• Registered: 2010-06-23
  • Posts: 5

Topic: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

Hello to everyone,
We are a professional studio based on Greece running 3 fireface's 800 on a mac pro. Our mac has 2 hard drives, in one running latest mac osx and on the other win 7 64 bit. Our main control is The euphonix system 5 mc.
The fireface's are connected via firewire 800 and clocked with adat setting up our primary card to master and the others to slave. In both osx and win 7 we having a lot of noises/crackles and sometimes we having pitching problems, this problems are happening due a playback of the sequence even if it is 1 or 100 tracks. To correct the problem we have to go to and reset the asio driver from devices setup (steinberg) and then it seems to be ok for the next 5 playbacks sad witch we have to do it all over again.
Please note that when we had the same configuration but with only 1 fireface nothing happens and everything are fine, still if we close the 2 other firefaces its working perfect.

Please help us, this is really bad for us.
Sorry for my bad English

Thanks, Chris
Madbox Entertainment
www.madboxent.com

  • Registered: 2010-06-23
  • Posts: 5

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

Before you ask, yes we have updated to the latest drivers/firmware/windows and osx update

  • Registered: 2010-06-21
  • Posts: 6

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

I use BNC cables for the clock and have a terminator on the last one

  • Registered: 2010-06-23
  • Posts: 5

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

Hmm we have connect them with wordclock before, from the output of the first to the input of the second and from the output of the second to the input of the third but only in the 3rd card the WC led is on. Should we use the terminator on both of the second and third ff800?

  • Registered: 2010-06-21
  • Posts: 6

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

out of the 1st into the 2nd in
out of the 2nd in to the in on the 3rd
terminator on the out of the 3rd.

if that's how it is then it's something else..?

  • Registered: 2010-06-23
  • Posts: 5

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

Yes its like that but only in the 3rd card the WC led is one, i wonder why

  • Registered: 2010-06-23
  • Posts: 5

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

Please guys, say something

8 Reply by marchoule (edited by marchoule 2010-06-23 15:57:39)

  • Registered: 2010-06-21
  • Posts: 6

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

what happens if you switch the 2nd and 3rd unit around? does the 2nd one get a red light?

Also make sure in the Fireface settings window, the 1st is set to Clock Mode:Master and the other 2 are set to Clock Mode AutoSync

9 Reply by uwekirst (edited by uwekirst 2010-06-23 17:44:04)

  • Registered: 2008-06-26
  • Posts: 152

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

Some hints:

-the fireface devices must be synchronized to the same clock -> one is set to master (internal clock), the other are slave, connected by a clock cable (Wordclock, ADAT or spdif).
-you must connect all firefaces to the same firewire controller (same firewire bus), otherwise the starting time of the recording/playback is not in sync.
-if one device has an error (look at the error counter in the settings dialog), they all get out of sync and you should restart the recording. You should check the dpc latency of your machine if you get errors.
-the devices must use the same buffer settings, check the settings dialog.
-you can also use each fireface with a different DAW software - not synchronised at all - at the same time, but this is probably not what you want.

-before you try 3 units, I would check wether 2 are running troublefree.
-you could also connect one unit over adat and disable the channels of that unit in the DAW software if you don't need all ADAT channels. In that case you use the firewire connection only for controlling the mixer.
-you could limit the bandwidth, if you don't need all channels.

good luck,

/Uwe

10 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,599

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

Is the second unit set to WC In in the Settings dialog? And does the Settings dialog say 'Sync'?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2010-03-02
  • Posts: 16

Re: Triple Fireface 800 Problems

that way i think you have 2 different clocks running at once. If your 2nd unit doesnt lock to the the first (WC Led not on) even if the #2 FF800 is Autosync, if it doesnt find any Clock source at the inputs, it will lock to it's internal clock, And 3rd unit reads this clock that is outputted by the 2nd unit and locks to it. So it seems that first unit is running in one clock and unit #2 and #3 are running in another clock.
Im experiencing clock reading problems in the WC BNC input since ive flashed the unit to the latest Firmware too (2.77)
Are you having this problem since drivers/firmware update?

I would say for you to put the 2nd unit ( the one that dont get the WC Led on) to be The master, and see if the other units get the WC Led on when slaved and if they lock to the WC.

Cheers