1 (edited by oasinouroboros 2022-04-23 14:38:02)

Topic: Fireface UFX: no sound and loud cracks

Hi,

I've had a problematic Fireface UFX for years, but been too busy to figure out the problem, so I've just not used it.

My current situation is that I can not get any sound out of the device. USB-link is blue and fine, Totalmix lights up with signal in & out on relevant channels, but still nothing comes out neither via headphone outs or main out. Everything looks as it should, but no help. Every once in a while I get extremely loud crackling which forces me to turn off the device not to blow my speakers.

Earlier my problem - and why I stopped using it - was that sound would come out totally fine, but every random 5 or 15 minutes I would get the same very loud crackling, starting out small and quickly going to total noise on full blast.

I tried finding a fix for the crackling: updated OSX (now Mojave 10.14.6), updated firmware to 360, drivers 3.21
If I remember correctly, the updates didn't do anything for the problem, so I still had sound, but interruptions made it useless.
So a year or smth later, I now try to get it working, but now I can't get any output, but still have the crackling issues.

When the crackling starts it starts softer and analog inputs start lighting up and quickly escalates to constant signal across analog inputs. Interestingly, it's all the mic channels 9-12 and sometimes only the left channel in each analog stereo input, or pairless channels 1,3,5,7. Sometimes it's all channels 1-12. I have nothing connected to any of these inputs.


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EDIT: While writing this post, getting all the input crackling happening and studying it, suddenly it disappeared and THEN THE OUTPUTS WORKED NORMALLY AGAIN without doing any changes!

I'm at a loss in how to tackle the crackling issue making the device unusable.

2 (edited by oasinouroboros 2022-04-23 14:31:59)

Re: Fireface UFX: no sound and loud cracks

Oh, and the main out fader does not affect the output of noise to my speakers, while on the headphone outs, I can just pull down the fader.

I can also not find any logical causation between what I'm doing and when the noise appears. It comes and goes whether I'm playing back or everything just idle.

3

Re: Fireface UFX: no sound and loud cracks

Older UFX might have two potential problems: a failing power supply, and a dieing DSP/RAM. See here:

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=33684

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME