• Registered: 2008-01-24
  • Posts: 6

Topic: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

I've been having a problem with my fireface 800, particularly when playing video files, but also mp3s and WAVs and in my DAW.
After being used for a while, the audio will sometimes speed up, with drop outs and digital distortion. Is this a sync issue?

My PC is built around an Asus P5K-VM with a VIA firewire chipset and onboard SATA controlling a 10k rpm western digital raptor which is 2/3 empty and well defragged. It has 4 gigs of memory and the CPU is a core 2 quad. There is no other device connected to the fireface.

I've recently switched from xp 64 to xp 32 hoping this would solve the problem, but it didn't. I was thinking of trying a good PCI firewire card (any recommendations?) but I read some posts here pointing toward the onboard SATA which sounds reasonable.

Any ideas?

  • Registered: 2007-07-01
  • Posts: 53

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Does audio while playing correctly suddenly speed up? What is the DAW software?
Rick

  • Registered: 2008-01-24
  • Posts: 6

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Yes, that's right, it is playing correctly for a while and then all of a sudden for no apparent reason, the playback gets fast and distorted. The distortion almost sounds like it's being amplitude modulated by a square wave, or even ring modulated. Nasty sounding. It's happened in Ableton Live, but even more often it happens in Winamp, ITunes and most often VLC. I've changed the buffer size and that may have helped but that isn't a cure to the problem.

  • Registered: 2007-07-01
  • Posts: 53

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Ableton Live can be tricky. Make sure tempo changes have not become automated somehow. Check the tempo indicator (beats per second) on the upper left area of the screen. If on try turning off warp for the track. Try clearing all envelopes.
Good luck.
Rick

  • Registered: 2008-01-24
  • Posts: 6

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

It's definitely not just Ableton, the same effect happens if I just play a WAV or AVI in any media player program. Actually, it happens less often in Ableton. It's a really nasty distortion not just the audio speeding up, more completely destroyed audio playback.

6 Reply by rick-slo (edited by rick-slo 2008-01-26 03:56:13)

  • Registered: 2007-07-01
  • Posts: 53

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

I was thinking of some file you recorded in Live and then played back in another media player. In any case is there a computer sound card or just the Fireface and are you using the computer sound card or Fireface for playback outside the DAW, say with Media Player? Are you using FireWire 800 1394b or FireWire 400 1394a cable? If using FireWire 800 1394b you may have better luck  with FireWire 400 1394a.

Rick

  • Registered: 2008-01-24
  • Posts: 6

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

There is not other soundcard and I'm using a firewire 400 cable. Is it worth getting a firewire 800 PCI card and cable and trying that? Less expensive than a SATA PCI controller, which other posts have suggested cause this problem with my motherboard and the fireface.

  • Registered: 2007-07-01
  • Posts: 53

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

The 400 cable should be fine. Be sure windows sounds are turned off. That's all the ideas I can think of. Good luck.
Rick

  • Registered: 2008-02-04
  • Posts: 4

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Hi.
I get the same problem if I connect my Akai MPC 2500 s/pdif out into the Fireface 800 s/pdif in and set the master clock to auto. In order to have my FF800 work at the correct, stable sample rate as my PC audio programs, the FF800 has to be in master mode. Sometimes when I record audio after having accidentally left the clock mode in 'auto', my audio records at silly sample rates, like 28000 hz, 23000 hz, 38000 hz, etc. It's a total pain when I accidentally leave it in auto and then record 8 separate tracks of jamming only to realise when I come back to it later that it has all recorded at 28313 hz!
Probs not same problem, but hey... I got to vent a little about my own stupidity smile

  • Registered: 2008-01-24
  • Posts: 6

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

I did check that all right as other posts said that can be a problem. It's still doing it, but I'm starting to think it's the computer hardware. I need to try a PCI firewire card and/or a PCI SATA card.

  • Registered: 2007-10-22
  • Posts: 7

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Same here with ADI-2.

