Can someone tell me where exactly is the interleaved option on this new control panel ?

And Why does the Master Solo Button not respond to my b_solo.bmp ?

Is there a way to reproduce this on a Dual/2 Core CPU?

I just downloaded a Windows 7 Firewire Hotfix that replaces the 1394ohc.sys file (original version .16385/04-14-2009 is replaced by .16440/15-10-2009). This fix is supposed to fix slow transfer rates of Firewire harddrives on computer with at least 4 gb RAM, but maybe it also affects other issues?!

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as … -US;975500

That option is no longer needed, as you configure that in the Speaker setup dialog.

The Master Solo Button: what exactly is wrong there?

I was very worried youd say that, but convinced myself into thinking it cannot be.
Matthias, that is simply no good.

This means every user with XP system/s on the planet will have to reconfigure the speaker setup in control panel every time it needs a change.
Also you are assuming XP users are using it as the Default Audio Device.

If the Fireface is not the default audio device, youll have to the the following:
Setup as default
Reconfigure Fireface
Setup other device as default.

I understand that there is no workaround for windows 7 (For now, I hope RME will be the one to find one, in a way that there will be an option that the device can automatically reconfigure itself when presented with interleaved audio ).

but for XP systems this is one more totally unnecessary hoop to jump through & a pita.

BTW:One more thing I am trying to understand: I have been installing old drivers on Firerefaces.
I am doing my best to try & test the new drivers, but I cannot get what is going on in development.

When set to SLAVE via spdif etc, the firefaces w old drivers were really slaved, ie, played in the wrong pitch if audio was played through any of Firefaces soft outputs.
Now in this driver, this is not the case.
The driver shows the Slaved sample rate, but playback is in the correct pitch, ie resampling does occur.

Even worse' when set to INTERNAL, the Fireface will not automatically switch sample rates when playing on XP when using WDM through AN1+2,
it just listens to the Internal Sample Rate Setting.

So there goes the Best XP RME Feature straight out the window !
This effectively makes the Fireface an inferior version of of the Windows 7 driver, with subpar WDM resampling ..

Does this driver behave like that by design ?:-O

Experiences during last week: 

- Adobe Audition 3: when playback is started in editor, audio stutters half second but after that sound comes out right.
- Winamp with ASIO plugin: usually works fine but sometimes crackles. Changing buffer size (to any direction) usually helps. Power off/on FF800 helps, too.
- Sonar 8.5.3: almost perfect. Sometimes Sonar hangs for a long time when trying to start playback and after that no sound comes out (same behavior than I explained earlier). This happened never in XP32/SP3 + Sonar 32bit.
- Sometimes playback won't start with any program (that uses ASIO - I haven't tried Windows Sounds). I must restart computer to get FF800 online.
- Rarely: Sonar "loses connection with audio interface driver". Closing and opening Sonar again helps.

Practically every problem I've described has happened only after I went from XP32 to W7 64 bit in January. RME drivers worked absolutely great in my old XP system.  All issues in my system began after going to W7.

-Panu

---
2 x FF800, W7 64 bit, Sonar 32 bit, newest RME drivers

PC:
Intel Core i7 950 3,06GHz          
Asus P6T LGA1366    
OCZ Gold Low Voltage Triple Channel 6GB         
Asus EAH5750                     
Sunix Firewire 400/800 2 x Beta, 2 x 6-p

My 64-bit W7 works better with RME driver after this patch.
Recommended!

-Panu

Hi Mathius, question to autosync.

I have FF800 with TCO.  If I have the clock source set to say Adat1, (but nothing connected to Adat1), the clock source "travels" down the list and arrives at the TCO (which is before internal). 

Today the TCO (which is not connected to anything) is feeling at 46000Hz. 

So if I have accidentially left my clock source at Adat1, and not using a host that sets the sample rate, my audio is out of pitch. 

Has anything about the new design changed, to allow this behavior?  I can't remember if it was thus on 2.xxxx.  But maybe it was?

Maybe the TCO should be top of the list?  for all the unconnected TCO's of the world.... ?

thanks
pot.

Sorry, I haven't made thorough one unit test. If there have been problems with two units, I have usually switched off the second unit or rebooted Windows.
Now I have installed the 1394 driver hotfix. New report is coming soon. I'll keep on eye if one unit works better.

Matthias, this does not address the problems I brought up one bit, I did ALL THESE TESTS ON XP.
These specific issues have nothing to do with Redmond & everything to do with RME.

