1 (edited by Beepa 2011-02-27 06:58:04)

Topic: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Hi all,

After quite a long time of struggling, like most of you, of finding a flawless firewire card for Fireface, I assumed that a conclusion of TI chipset TSB82AA2 is better than XIO2213?

Like most of you, I had problems with firewire card, having annoying glitches and clicks during recording and playing back with FF 800. I did the suggestions in this forum, like update drivers by using MS hotfix, changing PCI slots, disabling windows sounds, changing motherboards, swapping units, swapping cards, considering brands etc... The result is... Sigh...

I found that the problems ever existed in XIO2213 card (PCI-E based, and I checked the TI document, supposed to be a newer chipset than TSB82AA2), while no problems with TSB82AA2 card (PCI based--spec from TI document, but it seems I saw a PCI-E one from Syba, anyone knows why?).

Now, my current machines setting are like this: Machine (A) is a highend C2Q extreme desktop with 16GB RAM, having Syba TSB82AA2 PCI FW 400+800 card. Machine (B) is a highend Xeon workstation with 24GB RAM, having XIO2213 PCI-E FW 800 card.  Both machines connect to a FF 800 with firewire 1394B connection.

The situation is, even the card with TSB82AA2 is PCI, there are no glitches, smooth. But XIO2213 PCIE card always have glitches.

I hope you guys with talents here can suggest why the situation happened? Or you guys experience with both chipsets can have solutions and opinions?

Now, I'm considering to replace my XIO2213 pci-e firewire card with the one with TSB82AA2 (also PCIe card). Do you guys think it's worthy to spend again extra money to solve the PCI-E XIO2213 chipset problem??

This have been very annoying about finding a suitable card for Fireface 800 ;(  Not sure if RME support also has suggestions of confirmed brands or models of those workable cards.

Looking forward to hearing from your guys, thank you!

2

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

You compare a PCI card against a PCIe card. Obviously they will work differently even in the same conputer because they use different busses. In another computer the situation might be the other way round. The 2213 is known to work good (except for its first generation back in 2007 or so).

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

3 (edited by Beepa 2011-02-27 09:23:34)

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Thank you for your fast reply, Matthias.:-)

I have checked online about those cards which stated (if they have) they are using 2213, and I think most PCI-E cards (except the Syba one I saw in this URL here) are using 2213, but it's quite difficult to know which model (or brand) of 2213 chipset are the newest one unless you bought it.

I'm considering to get that Syba card from that URL link, it used TSB82AA2 chipset (the one working falwalessly to me is with this chipset but on PCI bus), but it's running PCIE... So it made me have a question since, from TI document, they said TSB82AA2 is for PCI, while XIO2213 is for PCI-E. Maybe someone can suugest why this happen?

Actually, the one(s) i'm using are from an audio/video card accessory shop where the sales claimed it used the newest chipset (XIO2213), but it turned out to me having the unresolved problem no matter I swapped different XIO2213 cards.

So It would be good if you guys can suggest a workable card without the need to spend another sum of money on wasting (to guess which one is working) a card which is smooth and "glitchless" for connect FW 800~

Thanks again for mentioning the situation, matthias. Wish anyone can give me more opinions. Thanks you guys.

4

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

They simply put a PCIe to PCI bridge in front of the PCIe FW chip. That indeed works.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

5 (edited by Beepa 2011-02-27 12:56:42)

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

ah, that could mean the speed isn't as fast as it should provided by the original PCI-E speed... :-O

6

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Sigh...

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

No offense folk, what i was mentioning was about the problems came across with XIO2213 chipset, but not how the architecture works with TSB82AA2 to PCIE, or any problems caused by PCI to PCIE bridge.

However, just checked again the PCIe card i'm using, the chipset printed "XIO2213AZAY". As MC said the eariler 2213 wasn't quite working so I'm not sure if this one is the eariler chipset referred to. I still couldn't find if this chipset was produced early in 2007 or so.

No such information was found in RME tech info documents about chipset(s) to be working with fireface, but mentioned about things like "using the card with TI chipset works fine". Searching on web yielded no useful results too.

I would think many people with fireface came across such, but unresolved.

Regards.

8 (edited by Beepa 2011-02-28 08:55:22)

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Here, almost give up! what's a disappointment, and NO response here...

Meanwhile, I tried a trick (someone may say it is useless), hoping to solve it... But not sure if it is really improved the situation or not.

It has been mentioned in RME forum and elsewhere, the "sidspeed" registry editing (originally for XP), but I tried it in my win 7 x64 machines. After setting the value to 3, it seems better in some situations (or it's just an illusion, not sure)...

I tested it with 5 mic channels recording (24bit, 48kHz)--connecting 1,7,8,9,10, latency 512, Sonar and Nuendo, it seems no glitches. But, when setting latency a step down back to 256, glitches, about 5 errors within 10 minutes, showing on fireface settings panel.