  • Registered: 2008-01-24
  • Posts: 6

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

ok, after trying a PCI SATA2 controller, a diffn gfx card, disabling the DVR drive, ethernet controlller etc... with no luck, I think I have narrowed the problem down to the WLAN card. If I disable that, the problem appears to go away. The latency checker has been invaluable in troubleshooting this cos, you can see the latency spiking when the wlan card is enabled/in use even if it doesn't immediately cause sync loss which can take some time to manifest.

I'll keep testing over the coming week and post the results.

13 Reply by john (edited by john 2008-03-15 15:42:50)

  • john
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  • Registered: 2008-03-15
  • Posts: 14

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Hi,

I am a previous MOTU 828 mkII owner. I just picked a brand new RME FF800 hopping the preamps would be better (this is the case :-)) and that the drivers would be more stable: however I am having the exact same issue than deasunf.

The audio speed-up pb occurs sporadically, after 15 minutes on average when winamp is playing files for example (I am not even using the computer for anything else at that time).
Sounds pretty much like a wrong sample rate is picked, the audio seems pitched-up or slightly speed-up and there is ugly distortion on top of it...
I have a PCI dedicated firewire card but I don't think this is the issue here...also, I have glitch and pops pretty often when I use the computer, but this is because I set the samples buffer on 128 samples (well I cannot set a latency which would be bigger than on my MOTU right ;-) ?)

Also, it is very frustrating not to be able to have let's say Abelton Live opened and winamp playing at the same time (i quickly tried asio output for winamp and was not so lucky, my system hanged when I tried to open ableton while playing with winamp), or being able to surf on myspace, listening to the flash player and having another ASIO application opened...this was definitly possible with the MOTU, and I don't see myself having to close and open application all the time...hope I will find a workaround

OK, otherwise this sound card SOUNDS good, so solving these pb has become my mission smile !

14 Reply by john (edited by john 2008-03-15 18:01:18)

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Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

OK, here is what I tried:
1/ Setting the windows drivers settings to "Fireface Analaog 800 (3+4)" (WDM gave the best results for me, because MME gives me interrupted playbacks when messing with winamp GUI)
2/ Setting winamp to use the main audio peripheral (so that it would choose the one defined in windows sound prefs above)
3/ Setting Ableton to use Asio Fireface Analog 800 (1+2)

And so far, it seems to work OK...I can playback under Ableton while playing songs with winamp, while listening to my band on myspace...totally useless but at least I don't have to turn one application off  in order to turn the other on ;-) !!!

What I understand I did is using different submixes for ASIO and WDM...and so far, it seems to work !

I still have a question: how come there are 5 stereo submix buses available in the drop down menu of win XP sound prefs and "only" 4 stereo submixes shown in totalmix ?

15 Reply by john (edited by john 2008-03-15 19:17:58)

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  • Registered: 2008-03-15
  • Posts: 14

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

OK, the audio speed-up occured again...
This thread might be related and helpful: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=979

16 Reply by john (edited by john 2008-03-16 22:58:08)

  • john
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  • Registered: 2008-03-15
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Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Finally, I used the latency checker, and I might have found the solution of the audio speed-up pb: I don't seem to have the pb when I disable the WLAN and LAN...Seems that FF800 sometimes becomes out of synch while network is busy, i.e. while surfing on the web, or if some automatic updates are starting...

So, for my case, having a RME FF800 implies that I have to choose between playing songs on winamp and web surfing (or buying a Mac hmm), not both simultaneously...kind of frustrating!
If somebody has the solution to lower the lan priority in order for the sound card not to loose its mind and speeds up the audio, I wanna know it please!

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,782

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

WLAN disturbing (firewire) audio is not an uncommon problem. Regular LAN does not do that so much, though. Heve you tried with LAN only active?

You can always replace both onboard LAN and WLAN with USB devices, that might help.