They are valid issues.
Please let me know if my reports will be considered for future updates,
or Am I wasting my life trying to help point out the issues so we all can have functionality & flexibility we once had.

Testing these issues & reporting them is very time consuming & I'd hate to think no matter what eventually everything just gets ignored.

1. Interleaved should be back as an option instead of forcing XP users as well to reconfigure the speaker setup.
2. When set to SLAVE via spdif etc, the firefaces should be truly SLAVED as with old drivers , (with wrong pitch & all),
3. the Fireface Settings should have an option when set to INTERNAL, that the Fireface will automatically switch sample rates when playing on XP when using WDM through AN1+2, or ANY other output for that matter, like it used to work.

There is no reason for the above three problems to occur on XP.

It's just down the road from Mackie.:-)

Ira

Fireface Settings issue

Unit 2 settings at Analog (2) tab change mysterically: I've stored Line In and Line Out levels as +4 dBu but after few hours of use (few power off/on's because of playback problems in Sonar) I checked Fireface settings and found that second unit's levels were changed:

- Line In: Lo Gain and
- Line Out: -10 dBV.

-Panu

ADM has not changed in 3.x.

I am giving a reminder here, to please not ignore the XP problems I have mentioned the driver to solve the XP problems earlier,
Here & Here

What are the problems?  What does DPC latency checker show?  If you've got latency spikes, I fear a new driver isn't going to make any difference.

Was your laptop designed for Windows 7, or did you install it as an upgrade?  The new power management in W7 seems to be doing horrible things to some laptops which weren't designed for it :-(

is it the version 3015 last official or beta version? becouse the version 2.9992 is still available for download as last one? thx

This happens because these drivers are plain useless for XP.

I have reported it in length here ,read Here & Here,
better hope RME appreciates the reports & listens.

Sorry to hear you had to go through all this to find out, if you would have asked me, I would have spared you the work.
Fact is, the situation is a nightmare, cannot believe we are even discussing sample rate locks & resampling in 2010 on no less than RME hardare.

In windows 7,  the driver goes with windows 7 samplerate lock, as it installs like every multi channel "speakers" device,
as I have already reported, obviously for your purposes, it is even more useless than it is on XP.

In the past, you could have used the "MME" option for 2 channel, that would at least save you for 2 channels.
Now that RME removed it without warning, you pretty much ran out of luck.

Right now your only option with a Fireface is to do the following:
-Use XP
-Use Driver 2.XXX
-Make a request to RME , that the new drivers will be fixed & restore previous correct behavior, even if only for XP for now, hopefully a workaround will be found for Windows 7 as well.

Thanks for the update. However, same stuttering and hanging problems exists with Sonar as before when I use two units :-/.

You do set the card to a specific WDM sample rate via the dialog, have it work as slave at the same rate, and now change the input clock to something different (48 instead of 44 or similar). The WDM sample rate will and can not follow (would require a complete system reconfiguration), so a warning in red is displayed about the mismatch.

This behaviour might change when MS has the 'sample rate change on the fly' finally working, but at this time it does not.

No other changes.

On my XP system Digicheck stopped working after installing 3.016 driver. There is no entry for Fireface under 'Input device setup' - instead there is a new entry 'ASIO Hammerfall DSP' which I don't have. Everything else seems to work fine so far.

Thanks. That did the trick.

Hi

I have just purchased a fireface 800. I am using windows 7 32 bit and have installed the latest 3.016 driver and 2.77 firmware.

For music playback via asio, I am having some problems with a clock of 96kHz.

After about 1 minute of playback at 96kHz, the fireface loses the firewire connection, the mixer freezes and when I try to restart I get a BSOD with stop 0x9F error.

Playback works fine at 48khz.

The firewire interface on my motherboard is a VIA VT6315N and the VIA driver is installed.

Any suggestions for a fix?

I found this behavior in 3.015 & W7 64-bit, too.
I am 100% sure that I do not touch I/O levels but sometimes they get changed.

-Panu

Hi MC

Just want to say that the behavior with sleep and hibernate states on my notebook with 3.xx has been really exemplary on my system.  FF always comes back on straight away no matter what state the notebook is coming out of. Never had to reboot pc or cycle FF.

Still wish there was a "perfect" solution for the Autosync. I find that when I have been clocked to adat etc, and which may be no longer be present, FF defaults to last known rate of TCO (which may be a different rate). Yes it's a user thing and one should be all over such matters and anticipate it.  But sometimes we forget... would be nice if TCO is no longer receiving signal, Autosync drops right through to Internal. Who knows if it's possible in the hardware.

regards
pot.