I have two original Multifaces, one is 7 years old ("MF1"), the other 6 ("MF2"). Both have been in the studio 99% of the time, both were purchased new. I've had very little in the way of issues with either during this time and have almost taken their reliability for granted.

"MF1" had been hooked up to my PCI card on the Windows machine, "MF2" to my original slim profile Cardbus card (I have two of these).

The motherboard died on my PC a couple months ago, so the bus-powered MF1, which had been working without issue up to that point, sat in the rack powered off once this happened. MF2 is connected to my Vaio Notebook via Cardbus (first running Vista 32 Ultimate, and as of a couple weeks ago, had been upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate). I've been running 3.085 since August and the firmware on both my Cardbus cards has been upgraded to the latest version.

While working with my sequencer one day, the output suddenly cut out altogether - on all channels. I could see audio going to TotalMix, but no audio output on any channels, analog or ADAT (I did not try SPDIF). After changing a bunch of different things, I finally replaced the cable from the Cardbus to MF2 and this seemed to fix the issue for a while.

A couple weeks later, while watching a movie on my Vaio (audio out via the Analog 1 & 2 on MF2), the audio quite suddenly was very distorted -- distorted signal plus lots of background distortion/white noise. I tried switching to the various analog outputs, changing the latency, other settings, etc. but still got the same distorted output. Output on the ADAT channels was unaffected. Additionally, plugging into the headphone jack increased the background distortion on the analog outputs and although I could plainly see normal levels in TotalMix's headphone output, I could only hear a lot of distortion and white noise and the faintest impression of the signal I was monitoring.

I also noticed, oddly enough, that activating the professional checkbox for SPDIF out in the HDSP Settings Control Panel would result in an increase of the background noise/distortion db level.

I had an unused firewire->slim cardbus cable, and replaced the cable but the problem remained.

I then disconnected MF2 and hooked up my older MF1. However, with the MF1 I simply got a solid red light and an I/O Box State error. I've tried swapping out various firewire->cardbus cables, my cardbus cards, etc. but I get the same behavior. The only thing I have not tried swapping out is my power supply.

My optimistic guess is that two new power supplies might do the trick. My hopeful guess is that they're both broken somehow, but repairable. My worst fear is that I won't be able to have either of them repaired.

Before I get in touch with Synthax to ask for an RMA I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.