and missed the options page, so that I had to install the packages manually, but it didn't seem there was something wrong.
Then, with FFADO, my Alesis Multimix16 Firewire worked, channels seen, but music (on Aqualung and Audacious player) is having flow problem, not streaming well as needed.
Qjackctl says everything is OK, FFADO 2.0.99 says the same, but I can't make it.
My ASUS P7P55D-Pro also has a 7.1 Intel HDA, that I normally unset in Windows, but with Linux it is working very well (but I want to work with Alesis).
Do you know what to do?

Question? Does Aqualung or Audacious support jack audio? I don't use those audio programs so I don't know and I think you should start there. In the audio programs there should be a setting to select a default audio device. See if it list jack audio as an option. If it's not listed then your out of luck.
Think of jack like windows ASIO. Not all windows audio programs support ASIO either.
Hope this helps.

Thanks Jazzman
Yes, Aqualung and Audacious (almost Linux Winamps) support Jack, as checked in Patchage (a good route display for JACK and ALSA together).
Every other program I've tested, worked well but the "xRun"s I get are very sensitive.
This complain, I've found all around Internet but I know there will be a solution.

I've read about it and installed Ubuntu Studio 11.10 which, they said, had a special config for Firewire devices.
Yes, my Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire is working full 100% with only 3.8% use of DSP. No Xrun, anymore.
Went to Armour, looking for inputs, and found those all 18 channel inputs (no drive needed).
Worked for a long time with Ardour, and it was perfect.

I can confirm that it works. I too use Ubuntu Studio 11.10 and Ardour. I start jack manually usig the following command:

jackd -d firewire -D -i 18 -o 2 -p 128 -r 48000

Works fine, all 18 input channels as well as the 2 output channels work fine for me. Thanks a lot!

Hi. I found out that CPU stepping is really evil! It totally ruined a recording. Ardour was sprinkled with nasty little xrun messages. I totally forgot about that. So if anyone out there has a similar problem, turn it off. I for my part use a potent P4 computer to avoid running into this problem at all. Tested it with Ubuntu Studio and Dream Studio. Both work well :)

Using an i5 as well when doing it right:

Pushed it to maximum. No more problems. Works great :)

with an asus A4G,

I can not try with Ardour : I don't uderstand why but I get
Cannot connect to server socket err = No files or folders
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started

in Audacity after starting jack with


I get all channel properly !!

If somebody can explain me how use ardour, it will be great !


It's unclear what might be happening here. One would expect that if one jack application works (eg: Audacity) then they all should, including Ardour. Starting ardour is usually the same as any other jack application: first start jackd and then run ardour.

About the only thing that springs to mind is to confirm that when you're trying ardour you are running jackd as the same user as ardour. That is, if your username is foobar then both jackd and ardour must be started as the user "foobar". I'm guessing this isn't your problem though because things work for audacity.

I am curious why you need to use the "-D", "-i" and "-o" command line options with jackd and its firewire driver. Normally the number of inputs and outputs is determined automatically. I'm also not sure what "-D" is meant to do: as far as I know it's not a valid option for the "firewire" driver. It may be worth trying to start jack using simply "jackd -d firewire -p 128 -n 3" for starters and see what happens with both audacity and ardour.

No major problems with this device since Ubuntu Studio 10.04. Now running 13.04 and installing 13.10. The only stuff that changed are the names for the channels. Now they have the pcm id in front of it. Could rename them so but no really need. Means the new and old firwire stack gets along well.

If there is any intrest I could help out testing new versions of ffado with that little gadget. Just send a mail with build system you'd like and I get going. Though I only have one firewire pci card right now also I don't mind getting another or two.