Regards,
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • hoswa
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  • Registered: 2009-07-03
  • Posts: 8

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

I have exactly the same problems with my fireface uc. Switching to mac doesn't help, I'm using a mac. ;-)

  • From: Iran
  • Registered: 2008-02-04
  • Posts: 17

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

HI Listen carefully Because I solved this problem ON Windows 7 very simple:lol::lol::lol:
1-Go to CONTROL PANEL
2-Goto Power Options
3-Open "Show additional plans and choose High performance .
I am sure that this problem is because of Power saving That Fireface goes out of sync sometimes .
My problem "Speed Up And Distortion and pops and clicks" solved with changing to High performance.
I also changed some other options in the "Change plan settings/Change advanced power settings" near the High performance option that i think is not important for the problem.
Trust on me ,Your Answer is under Power Options. I solved my problem after 8 mounts of doing evrything ,even changed my mainboard,buy sata pci card ,buy firewire pci card , that did nothing .
Just by changing to High performance my problem went away and i am so happy because my Fireface now working whithout any problem.
I hope this post will help many people.
         "Sepehr from IRAN"

  • Registered: 2009-10-04
  • Posts: 3

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

I'm bringing this thread back to life as I suffer the same issue with my FF400. This is a serious issue with the Fireface drivers and is certainly NOT solved by the guy above, so needs to be looked into further by RME. I'm running a pc with windows xp sp2. I have 2 partitions - 1 for internate/general use and the other for music production. The music partition doesn't have any internet connections or wireless card enabled and doesn't suffer this issue. However the internet partition suffers so badly from this random speeding up and distortion that listening to music or watching videos is totally undoable. I've ended up having to go back to using my old emu 2 in 2 out pci card for this partition which is a ridiculous backward step that I shouldn't have to make given the price and capabilities of the FF400. The fact that other soundcards can run without this issue certainly points to the fact it is a problem with the Fireface drivers, I simply cannot recreate the same problem with my old Emu card no matter what I throw at it. I don't see why I should have to sacrifce the quality and i/o of the Fireface in order to surf the net... Suggestions would be great. Many thanks

21 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • Registered: 2007-04-06
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Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

When your computer includes components that (or their drivers) disturb FireWire communication, then we (nor any other manufacturer) can not change that. A comparison with a PCI based audo interface is simply invalid. An RME PCI interface would work as well.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2007-06-16
  • Posts: 214

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

To deasunf:

I had a similar problem in the past. I replaced my old notebook with HP EliteBook 8730w. This "elite" machine came with win xp and vista pro with drivers for both systems. As I hate vista I installed xp and then simply put driver CD click install and that was it. But drivers that came along for xp were incompatble with xp. As I remember there were problems with integrated camera, integrated bluetooth module and SATA device mode in bios setup. After a lot of waisted time (and blaiming RME for that broken sync problem -  very sorry again) we fixed machine somehow. No camera, no bluetooth installed and sata mode to ide instead of ohci. Some additional patches and now thing work ok.

But there is one thing also. When I use FF800 (with ASIO) and in the meantime run a program (winamp) that uses separate audio card (on-board audio card for ex.) with MME sound mapper it sometimes interrupts FF800. Playback speed increases with some sort of square wave modulation.

I can reproduce this (not generally or even not RME's problem) any time I like. Wnen FF800 runs with ASIO with some app, I just programmaticaly list for installed Mixer devices in windows kernel mixer in another program. In that case FF800 gets out of synch anytime. That happens with all computers I own.

Maybe that happens in your case also. You might have another app that uses/lists audio devices in background. Messenger could be the one or HSDPA sms client that beeps when sms message was received... At first disable everything not related to your audio you can. Disable also all unnecessary hardware. No other audio playback should be mobilised when playing through FF800.

Hope it helps.

  • Registered: 2009-10-04
  • Posts: 3

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

what do you recommend then matthias? to not use a firewire interface? would the fireface uc be different?

