Hi,

I would like to post here one solution that solved my great problem with freezing output sound on my Fireface800 (other firewire soundcards could have the same problem). It wasnt about applications, my Cubase or Youtube etc were still going but after couple of minutes output sound jumped to something like 1ms loop (sounded like BZZZZ... :-)  ). I am Win7 64bit user with gaming notebook (integrated firewire). Some users here solved this problem by changing driver of their Firewire 1394a device (in device manager) to "legacy" mode or by installing third party driver. None of these solutions helped me. Sound was still frozen after couple of minutes or in case of "legacy driver" no input sound was detected in TotalMix.

So I spent many hours by searching how to solve this and found critical point of these problem. It was chipset of my firewire device. Finally I found the list of recommended chipsets (unfortunately on competitive soundcard manufacturers website)and also there is "blacklist" of chipsets. My chipset was unfortunately on blacklist with this information :
"This chipset drops data packets, resulting in devices
being unable to sync, play and/or record audio
properly. Ricoh chipsets are found on laptops and
motherboards as an embedded interface"

And thats it. I have Ricoh chipset which is piece of s*** for working with audio or video. Finally I bought Firewire 1394a Expresscard with chipset from Texas Instruments (supposedly the best manufacturers of chipsets...BUT he made two blacklist chipsets too!!!) and everything goes silky smooth like on Mac notebook :-) [maybe because Macs use the Texas Instrument chipsets too!!]. I dont want to damage RME so I will not public the list of "Approved FireWire chipsets" :-) here but maybe RME should make somethink similar (maybe they made but I just didnt find)...

Hopefully this will help to some of you and will save your time and stress :-)

SOBW