Hi,

I've been reading loads and loads of topics, posts, tips and what not, but I can't figure out what is going on in my setup and I'm running out of ideas and things to try. I'll start with describing my current setup and will then follow describing both problems and then a list of things I already tried. Sorry if this is a bit of a long post, but I have been on the matter for months now and it is slowly driving me crazy. I hope you guys can point me in the right direction.

- I have an ADI-8 DS with several Synths connected. The Clock is currently put to internal 44.1 no DS. Never any problem with this one.

- I have 2 ADAT cables connected from the ADI-8 to a Fireface 800 with several more synths connected. The Fireface clock is synced to ADAT. This is on a Intel core2 quad 4GB win7 64 bit. Machine for producing / performing. Has been great up until I upgraded from Vista 64bit to Win7 64bit.

- Next I have 1 ADAT cable from the Fireface 800 to a Fireface 400 on a I7 4GB win7 64 bit laptop. Clock is also synced on ADAT and doesnt report problems. This is the device where all monitoring, recording and mastering happens. It replaced my old Pentium 4 / EMU 1616 combo used in the past for the same purpose, which had no problem up until the p4 died last summer. The Laptop / Fireface 400 combo is giving me trouble since day 1 though. Laptop is this one btw: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=e9WqjDIhlAZgEbT9

- Green ADAT lights are not flickering on any of the 3 devices, which they do if I for example put the Fireface 800 on internal clock of course. Both the Fireface 400 and 800 report "Current ADAT" behind clock source and a solid "Sync" report on ADAT under Input Status. This is all taken from the Fireface Settings app. Also the "Errors:" count remains 0 under normal usage.

Problem 1 :

From day 1 that I started using the Fireface 400 on the laptop, any sound played from the I7 to a channel on the RME can randomly get stuck in a very short loop. It sounds like a saw/pulse oscillator. The pitch and volume seem to be based on what was playing before it got stuck. I can mute the channel and still have clear sound coming in from the Fireface 800, which will still sound just fine.

It really only happens with sound coming from the laptop. Not with sound from external input, so if I don't do anything on the laptop, I can work from my other machine with the Fireface 800 and hear the results trough the Fireface 400 on the speakers without any trouble.

If I kill the application or hit sound interrupting buttons within the application that was producing the sound that got stuck, then the sound will stop and I can then usually restart playing sounds in that application on the same channel that was stuck before. It can happen in any application: browser, Sonar, Media Player and even with windows sounds.

Although rarely, sometimes restarting the sound is not enough and everytime any sound plays thereafter, will result in the saw/pulse tone immediately. In those cases I have to reboot Windows 7 completely.

When working on louder volumes this problem is killing my ears. Mastering audio has become soo hard now. It also interrupts recording in Sonar, having me start over a performance. On average it happens 2 to 4 times each hour when I'm working with Sonar on my laptop. If I'm just listening to music with Media Player, iTunes or browser, then it is only like 1 time an hour.

Btw, probably this doesn't have any meaning to all this, but a fun thing I noticed is when I have the saw/pulse tone and I go to Fireface settings and put Clock Source to internal, I can then change the pitch of the saw/pulse by playing with the -5%/+5% slider below the Clock Modes. Too bad it doesn't sound as good as pitch bending a synth. That would have been an interresting new sound source for sure

Problem 2 :

Well this one is the least of my problems, since I found a workaround, but still it is odd: Ever since I upgraded my Intel core 2 Quad from Vista 64 bit to Win 7 64 bit, I found I get crackles and pops on my Fireface 800, and I mean a lot of them. It reminded me of an old system I had that would do that to sound when there was a lot of disc activity and stuff. In this case however, the crackling an popping sound occurs even with the Quad processor sitting at 0~2%, memory at 1GB out of 4GB and nearly no disc access.

The workaround is an odd one: If I open the fireface mixer and do not minimize it, then the crackling stops and all of sudden the Fireface 800 seems all stable again, up until I minimize the mixer that is. So for as long as I keep the mixer on one of my monitor screens all is well. But this is not normal of course. I wish I still was on Vista now

ps. I'm am fairly sure the crackling only happens in the Fireface 800, even though I play it trough the Fireface 400 input. I can play music on the fireface 400 that stays fine and just the 800 doing the crackling when I unmute it while it is in that unstable state.

As I said I tried loads of things, but here a list of general stuff I already tried and did:

- updated both firefaces to latest bios / drivers

- I increased Buffer Size (latency) to as much as 1024 samples. In case of the Fireface 800 the crackling seems to become less, but doesn't go away completely. With mixer open I can set the Fireface 800 as low as 64 samples though. I run 256 samples currently to stay save. In case of the Fireface 400 1024, 256 and 64 samples doesn't change anything in relation to the sound getting stuck. I currently keep it on 256 samples as well

- I disabled as much stuff at startup as possible. For example my I7 laptop now only has drivers/software up for touch pad, nvidia display, microsoft stuff, wifi and the RME mixer and settings applications. I disabled all other stuff like Bluetooth, card reader,  iTunes and Adobe acrobat reader helpers, and all Asus software that came preisntalled with the laptop.

- I set both windows 7 to optimize for background applications

- I tried increasing priority on the fireface mixer app

- I changed power settings to always best performance

- I tried swapping out the firewire drivers on my laptop. It was Ricoh 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller. Swapped it in Windows configuration to a generic 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller. Didn't seem to change a thing.

- I used to have the full chain on 48khz, but I switched the ADI-8 source to 44.1khz now. Didn't found any improvements with the Firefaces, but did find our highly unstable Virus TI is having it easier with 44.1, so I'm sticking with that for now.

I hope anyone can point me to some other things I can try and hopefully I can find a solution to especially the 1st problem. I can't work this way

Thanks