Topic: Fire Face Mixer & Matrix WIN 7

With much effort I succeedded to instal FF800 in Windows 7. Even with the latest driver and flash version, legacy 1394 driver is needed, otherwise bluescreen party comes up... I got used to the fact that installing FF800's is some sort of nightmare... Test, inspect the processes, analyze the system and so on... And in the end, things are 98% stable instead of 99.99999%.

When I opened the Fire Face mixer and then opened matrix and then closed the mixer with matrix left opened I can't open mixer anymore. Matrix opens instead of mixer. I also double clicked windows/system32 firefacemix.exe and I got matrix. In win XP there was a similar problem, but with double-clicking on firefacemix.exe both mixer and matrix showed up.

Why there are not 3 programs (control panel, mixer and matrix) instead of control panel and mixer only?? A lot of users have that kind of problems and I think 3 programs would solve this issue.

Sory, if this question was allready posted in this forum...

Regards, tired user

Re: Fire Face Mixer & Matrix WIN 7

Open the Matrix, then hit the "t" key to open TotalMix view.

Regards,
Jeff Petersen
Synthax Inc.

Re: Fire Face Mixer & Matrix WIN 7

Hello, and thanks for fast reply. The magic "t" shortcut key solved the problem. I have another question... I have two FF800 units. First is about a half year older, both were purchased in year 2006. After a half year of operation of the first unit there were some hardware problems and it was send back to repair. (http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=446).

After repair unit worked as expected with "classical" issues (http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4231) which was not FF800's fault in the end. But they were quite difficult to overcome as there are absolute no hardware and software errors allowed during the show.

During last year of operation I had two crashes with the same "first bought" unit. I'm a lucky guy - both happened during the soundcheck. Last crash happened two weeks ago in the following scenario: everything worked fine for more than two hours and then a sudden (quite loud "top") came out of FF and audio (ASIO) streaming stopped. Red host light was not lit, error counter in CP indicated no error but streaming stopped. I was not able to restart streaming form application level. Complete system restart (FF and computer) was needed to make things running. Not to mention - we ran the show without FF as there are no errors allowed. Better "bad" sound than DEAD sound.

After that I considered this must come to the end. One week of testing under the same conditions with win XP OS showed no problems with this unit. Then I tried things with win7. At first I instaleld the latest driver (2.9992) and the latest firmware (2.77). When I managed things to work in win7 it is obvious that win7 handles the FF and FW drivers quite differently than XP. I don't know the details behind and I am even not inerested in them.

There is a lot of undefined things here but one is certain: the two ff800 units I have behave different under the SAME conditions. During 8 hour test there were 81 Errors (with audible clicks) on the first unit and 0 on the second. FF control panel sometimes shows TCO module!! with the first unit and never with the second. I do not have TCO module instaled in any unit. These tests were performed under win7 with the latest drivers and custom audio software. Custom audio software is STABLE and it was not the cause of any errors I had with the FF in the past. Others who use it also have no problems with it and it runs with ESI and MOTU devices as I know.

System desc:

HP EliteBook 8730w (T9600, NVidia Quadro FX2700M, 4GB)
win7 pro 32 bit (genuine)
legacy FW driver
latest FF drivers

What is to be done with the first FF unit??

Re: Fire Face Mixer & Matrix WIN 7

The errors counted in the settings app indicate FW transmission trouble. Could you explain more about the test? Were both units active at the same time during tests? If so, how were the units connected?

Regards,
Jeff Petersen
Synthax Inc.

Re: Fire Face Mixer & Matrix WIN 7

Test procedure was very simple: ASIO application prefroming quite heavy DSP (long FIR filter for example) running for eight hours on by user uninterrupted computer. Test was performed on a single FF800 interface at a time (FF800 were not connetded, I tested the first FF800 (problematic at my opinion) and then the second). I tested both interfaces on the same computer and under the same conditions. The error count difference was 81 against 0. The most suprising thing is, the first interface sometimes shows TCO module in CP which is NOT present. And values in TCO view are nonsensely jumping on every second. CPU load during the test was around 30%.

I have to mention this: Error counter indicates FW transmision troble; how is than possible, that if I run ACAD2004 program together with Audio APP running FF800 and i move crosshair with mouse pointer along ACAD's display, error counter goes up like mad. That (the simplest of all) ACAD action does not invoke any hardware action at my opinion (no disk writes or something simillar, just a little of CPU), but heavily interrupts FF800 operation. And all that happens in win7. In winXP acad doesn't interrupt FF800 at all as it has nothing special to do with the comp's hardware.

Re: Fire Face Mixer & Matrix WIN 7

I forgot: sample rate during tests was set at 48000 and buffer size at 96. I allways use that setting as it is best compromise for my audio performance.