  • Registered: 2009-10-04
  • Posts: 3

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

well i'm selling my fireface in order to get a usb interface. prob get a cakewalk v-100 as i'm a bit alarmed by the problems in the fireface uc forum. its a shame as i love the audio quality and i/o on the fireface, but this problem is just unworkable for me. good luck to others in the same situation, there doesn't appear to be any solution... sad

  • Registered: 2012-06-22
  • Posts: 2

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

PLEASE HELP! suddenly I have exactly the same issue with my FF 400 running under XP SP3 with quad core pentium IV 2.66 usual 4 gig RAM
i have a very simple set up no tweaking, no over clocking, hardly any applications installed just Traktor and Abelton. My computer is dedicated to making music.
Symptoms:
occasionally when on the web i would get the problem of the audio suddenly speeding up and horribly distorted. However I would reload page and it would go away.
now i continually have the problem described abovewhen using either Abelton 8 or Traktor 2.5. or the web
problem occurs when playing audio samples and using VSTi midi instruments
sometimes the tracks will load and play normally then after a few minutes suddenly the distortion and audio playing too fast happens for no reason.
sometimes the tracks in Abelton or TraktorI am working on will sound horrible and distorted from the very beginning
sometimes if i leave Abelton on and come back in twenty or thirty minutes the tracks will play normally again for a few minutes and then suddenly the tracks play too fast and distorted again.
this also occurs when listening to audio on the web also.
it all seems very random but persistent. BUT no matter platform or sequencer I use after either from the beginning or 10 - 20 mins the distortion and too fast audio kicks in.
to me the speed up audio sounds like playing wrong bit rate.
Attempted Solutions:
updated to latest firmware and drivers from RME web site
Checked all setting in FF400: Single Speed ticked, FF400 and abelton both set to 44 and Buffer size 128, clock source "word".
I have removed all unnecessary software
I have disconnected the very few hardware devices i use. i.e keyboard and controller. I do not clock to any external devices.
Changed the firewire cable I am using Firewire 800 that powers the card.
Changed  cable to different Firewire slots on my PC and FF 400

Conclusion:
i have been making electronic music for 6 years and mostly using FF400 and I am v. experienced user.
I built my own PC
Never had this issue before and it is driving me INSANE.
I love RME and always recommend it to friends BUT this issue is very troubling. everything points to the soundcard.
i cannot make music anymore and have been trying to fix the issue for two weeks!
PLEASE HELP my problem is identical to the problem stated above clicks, pops, audio playing too fast across multiple platforms and horrible distortion.

spek

26 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • Registered: 2007-04-06
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Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Set buffer size to 512. Is the FF clocked externally? If not change clock source to 'Internal'.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2012-06-22
  • Posts: 2

Re: Fireface 800 problem: audio speeds up with digital distortion and gaps

Too Fast & Distorted Problem: SOLVED SOLVED SOLVED SOLVED
For those who have experienced this issue I can say confidently the problem is not the Fireface.
As everyone says: "hardware or drivers failures for the Fireface is the least likely explanation. Built to last forever."
The cause of this problem is.......  SATA Controller or  SATA cables. Yes it was hardware but NOT the Fireface.
This was identified in the above thread: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=979.
I had exactly that problem in every way. And my solution was identical: re-sit the hard drives and replace the SATA cables linking to the SATA controller, re-plug -in the power cables for the SATA drives.
Although I have only done this a few hours ago all the problems seems to have vanished.
Because it is the SATA controller or the SATA cable connection the problem manifests itself across all platforms and so you are mislead to identify the Fireface as the problem. WRONG WRONG WRONG.
The key symptom: Long Boot Times on start up and executing programs. That should have alerted me immediately to the SATA controller but I was fixated on the Fireface: updating drivers, firmware, Digi check etc (all of which are good ideas)
I feel so relieved and slightly embarrassed doubting the durability and reliability of RME.
Thank you MC admin for the quick response. really appreciate that.
PS this problem and solution should be remembered by all.
and now the hardware becomes invisible again and back to the music.

spek