The firewire cable from the Hammerfall HDSP CardBus (PCMCIA) has broken.
Does anyone know where I can still get a cable like this?

FW400 to CardBus PCMCIA
RME 511019

Regards
Ronny

I currently own a multiface II and added an expert sleepers ES8 for my  synth rack through adat to it.

Was thinking to add a digiface so I can attach the ES8 to it and a ADA 8000 , so I can get 8 additional analog I/O, the ES8 also needs adat connection but it is there just to send/receive CV from/to my pc to my synth rack.

Anyone running a similar setup?

Does this even work simultaneously or am I running into master/slave issues here?

I have a 32bit Win 10 DAW partition (necessary for running beloved legacy hardware)

Recently the option to use MF as ASIO audio device in all audio software has disappeared - it's just not listed

However the driver is listed in Windows Device Manager

Can someone help/advise pelase?

Thanks

My ADI-8 DS powers on, and passes signal, but none of the buttons on the front panel work anymore. I can't change the clock settings or the input or output levels.  I press the buttons nothing works.

I should note that one time i left the unit on for an hour and i was able to have a few buttons work, but then they stopped again

I checked the voltage coming from the power supply (which has been recapped about 10 years ago), I get 15v and 5v, which i understand is what i should be getting.

Usually everyone always says replace or recap the power supply, but in my case this has already been done not *that* long ago, and I seem to be getting the proper voltage.

What's the next thing I should check?
Thanks!
Ben

I have a problem with my **RME Fireface 400**.

In **TotalMix** the meters show normal signal.

However the audio outputs behave incorrectly:

* **Line Out does not play the music signal. It only outputs a robotic / distorted noise.**
* **Headphone output plays the music, but it also sounds robotic / heavily distorted.**

So the situation is:

* TotalMix shows normal signal
* **Line Out = only robotic noise, no music**
* **Headphones = music is present but with robotic distortion**

When I connect an external amplifier and increase the gain, the signal becomes louder but the distortion remains.

Has anyone seen this issue with Fireface 400?

Thank you.

Hoping someone can help me get my FF800 back online after a local power outage knocked everything out.

**My setup:**
- RME Fireface 800
- MacBook Pro M3 (macOS Tahoe) — I'm aware FireWire is no longer supported on Tahoe, so this is not my primary test machine
- Secondary test: older MacBook running Snow Leopard with legacy TotalMix software
- Apollo Twin MkII (the FF800 was being used as additional I/O)

**What happened:**
The unit had been running fine for a couple of months. After a power outage in my area (I don't believe the FF800 was powered on at the time), it stopped being recognised. I've read that outages can scramble internal settings on the FF800.

**What I've tried:**
- Two different FireWire 800 cables
- Both FW800 ports on the back of the unit
- Tested on both machines — neither detects it

**Front panel behaviour:**
The only lights active on the front panel are the +4dBu input and output indicators. No host light, no other activity. Nothing that suggests it's communicating with the computer at all.

**Where I'm stuck:**
I can't tell if this is corrupted internal settings from the outage, or potential hardware damage. I've seen the old thread about the red host light and burnt FW port, and I'm hoping that's not what I'm dealing with here.

Any advice appreciated — particularly around whether there's a hardware reset procedure that might restore the FF800's settings, or any diagnostic steps to distinguish a settings issue from hardware damage.

Thanks in advance.

So Firewire is dying, I know, but who doesn't love getting the absolute most out of your old devices.

The FF400 could still be a great ADAT converter, it should work!
However... I've tried absolutely everything and it doesn't seem to store the workspace from TotalMixFX. I'll have it plugged in via firewire, it works fine, it does everything I want it to do. I unplug firewire and it still does its thing.

I power cycle it without it being plugged in to Firewire, and it doesn't keep my routing. It only does analog1 - ADAT 1 and analog 2 - ADAT 2.
I thought that might be a clocking issue, so I gave it a clock from my FF800 with ADAT and saved its settings under AutoSync and ADAT as preferred input. It shows a light on the front that it's getting sync I believe from ADAT1. It still does the same though. 

I've also tried flashing a state from an old mac with a built in firewire port thinking my adapter chain could be the problem.. No success.

My hypothesis is that it might be a hardware thing, that it's not able to save the state correctly and it defaults to some state that was saved pre-problems. My second hypothesis is that it may be a software thing to do with more modern TotalMix FX not saving into the older devices.

Anyone have any tips? References?

thank you
David

@MC for 200 euro could you make a USB-C to RME-RPM/ Multiface 2 cable, bringing Fireface UCX features?

