Hi guys,

I've got a Fireface 400 at the moment which is connected to my current laptop (Dell M1330 c2d 2.5ghz 4gb ram, no pagefile etc etc) via a SIIG expresscard interface running Win7 x64. I work primarily @ 96khz 24bit in Ableton Live 8.1 - upto 32 stereo channels.

My FF400 pops and cracks all over the place because (I think its because of this) the firewire performance for this laptop is crap (although dpc latency checker shows up 300ys average). I've even got the buffer set in the FF config to 1024 and this still causes dropouts. There are several discussions around the M1330 and how the FW/expresscard bus are rubbish on this laptop. CPU usage never goes over 50%.

I also had a desktop PC with a TI dedicated FW400/800 interface which also resulted in pops and cracks etc.

I've read a few posts around latency and performance of the FFUC and I'm thinking that by using USB instead of the highly volatile FW interface it may well prevent the issues I'm having so....

If I sell my FF400 and replace it with a FFUC, is it likely that the pops and cracks etc will be cured (or at least reduced) or am I well off the mark?

Thanks Andy