firewire issues after system upgrade

stevo58

New member
Hi folks -

Though I've been a member here for some time, this is my first post, and of course I have a problem which is confusing me.

For many years I've had a stable recording setup. I use a Presonus Firepod (with the final firmware installed); my computer
was rather low end - an MSI motherboard, AMD Phenom 965 CPU, 8GB memory, windows 7, PCI firewire card with a TI chipset.
This ran stabily and I wasn't really having any performance issues. I was beginning to worry though that using an out-of-support
interface and OS would bite me at some point, especially as I regularly updated my DAW (Reaper) and plugins (mostly stuff from IK Multimedia.
Toontrack, and Izotope).

My old case was starting to vibrate loudly, and it really was a piece of junk, so I replaced it with a Fractal Designs R5. Much better, much
quieter. But then I got hooked on reducing the noise - so I replaced the power supply with a BeQuiet Straight Power 10/600, and added a
Samsung EVO 850 500 disk. I installed Win 10 on this disk, configured the FW card to use the legacy driver, and installed the Presonus drivers
in Win7 compatibility mode.

It is important here to note that everything was still working perfectly - the win7 drivers functioned with no problem under Win10.
This is where I should have stopped, but like Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon, I crossed the line.

I decided it was time to buy a modern MB and CPU, so I did a little research and bought an ASUS Z270-A and an I7-7700 (no K),
with a Dark Rock Pro 3 fan. I put 32gb (2x16) Corsair DDR4-3000 memory in it. It was at this point I realized the new MB had no PCI
slots, only PCIe, so I bought a new FW card (TI chipset).

This is where my misery began.

If you listen to the attached mp3, you can hear, under the horrible noise, the recording, being played back too slowly.

I did the following:

1) tried all available PCIe slots.
2) tried a second, more expensive FW card (TI chipset)
3) made sure everything unnecessary was shut off (on-board sound, USB3.1, useless motherboard LED lighting, network/firewall/etc., and all the usual tuning stuff)
4) I borrowed an RME UFX and installed the current driver - same result. Using USB, the RME was fine. I thought the old FP drivers might not work well with a new chipset.
But the RME drivers are new and of high quality - and since the RME has the same problem, I don't think it is a driver issue.
5) tried known-good cables
6) used the Firepod with my laptop (win7) - cable and interface are fine; worked without issues
7) checked all the OS and BIOS settings I could find
8) tried the "TI" FW driver rather than the legacy
9) updated the MB bios, installed newest chipset drivers

all to no avail.

So I have a fast, dead quiet computer that I can't use. But I can no longer go back to the old MB either.

I bought a little Focusrite 2i2 USB just to have something to work with, but it really feels limited after using the
FP for ten years. I also don't like the preamps; but that may be because I am used to the Presonus pres.

Now, before I completely give up and buy a new interface, I thought I would throw myself on the mercy and knowledge
of this forum. I've searched through this and other forums and haven't found anything quite like this. If it were
just the noise I would suspect there was something from the MB buss causing it, but the slow-down, as if a slower
sampling rate were being used to play back, suggests the problem is somewhere else.

On the other hand, it is a good excuse to buy a new interface, since that will be necessary at some point anyway.
But I may be old-fashioned, and I prefer Firewire to USB2. USB3 might be a different matter.

thanks for any ideas or information

steven
 

Attachments

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Hi,
It's a long shot but did you get thunderbolt breakout card with that board?

If you did, I'd definitely try using that with a thunderbolt to FW cable.
It's not a protocol conversion or tradeoff - Thunderbolt is TB capable.

Can you try the firewire card in another computer?
I know this could be chipset incompatibility, but it'd be worth ruling out the card itself being faulty.
 
Hmm, since I tried 2 new FW cards, I didn't try either in a different computer; that's a good idea.
I can get a thunderbolt card; that would open a whole new set of possible interfaces, too, so it's not a bad idea. The Asus card would be the obvious choice for an Asus board.

Thanks for the suggestions. I should be able to test the FW cards on Thursday

steven
 
Hmm, since I tried 2 new FW cards, I didn't try either in a different computer; that's a good idea.
I can get a thunderbolt card; that would open a whole new set of possible interfaces, too, so it's not a bad idea. The Asus card would be the obvious choice for an Asus board.

Thanks for the suggestions. I should be able to test the FW cards on Thursday

steven

Cool.
Yeah, I saw on their website that they offer a breakout/expansion card for usb3 and TB.
I'm not sure if it was a specific bespoke card or something that's just available on the market.
 
I think I'm going to vomit.

I put the card in my old PC (H270 chipset, I think, 2nd generation quad-core i5) and the Firepod works perfectly with it - so it seems to be an incompatibility between the card and the motherboard.

BUT -

While I had it opened, I noticed there was already a firewire card in the old PC, so I pulled it. It had a VIA chipset. Then I remembered I had used this one briefly to record on, and had put that card in it. I must have bought the TI chipset card when I built my first dedicated PC.