Buying a second hand Babyface Pro as my interface in the mean time.

I dug out my "old" FireWire 800 to connect it as a slave to my Fireface 802.

Obviously, I'm not getting it to work completely. I can get inputs 1, 7, and 8 working, but nothing else.
I made two explanatory videos:
https://youtu.be/NzEOLXONqqk

https://youtu.be/_m9HhnLNKUo

If anyone has any idea what I'm doing wrong, I'd appreciate it

I wanted to make this post to possibly help other people struggling with firewire in their pc on Win11.
I bought a Startech PEX1394B3LP with the TI XIO2213B chipset. I have had good experiences with Startech stuff.

After installing the firewire card I started getting random crashes. My PC was always rock solid before and knowing RME's reputation the problem had to be the firewire card. The problem was the PC would freeze up, not leaving any crash logs. Every now and then all I could see was a WHEA CPU error in the event viewer. But this could be anything.

I installed a PCI-E riser cable to move the firewire card away from my GPU and motherboard, I thought maybe interference from my GPU was causing issues but that didn't help.
One day I felt the PC starting to crash and quickly hit reboot. That finally generated a crash log and after analysis with WinDBG it gave the error: SINGLE_DPC_TIMEOUT_EXCEEDED

After some research it seemed that a PCI-E device was taking too long to respond, and that the cause could be some sort of energy saving routine on PCI-E devices. I checked my bios but all the energy saving options were off, so I started checking windows options. There I found it:

Open Control Panel via the search bar --> System and Security --> Power Options --> Balanced power plan Change Settings --> Advanced Settings --> PCI Express --> Link State Power Management --> Set it to OFF

No more crashes now, 3 weeks stable.

Stupidly if you go through normal Win11 settings you don't find these options, you have to go through the older Control Panel.

My system is a MSI B450 Mortar Max motherboard with a AMD 5800X3D. Win11 Pro 25H2. The firewire card is still on the PCI-E 1x riser plugged into a PCI-E 3.0 8x slot running through the chipset. All latest drivers. GPU is a 7900XTX. I am using the normal firewire Texas Instruments driver from windows, not the legacy one. I tried that and it made no difference. I even ordered another firewire card with a VIA chipset but everything seems cool now.

Hope this helps some people. I am very much enjoying the FF400 and Totalmix. One day I'll get a UCXII for the dynamics processing.

Cheers,
Ted

Also, it always says 44.1kHz frequency for the sync when autosync'd. I'm not sure if this is correct, I'm trying to record at 48kHz through the sound card.

If I switch to master sync, the timing is fine, and 48kHz frequency is shown in sync.

However another problem pops up.

I have a been recording simultaneously off my mixer into both the RME sound card, as well as my Rane SL3 interface. Every recording through the RME is too bright. I'm recording an electronic track, then comparing the recording to the original track, and is way brighter than it should be. Doesn't matter what setting - 44.1 - 16, 44.1 - 24, 48 - 16, 48 - 24. Have tried 32 bit too. I've tried all three 9652 ADAT1-3 inputs.

I'm recording with Steingberg Wavelab 6.11.

I can post spek spectrals and audio clips if that helps (spectrals are easiest to notice if you flip back and forth between them to see the RME recordings are pushed up in the frequency range).

Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

Also listening to the recordings now, I'm also noticing more noise floor than I'd expect, but maybe that's due to recording at a low volume, through my analog Xone 92 DJ mixer. I thought I recorded at around -16dB though, it shouldn't have that much noise floor I'm assuming.

Here are some audio clips to A/B for anyone curious what I'm talking about: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ … sp=sharing

I am using a balanced 2xTRS output from my Allen & Heath Xone 92 mix 2 output, running into Alesis Ai-3 ADAT, optical out to RME Hammerfall 9652 Digi.
I am also using the RCA record output to run into my Rane SL3 and recording on my laptop, and the recording is identical in tone to the source material. So it's not mixer colouration or anything like that. There's no EQ or other setting applied on the mixer.

When playing back audio from ableton or sending in audio through one of the inputs, i can see the levels of the respective signals in the TotalMix (in software playback or the inputs), but when i routing them into the headphones or MainOut, the levels are not showing there, and there is no sound.

I already did a restart, two complete shutdowns, a compete Reset of the TotalMix... everything to no avail...

Any ideas what this could be about?

Thank you!
Wolf

FireFace 400, macOS 14.6.1, MacBook Pro M1