• wilfy
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Topic: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

I've just bought a fireface 400 and am having problems with the audio breaking up (stuttering) and finally degenerating into a noise / constant note.

My setup is:

-Dell Inspiron 1545 dual core
-Windows XP sp3
-Lindy Express card 34 1394a with 2 six pin ports
-The latest ff400 drivers / firmware as of yesterday

The audio break down happens in:

-cubase. It plays back for about 60 seconds before breaking up
-windows media player for mp3s and wavs
-any other audio including system sounds

For troubleshooting I've:

-played with the sample rate in the ff400... and just about every other setting
-disabled everything I possibly can in xp devices including native sound drivers, cd rom, wifi etc.

In the ff400 settings panel  I can see the errors building up consistently whilst playing audio, and the manual says that this could be due to loads on the PCI bus due to insufficient buffering in FireWire controllers. However, it also states that the ff400 has a mechanism to handle any dropouts.

Any ideas??? Else I need to send it back to the suppliers quicksmart before I spend twice the price of the product and the rest of my forseeable life trying to fix it :-O

thanks

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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Re: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

I would send back the Dell, no doubt.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • wilfy
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Re: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

MC wrote:

I would send back the Dell, no doubt.

Thanks for the reply cool

OK, my bad... I thought I'd disabled everything everthing in devices that could conflict with the ff400. However, when I sorted by IRQ I saw that the chipset driver was on the same IRQ 14. Now, I assumed that the chipset drivers were something you shouldn't disable, but I did and the stuttering / breakdown has stopped (although I've now lost graphics resolution - but I can live with that).

I played back a track in Cubase and after 3 minutes I only had one error. However, every minute or so I had a tiny 'glitch' - as if the sound had been speeded up to make a screech. But... on playing back again it stopped. Oh well, I can of expected the odd dropout with firewire on playback so I'll keep an eye on it for now.

  • Knut
  • Knut
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Re: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

What Matthias wants to say: He has a very bad experience with the Dell. It will always create dropouts - this is no audio notebook (search this forum).

best regards
Knut

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
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Re: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

Matthias' Dell is a different one - Studio 15, not Inspiron...

Nonetheless, you shouldn't have to live with even irregular dropouts or glitches... I would look for another laptop, too.

Have you tried these?
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1704
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3437

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • wilfy
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Re: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

Thanks guys.

I'm a bit worried about the firewire aspect in general now - having tried it out. I didn't even realise there was a new USB version of the fireface now. I've had it less than a week and I'm now thinking about returning the ff400 and paying the extra for the UC - if they let me of course.

Another reason is for longer term and general compatibility with other laptops and PCs.

In anyones experience, is the UC connectivity likely to be more stable than the FF400, especially in my situation using a notebook with express card firewire?

  • Jeff
  • Jeff
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Re: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

Use DPC Latency Checker to see if the notebook can handle streaming audio/video at all...

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Regards,
Jeff Petersen
Synthax Inc.

Jeff's Website

8 Reply by wilfy (edited by wilfy 2010-04-07 00:24:27)

  • wilfy
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Re: FF400 audio breaking up / firewire problems

RME Support wrote:

Matthias' Dell is a different one - Studio 15, not Inspiron...

Nonetheless, you shouldn't have to live with even irregular dropouts or glitches... I would look for another laptop, too.

Have you tried these?
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1704
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3437

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Thanks very much for this - and thank you Jeff for pointing this out as well.

I tried the latency checker and it did just the trick and there are no more dropouts etc. Just to recap for anyone interested, I did the following:

-ran the latency checker (excellent tool) and found out that the only thing causing spikes was the wifi driver, so I disabled it
-in computer management/devices I sorted 'resources by type' and looked in the IRQ section. I found that the graphics driver was sharing the same IRQ so I disabled it (oh well)

But.... as I mentioned earlier, I am still keen to return this unit while I can and get the fireface UC usb unit in order to:

-avoid this IRQ problem evidently due to using a peripheral express card
-have more future options and portability. This is the last audio interface I intend buying for many years
-get rid of the damn express card adapter and firewire cable sticking out like a sort thumb waiting to get sat down on (I often work on the sofa.. ahem).

If I could ask last one last time, are there any disadvantages to going the USB route? Issues I can think of are:

-apparently firewire handles '2 way traffic better' i.e. is firewire better for recording on multiple channels (at most 3 for me) whilst playing back / monitoring?
-I'm probably going to use a scratch hard disk for audio. I read it is a good idea to keep the audio interface on a different input to and other devices. Will there be a problem running a USB hdd at the same time as the fireface UC?

Grateful for any opinions at all...