• From: Missouri City, TX
  • Registered: 2010-04-04
  • Posts: 15

Topic: FF400/WinXP SP3/ Newbie Multiclient setup questions

Ok gang,

After reading through a whole host of posts here on the forum, it appears alot of my woes with this interface may have been related to using the same outputs for both WinXP apps like itunes and WMP11, as well as with Reaper (my music recording app of choice).  Understanding this, I need some REAL BASIC HELP in terms of how I should theoretically have things setup, both in the Control Panel->Sounds->Audio as well as on the FF400 itself and inside the Fireface Settings and TotalMix apps.

Here's what I have physically connected to the FF400:
Sennheiser HD-580 Headphones -> Phones/Monitor Ch.7/8 pm front of FF400
Firewire Cable plugged into Right-most firewire port (as you look at the back) -> Firewire port on PC
Axe-Fx Balanced L & R analog outs -> FF400 Balance Line Inputs 5 & 6
FF400 Balanced Line Outputs 1 & 2 -> Active Studio Monitors

Pretty straight forward, right?

In the WinXP Control Panel->Sounds & Audio Devices->Audio I have Playback set to FF400 Analog 7+8.  I have no idea if that is good/bad/otherwise.

In Reaper, I have selected the ASIO driver and setup the inputs to be Analog 5 &  Analog 6, i.e. the only input into the FF400, which is my Axe-Fx.  For outputs in Reaper, I have selected Analog 1 and Analog 2. 

I'm not sure how to have the TotalMix setup such that I can playback normal WinXP programs like itunes and WMP and VLC or have a YouTube clip playing while I jam through the recording interface of Reaper.

Can someone lead me by the hand to set things up appropriately so that I can actually hear audio the way I want and hopefully no longer have the insane things that were plaguing me in the past.

Thanks for any and all help.  Please let me know if you need more details.  I really did read the user manual, but the examples just didn't seem to click with my feeble mind, evidently.  Thanks.

Regards,
Jeff

  • From: Missouri City, TX
  • Registered: 2010-04-04
  • Posts: 15

Re: FF400/WinXP SP3/ Newbie Multiclient setup questions

Well, I figured it out after much trial and error.  Unfortunately, I still get the horrible audio corruption that happens typically when I open up a YouTube or other media clip in IE.  The audio comes out at the wrong sample rate and is completely distorted by a noise signal.  Playing around with DDS settings do nothing other than changing the speed of the awful audio, but never gets it to "re-synch" to playing at the correct speed.  Power cycling the FF400 or shutting down all audio programs and bringing up something like WMP11 to play an audio track is the only thing that can get things to play well again.  This phenomena does not seem to be limited to playing back audio with IE, but that tends to be the thing that causes it most often.  I've had the issue when playing back tunes with itunes and WMP and IE.  Not sure if I've ever had the issue with Reaper playback, though. 

If anyone has any idea about what the heck may be causing these horrible audio issues, I'd love to hear them.  I've already done the uninstall/reinstall thing with the FF400 drivers and I am running the latest firmware and the 2.9992 driver under WinXP SP3.

Thanks,
Jeff

  • From: Missouri City, TX
  • Registered: 2010-04-04
  • Posts: 15

Re: FF400/WinXP SP3/ Newbie Multiclient setup questions

Closing this thread with my solution, too...

I just bought a new Siig 2-port Firwire PCIe card with the TI 1394 chipset in it and all of these weird sample rate/distortion nasties appear to have been eliminated.  I still get pretty horrid DPC's in my system at times, even after turning off the network card, but I see to recall once upon a time that I tracked it down to a "USB driver" issue.  Of course, I have like nearly every peripheral known to man plugged in via USB, so I don't know exactly how to go about disabling the USB controllers and such without losing total functionality of my keyboard, mouse, etc...

Regards,
Jeff