Then I tested the playback (24, 48kHz), i set to 1024, playing back with an about 120-track VST instruments project, get 1-5 errors within 10 minutes.

However, for the card that runs older TSB82AA2 chip, PCI connection, no such problem.

Guys, c'mon, you should experience similar problems before, and I saw people here asking similar, but usually these are unresolved posts.

RME tech info here is quite old, no deep and detailed information about recent PCI-e firewire cards, so I'm afraid I have to say it is not useful information. Tech support, without valuable information, don't expect we users can troubleshoot ourselves!:-mad:

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

You are right, nowdays even "TI chipset" doesn't mean it will work ok for audio. I built myself a compter few months back, and took care to find a pci-e FW adapter with TI chipset for it, to make sure that my audiofire will work ok, and spent a week trying to make it work, trying to find issue everywhere else except the FW card (it had TI chipset and seemed to be working), but in the end, replacing the card solved the issue. The chipset was something else than XIO2213, but was also something from the XIO22xx series.
Now I temporarily use my friend's old PCI card with NEC chipset and need to find some replacement, but it's quite hard, while in most webshops, they just mention "TI chipset" instead of mentioning the exact chipset used.
Right now, I found KOUWELL 5101 available locally (slovakia) and it's pci-e and they claim it's using tsb82aa2 so i'm going to try it...
(i have to say i find all this very frustrating. same set of firewire troubles i had to go through 7 years ago when firewire was still quite new. now 7 years later - totally the same. no progress...mankind deserves to go extinct..)

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Your original question was: "Do you guys think it's worthy to spend again extra money to solve the PCI-E XIO2213 chipset problem??"

Answer: Yes!

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

After running 400 and 800 Firefaces with separate connections to a Gigabyte GA-X58-UD4P motherboard with a TI TSB43AB23 1394a chip for a year or so with no issues, I had to get a separate PCie card when I upgraded to an Asus P9X79-E WS motherboard, as the native one was a VIA with only a single output.

However, I am finding that two cards with TI XIO2213A (Syba SD-PEX30009 and SIIG NN-FW0012-S1) seem to work absolutely fine when using a single 400 or 800, but when using them together, problems occur with some programs (Cubase and Reaper), but not others (Amplitube).

See the Cannot use 2 RME Firefaces with Cubase 7.x.x and TI XIO2213A thread at http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=19403 for details.

On music hiatus, so RMEs have gone to homes where others can enjoy them.

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

I did get the two Firefaces to work together, but only when they were plugged into separate PCIe cards. The 400 is plugged into the 1394a port of the Syba card, and the 800 is into one on the SIIG.

I did have a dropout occurring every three seconds, but I found out that it was that one of my plugins in the project I was testing things out with, was in demo mode since I installed in on the new computer.

All permutations for connecting both Firefaces to either of my cards failed.

On music hiatus, so RMEs have gone to homes where others can enjoy them.

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Hello altogether,

I see it is very old thread but Now I am having similar issues I believe. I was working with Fireface 400 on my Mac Pro 2011 until now. I built new studio and also new workstation:
i7-6700k
16gb 3200mhz
500gb m.2 SSD
Windows 10 Pro x64
1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy) drivers installed and active

I have bought PCI-E card Kouwell PE-101 (2xFW400 ports), which is available currently in Czech Republic.
It has TI X102200A chipset, which sadly does not work for me.
- Shows weird levels, mostly right channel only, managed to get sound output once and right after i got windows bluescreen crash, but mostly I dont even get any output and it crashes again.

I have spent hours reading about it but even today I did not find any 100% working solution. Most probably the newer version of chipset TI X102200B will work. Our current market in Czech Republic offers another card Kouwell PE-107 (2x FW800 1xFW400 ports), but they do not specify if that is the newer B version of TI chipset (which they did with the PE-101 card).

They also offer Kouwell KW 5101, which was mentioned by dnk777 earlier, and it has TSB82AA2 chipset.

My current plan: I will return PE-101, and buy both PE-107 and KW 5101 and will test it out (it will arrive tomorrow morning so I will let you all know)

In the meantime, does any one of you here got good results? Last post was posted over 5 years ago.

Cheers
Martin

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Ok I am here with great results!

I can confirm that I have nice sound output on card I have received today:
Kouwell PE-107, which looks like its working on the newer version X102200B.

Worked like a charm after just simply plug in.

I can declare that this setup now works:
i7-6700k
DDR4 16gb 3200mhz
500gb m.2 SSD
Windows 10 Pro x64
1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy) drivers
Kouwell PE-107

Hope this helps! I know that this PCI-E card is currently probably available only in Czech/Slovakia, but if someone would really need it, I might help you. Best to contact me on email martin.puta@email.cz if I wont be answering here.

Cheers
Martin

Re: Overlooked Secret about Firewire Card Chipsets: TSB82AA2 >> XIO 2213?

Good to know and thanks for sharing your test results.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13