• From: Sweden
  • Registered: 2013-03-22
  • Posts: 1

Topic: Problems with my fireface 400

I have huge problems with my fireface 400. I have been using an old Line6 Guitarport for a while now,which works fine, but I thought it was time to get a new firewire cable and get my fireface 400 hooked up. Which does not work, and leads to my machine freezing every time, and a hard freeze, I have to restart it with the power switch. It freezes if I play any type of sound through the fireface, or even if I select the fireface ASIO in for example GuitarRig 5 standalone without playing any sounds.

The machine is Win7 64 i5 750 quad core. 8 gig ram. Radeon 5850 (sound disabled) I´m using the latest drivers (3.071), latest firmware (1.71). I have tried changing to the legacy drivers for the firewire, and the firewire card used to work fine. If I start the fireface mixer I can see the guitar in signal, so the hardware is working as it should.

Because the machine just freezes there is no error information in the reliability history, it just notes that windows was shut down incorrectly.

I am stumped at the moment and could really use some fresh ideas.

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Problems with my fireface 400

Before checking anything else, first make sure to use the "High Performance" Windows power-profile instead of the default "Balanced" one.

3 Reply by Lexo (edited by Lexo 2013-03-29 17:13:11)

  • Lexo
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  • Registered: 2013-03-28
  • Posts: 4

Re: Problems with my fireface 400

Hi,
I have the same problem with my new PC and the FF400.
Win7 SP1 64bit
DeLock FW PCIe with VIA chipset, Windows driver from 2006
ASUS P8Z77-V LX (Intel 1155)
i7-3770K (3,5 GHz) 4c / 8t
VGA GF GTX 650 Ti 1GB PCIe

My DAW is Ableton Live.
OnBoard Sound card is not deactivated.

The PC is running in high performance mode and optimized for background services. All energy savers are off. No over clocking.
All drivers are up to date.
I have running LatMon.exe to find some problems with a driver or service, but everything looks fine.
I can use the FF400 with 48 samples / 48KHz with no dropouts (5 ms I/O latency)

After a minute or sometimes after hours I get this hard freez without any blue screen in totally different situations and in any settings.

I'm running a test with a USB IF (Guitar Rig 3) with 32 samples / 48kHz (7,2 ms I/O latency) since 4 hours with no freezing!

Is that a problem with the FF and the VIA chipset?

Cheers,
Lexo

PS: sorry Ingvar I guess this is not really helpful for you.

4 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 24,900

Re: Problems with my fireface 400

The lowest buffer size for the FF400 is 48 (not 32) samples, and not considered stable. Recommended is 64 samples and up. Did you try to work at 128 samples to see if that works?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Lexo
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  • Registered: 2013-03-28
  • Posts: 4

Re: Problems with my fireface 400

Hi MC,
thanks for the quick reply. I got it! smile

Yes, I try out different settings, but it works never very stable.
Yesterday, I worked with the USB IF and from time to time I had also "glitches" when I loaded sounds or patches for the virtual synthesizers. No crashes, but strange sounds in the audio.

This gave me the idea to look at the data exchange into the PC.
I have a system SSD with all sounds and patches, but the plug-in folder is on a external USB 3.0 HDD.
I moved the folder to the SSD and "voila" everything works fine so far.

I changed my audio settings to 64 samples, 48 kHz (roundabout 5,6 ms latency), made some recordings with the FF400 and add a lot of CPU hungry stuff. No crashes.

I activate all services and go back to the "normal" bios settings (EIST enable, Turbo-Modus enable, EPU enable,...)
Again, no crashes!

After that I made a performance check with 30+ synthesizers and efx and I/O Audio and MIDI to external hardware.
No problem at all.

Cheers,
Lexo

6 Reply by Lexo (edited by Lexo 2013-05-19 16:42:42)

  • Lexo
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Re: Problems with my fireface 400

Hello,
just a short update.

I had crashes again. :roll
It seems that the move of the plug-in folder only fix the preset load problem, but not the freezing.

I found out that it must be related to the settings in the BIOS.
I disable the Intel-SpeedStep (EIST) again.

So far I have no failures!

Maybe it is not the right forum for this, but I hope it could help other users with the same problem.

(EDIT) It works :-) EIST was the problem.

EDIT:
After an update of Win7 and using of the alternative driver for FW cards - no crashes with EIST on.

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=9827
http://kc.flexradio.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50433.aspx
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1704

UEFI BIOS!

Cheers,
Lexo