Q: Phonic Firefly 302 problem, can't recieve any audio signal

Hi,

I've just bought the firefly and am having similar problems. i noticed that noone has replied to you. Have you sorted it out by yourself? If so I'd really appreciate some help. I've connected an xlr mic to the firefly and then the firewire to my MAC. In garageband, It detects audio, but it's a very poor, low volume signal- nowhere near the level of the built-in mic.

Cheers.

Sam

I too have just purchased the Phonic Firefly 302 and am starting to pull my hair out in utter frustration trying to get a decent signal out of this thing. Very disappointing.

Installing the below link will probably solve the problem. It did for me. It allows you to recognise and acknowledge the interface signal. I can now get a decent signal from my mic and guitar in Garageband

http://doc.phonic.com/file/view.php?parent=1132&order=name&curview=0&sortname=AS C&id=12058&action=file_details

I tried installing that too but it made no difference. When you say you can now get a decent signal, what exactly do you mean by this? The reason I bought it was in the hope that it would give me a good enough signal to record a pretty professional sounding vocal into my mac- is your signal anywhere near that?

Cheers.

What mic are you using?

Did you select the firefly in garageband preferences?

I was using a rode ntg-2 directional mic. I made sure that both garageband and the mac were set-up to use the firefly as the input device. I received some signal but it was muffled and incredibly hard to hear. I fiddled with the gain knobs etc on the device but nothing doing. The master slider in the audio/midi section of utilities for the firefly was faded out so I was unable to raise the levels.

Do you have phantom power turned on or is the battery in the mic good?

Yeah, I had phantom power on.

The audio slider being grayed out means that the firefly has control of input volume, thats how it should be. Your getting a signal "low and muffled" but we know it's working. Does the firefly have any optional software or drivers or maybe a recent Firmware update?

I wrote to phonic, explaining the problem, and they sent me this link:
http://doc.phonic.com/file/view.php?parent=1132&order=name&curview=0&sortname=AS C&id=12058&action=file_details

I downloaded the driver but couldn't get it to make any difference. Any Toohey (from an above post) said that it worked for him, so I'm not sure what's going on with mine.

Hey Sam, When you're in Garageband and you create a NEW TRACK. Is the INPUT SOURCE Stereo or Mono. Switching it to mono should give you the sound you want.

When I installed the program from Phonic it boosted the microphone signal and also my acoustic guitar when plugged in the back. I had to cut the volume down as I was getting feedback so obviously the signal was strong. The signal for my electric guitar wasn't as strong as the mic and acoustic so I am still looking into this. I haven't tried the XLR input at the front yet.

OK....Now it seems my levels have returned to being muffled. I am fairly new to interfaces so I am learning as I go. Don't know what is happening as I was getting a strong signal as previously mentioned. Very annoying and very frustrating.

Looks like the firefly is a 3 channel interface with 1&2 on the back and XLR on the front with corresponding gains. So my guess is for mic you should choose channel 3 mono in garageband track input.

alright, so i'm not an expert, but i'm presuming your using the firefly 302 plus, your using the mic input on the front of the firefly, then what are you using for output? the headphone jack or the 1/4 out on the back? So what you need to do is make sure the green lights are on on the front of the firefly, if the red lights turn on, that means your signal is clipping. so you want to have the highest signal you can while not hitting the red on your firefly. Then you should select the firefly in your preferences/audio midi/audio input, but keep the audio output built in output or whatever speakers you use. The next thing is to make sure the track you want your voice on is a real instrument track and that the little dot on the left of the track is red, and the lock a little to the right of it is NOT green. Then if you don't get a strong signal, check the volume levels on the firefly, and in garage band, and if you still are having problems try pushing the +48 phantom power button on the firefly. If that doesn't work I need to know what your using to connect the firefly to your mac.
Hope that helps Jamie