Presonus audio hardware like 1818VSL on USB3, !NEW INFO!

[tuxdour]

Hi. If you believe the old discontinued Presonus 1818VSL and similar USB2 devices are useless, keep on reading!

I would have preferred to reply in existing threads like the ones below:

PreSonus AudioBox 1818VSL via USB on Linux

I have a PreSonus AudioBox 1818VSL that I used on a Mac. The Mac has since kicked the bucket. I am now trying to hook it up to a laptop running Ubuntu 18. I started asking for help on IRC and someone suggested I post here. Searching the internet, I find posts where people have gotten ALSA and/or JACK to recognize the AudioBox, but I have not had such luck. I believe Ardour is still trying to use the built in sound hardware rather than the AudioBox via USB. Any advice would be appreciated. I’ll…

Disabling USB 3.0

Now this isn’t specific to ardour but I think there might be a good community of users here that could help. Feel free to suggest other places to ask this. I have a Presonus 1818VSL which works very well on my desktop in a USB 2.0 port. On my laptop on the other hand with only USB 3.0 ports and an Ivy Bridge USB controller. It seems like the card cannot sync because there is intermittent playback and correspondingly intermittent Xruns in Jack. Windows users have experienced similar problems on …

but they are long since locked, so I open a new topic.

I’ve spent considerable time the past couple of days to look at the ‘USB3’ issue, with much help from the Gentoo Linux community.
What we have discovered / determined is that the reason for the malfunctions IS NOT USB3 per se, but much more specific a bug in the INTEL USB3 host chipsets. between say 2014 and 2020. But as we’ve discovered, the Presonus 1818VSL works like a charm on several other NON-Intel chipsets. It is also likely that it works fine on very modern intel chipsets, (newer than Skylake) but I haven’t been able to test that. But I have tested it on an AMD Ryzen 5 system. No cracks, no pops.

People from the Gentoo/Linux community well informed on USB driver implementations have repeatedly stated that the issue is not with version 3 of USB, but with a bug in intel’s implementation thereof (which is sadly very ubiquitous). So far, everything points to them being correct.

Presonus published a matrix of chipsets and issues, here: [sorry, can’t link here now]. I suspect a long time ago. So they did not know about chipsets that were not invented at the time, obviously. So I suggest to ignore that matrix and just try. Because I think the info is simply stale.

So, while this likely leaves out Apple users and Windows users, (for lack of drivers etc.), for Ardour and Linux audio in general this means that with suitable hardware, this 12-year old 8-channel unit can still be used with modern hardware(!!) And that is great news I think.

This likely also applies to similar USB2 hardware that Presonus declared obsolete in 2013, but again, not being able to test that I cannot say for certain which models and whether they work.

Hope this helps some people
Maarten

[tuxdour]

That matrix of chipsets and issues I talked about but was not allowed to link in the first post: https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/210044683-AudioBox-USB-Connecting-to-USB-3-0

Again: TL;DR: this old card can work fine on USB3, with the right hardware.

cheers,
Maarten

[tuxdour]

Hi, OP again. Two things to add:

1. It took a week but I now have my new hardware setup and tested so I can 100% confirm that my Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL works without fault on a USB3 port on this hardware: HP EliteDesk 705 G4 SFF, which has a Ryzen 5 2400G. Only caveat: the GPU doesn’t initialize properly when you boot with the 1818VSL plugged in, so I boot first, then connect the 1818VSL. Minor trouble.
   I do know for a fact that the problem is present on: HP ProDesk 400 G2 Mini and Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny, both of which are Intel Core i5 6500 systems. (The former claims to have some USB2 ports but they’re xhci_hcd too). (My initial report was based on a successful test with a Ryzen 5 5600X system, but unsuited because aimed at gaming)

2. My statement “between say 2014 and 2020” has been misinterpreted and/or I misspoke. By it, I did not want to claim that all intel hardware from this period would have faulty USB3 hardware, but rather the opposite: that if you want to play it safe, you best choose something outside of this time period. I have limited hardware to test with, and not all reports are credible or point to the intel USB3 chip; other unrelated causes could lead to similar problems.

Rock on!
Maarten