Topic: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

Hey guys,

There's this problem that's bugging me for a while now, I'm running my fireface 802 via firewire to my pc(with OSX Catalina installed). Everything runs smoothly until I start getting glitches/dropouts(as in the fw light on the interface goes on and off), randomly, either during a project or just browsing on youtube. Usually closing totalmix and restarting the audio interface solves it, sometimes restarting the computer. I remember running High Sierra on it and never had this issue back then.

I've updated to the latest drivers, I'll update the firmware too later on this evening and see what happens.

Symptoms vary from no audio at all, if the pc was open and I'm using it after a while, or fw light going on and off, or just crackling sound during a project, sometimes it goes crazy.

Is there any specific bios/OSX settings I should look at and modify?

My setup:
Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 3 mobo, Intel I7 8700 cpu, Delock 98213 Firewire A PCI firewire card, OSX Catalina 10.15.7, fireface 802 48khz/2048 samples.

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

Have you tried USB operations? What's the exact FW chip on this card, does the settings dialog show "Errors"?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

RME Support wrote:

Have you tried USB operations? What's the exact FW chip on this card, does the settings dialog show "Errors"?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

I've tried USB a couple of years ago on a macbook pro with a lot worse results, a lot more glitches and at around 50-60% asio load it was becoming very unstable,  which is why I switched to firewire.

There are no errors in the settings dialog, sometimes it just switches to another available asio device(I noticed this when the pc was on for a long amount of time and just started using it).

Here's the link to the firewire card product page(I have no idea what to look at):
https://www.delock.com/produkt/89213/merkmale.html

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

Your experience with a Macook does not just apply to the Windows PC... Why not just try USB anyway?
Your Firewire card has a VIA chipset, these often don't perform very well.

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

RME Support wrote:

Your experience with a Macook does not just apply to the Windows PC... Why not just try USB anyway?
Your Firewire card has a VIA chipset, these often don't perform very well.

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

All my USB ports are in use at this very moment(dongles, external instruments, daw controller, mouse, etc), I've specifically configured this PC for firewire. I'm using MACOSX Catalina on this PC, I haven't noticed this problem in windows but I don't use it at all for anything else than video, streaming a live session, etc). I'm somehow guessing it's a driver problem, High Sierra didn't have any problem with this setup, but I had to upgrade because the new Cubase wasn't working with it anymore. It only happens on Catalina..

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

BTW, we do not officially support "Hackintosh" setups like this. There's definitely no known driver problem as such, but you have two factors that could play a role, the VIA chip and the Hackintosh setup. There's not much I can do to help here, because we also have no way to reproduce this. What keeps you from at least testing USB?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

RME Support wrote:

BTW, we do not officially support "Hackintosh" setups like this. There's definitely no known driver problem as such, but you have two factors that could play a role, the VIA chip and the Hackintosh setup. There's not much I can do to help here, because we also have no way to reproduce this. What keeps you from at least testing USB?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

I know you don't officially support hackintoshes, but I'm working with whatever I have at my disposal. There's quite a real difference in sound between windows and osx and a daw that I sometimes need which only works with macintosh.

I'm testing USB right now, so far I'm getting clicks when playing something in a loop, but it might be Cubase or vst plugins, not necessarily the interface(it doesn't do it when I'm not looping).

I've noticed here there were some discussions about a few bios settings regarding cpu throttling and stuff like that(power management). It might be a problem from there, although if I don't know how to configure bios properly I can't tell.

If you have any input on that, I'd be grateful.

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

I caught it on video a few minutes ago. It did this after an hour or so of the computer not being used. I've just unchecked "put hard disks to sleep when possible" in Energy Saver settings. Hope it solves it.

https://www.facebook.com/10000044907886 … 680301632/

Re: Fireface 802 firewire dropout/sync issues on Catalina

Just so  you know, dear Rme Support, the issue was solved by cleaning up the firewire ports, apparently dust got stuck there. But thanks for not pointing that out from the start. wink