Anyway, what do I have to lose? I think, and pull the VIA card and put it in the new PC. A VIA-specific driver was automatically installed. Installed the PreSonus software, hooked up the Firepod, and - it works perfectly.

Now, I haven't extensively tested it; with all the reports of issues with the VIA chipset and audio hardware, I expect problems will crop up, but I will use it for a while and see what happens. In the meantime, I ordered the ASUS thunderbolt card, and will test that, too, but that may have been a mistake, as I have seen some information that the thunderbolt interfaces don't work well with the cards, and need thunderbolt on the mainboard, like some of the newer Gigabyte boards have. Well, we'll see.

I appreciate your help; actually your suggestion that I test the card in a different PC led to my apparent solution.

Steven
 
I've been using VIA chipsets successfully with two Firepods. On the Presonus website, it lists the VIA as being compatible with the firepods.
 
Yes, I've been testing, and even with 2 pods connected, it seems to be working perfectly, even with large (for my uses) projects with many plugins.

Well, this is good news, now I can spend that money on better monitors instead of a new interface.

steven
 
I think I'm going to vomit.

I put the card in my old PC (H270 chipset, I think, 2nd generation quad-core i5) and the Firepod works perfectly with it - so it seems to be an incompatibility between the card and the motherboard.

BUT -

While I had it opened, I noticed there was already a firewire card in the old PC, so I pulled it. It had a VIA chipset. Then I remembered I had used this one briefly to record on, and had put that card in it. I must have bought the TI chipset card when I built my first dedicated PC.

Anyway, what do I have to lose? I think, and pull the VIA card and put it in the new PC. A VIA-specific driver was automatically installed. Installed the PreSonus software, hooked up the Firepod, and - it works perfectly.

Now, I haven't extensively tested it; with all the reports of issues with the VIA chipset and audio hardware, I expect problems will crop up, but I will use it for a while and see what happens. In the meantime, I ordered the ASUS thunderbolt card, and will test that, too, but that may have been a mistake, as I have seen some information that the thunderbolt interfaces don't work well with the cards, and need thunderbolt on the mainboard, like some of the newer Gigabyte boards have. Well, we'll see.

I appreciate your help; actually your suggestion that I test the card in a different PC led to my apparent solution.

Steven

My advice about the TB card was very much a 'what can we try' thing. I hope it isn't a waste of your time but keep the packaging and be careful with it.
Most places will allow a return if it doesn't help.

Sounds like the VIA might be your saviour, though. :)

Firewire gets the nickname fussywire for this reason.
Unfortunately it's gets that reputation globally, when it really is specific to computer systems where chipsets are variables.

Best of luck and please let us know how it goes. :)
 
Thunderbolt seems to be the way things are going, so it isn't such a bad idea to buy the matching card now while it is still available, so that's ok.

The only problem I've had is with monitoring; I have latency issues I didn't use to have. But this could be caused by all sorts of things.

Thanks again for your help

steven
 
You may know already but the first place to look for latency issues is the hardware buffer size settings.

Large buffer like 512/1024 puts a lighter load on the computer but gives you higher latency.
Small buffer like 128 puts a heavier load on the computer but reduces latency.

Certain plugins can introduce latency too so start with a fresh slate session for testing.

Let us know if that's any help. :)
 
Hey, fair enough. That'll do it.

Just so you know, you shouldn't have to do that, although it's a valid approach and has its benefits.

Direct monitoring guarantees zero latency but, of course, prevents you from hearing any in-the-box processing or effects whilst recording.

If you do want the mix pot on daw to hear your digital delays, or whatever, you should still be able to get very an unnoticeable amount of latency through your buffer size settings.
Of course this isn't true if you have a plugin which introduces 1024ms of its own latency but, that aside, you should be able to work whichever way you want. :)
 
The firepod asio control panel doesn't have a buffer size option, only a latency (which I assume is really an indirect buffer size), sampling rate, and clock source. It's an old device, after all. I'm still looking at replacements.
The RME UCX would be a good choice.
 
The firepod asio control panel doesn't have a buffer size option, only a latency (which I assume is really an indirect buffer size), sampling rate, and clock source. It's an old device, after all. I'm still looking at replacements.
The RME UCX would be a good choice.

Oh, ok. Yeah, if something's labelled latency it's probably doing the same thing.
I'm not sure if that overrides the settings in the DAW but every DAW I've seen will have buffer size settings of its own.
 
While researching RME interfaces, I came across this thread:

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=120129#p120129

Of course, both of the TI cards I bought have this apparently defective chipset (XIO2200A).

So I'll try again, with a known-good card. I just can't let this go. I will be replacing the Firepod with a UCX in the next two weeks (I hope) - so this better work.

In the meantime, the ThunderboltEX3 card came, but getting from a USB C socket to a FW400 is a problem.

And of course the FP and VIA card are working fine, no problems whatsoever.

Steven
 
Final update: the Exsys card with a different TI chipset works. As far as I am concerned, the problem was with the XIO2200A chipset. So now I have five FW cards. And a Thunderbolt card.

The new card also has FW800, in case I can ever use that.

steven
 
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