Focusrite Saffire Pro 40

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CoolCat

CoolCat

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just posting some installation notes, while memory is fresh-

First, some terminology issues in the directions that came with this one. The startup says click on Install Saffire Pro...this term doesnt exist in my unit/software cd.

Instead installing the Pro40 to a older Compaq AMD 64, Windows XP32.
I got 2 CD's. Saffire Range (fine print Mix Control, and other folders) & Xcite+Pack

Started with the CD labeled Saffire Range, it needs to be inserted. once its loaded install the Mix Control. A popup soon arrived to go online and update the driver, I clicked YES...it loaded up the most recent drivers called "Mix Control"

After the drivers loaded/ Mix Control...it said to reboot.
While it was powered off I plugged in the Firewire and then turned on the Pro 40 power switch on the front panel.

** as I had read others post, the unit didnt power up with a green led for several seconds, this is normal! just chill a few seconds. I'm glad I'd read that post because I almost thought something was wrong too.

Then No Hardware Connected errors kept popping up when I clicked on the desktop Saffire icon. Tried a few reboots no change. Searched Focusrite website a bit and the web....yada yada..reboot no change.

Then Swapped Firewire ports- and pc sensed "new device!" and Windows asked to load it , YES....

It went through 3 or 4 loadings. After one group was loaded, the windows would popup and say it found another device. be very patient and wait until Windows info box says "device is complete and ready to use!"

** Be Patient as its loiading several things, in this case MIDI and other drivers requested. It goes through this "I found a new device", 3 or 4 times.

After going through this scenario with Windows detecting a "new device" and allowing windows to find the drivers automatically, it finally said "completed".

then when I clicked on the Saffire icon it worked. The soft-Mix Control window popped up. and there are three green leds on the unit. active/locked/[ower

Total time about 1hr.

next loading the Xcite + Pack that comes with Ableton Live and other stuff..
 
Re-tried the back Firewire port and got the No Hardware Detected error-

plugged into the front firewire port and everything works again. wtf??
 
Numerous hours later.... loaded ASIO4ALL, after loading all the info from the CD and the Focuisrite site, the old wav's and mp3's on my pc play through the Pro-40.... encouraging.

but my old recording software (Kristal Audio Engine) won't play anything through the Pro40.
The Kristal recording s/w does see the "Saffire ASIO" and the ASIO4ALL and a large number of MME Saffire " tuneConverAudio Devices selections??

So the audio is recognizing the Saffire and ASIO but its not hooking up yet.


Anyone have any inputs on connecting Kristal to the Pro-40 I'd appreciate the help.
In the meantime activating ABLETON Live.

Hopefully this won't be a long thread!
 
Productive morning, only a few issues to get my system up and running- last one being Kristal Audio Engine.

Which is now working great, and all previous recordings are fine with the Pro 40.

* Had to select the output to "ASIO 2" to get Kristal Audio Engine to work.

So I have to give this unit

5 stars being BEST:

4 STARS for ease of installation....maybe 4.5 (The Tascam 122 didnt require anything but it doesnt have control mix or patchmix typer softwares)

5 STARS for working with my old software and info..

and now this is my last post on this. Its time I go read up on the ALBETON Live 8 software, registered no problem and an assortment of plugins downloaded form ABLETON site no issues.

I was wanting to get a bit more powerful software than Kristal AUDIO Engine, with urges to get PRO TOOLS just to mess with it a bit, but for now ABLETON 8 live....and if my pc can't handle it, back to KRISTAL AUDIO ENGINE...but I needed a few tracks to record at once for live drums & band....

paid $425+tax for the PRO 40, AVLIVE had it for $385.

Time will tell if this unit crashes, but then that could be my old XP 32bit pc with 2g ram and AMD 64 Athalon.
 
Thanks for posting. I was about ready to order a Saffire Pro 40. This would be my first try at computer based recording. I'm not real confident with computers and I worry about not being able to get the stuff up and running regardless of what I spend. The Focusrite website has some good info on how to set up your computer for recording. You probably already know that. Do you think I would have the same issues with my computer?? I have a Dell laptop running XP with duo 2.5 processor and 4 gigs of ram. Thanks for any help and keep us posted on your project.
 
Also trying to install Pro 40

CoolCat said:
Numerous hours later.... loaded ASIO4ALL, after loading all the info from the CD and the Focuisrite site, the old wav's and mp3's on my pc play through the Pro-40.... encouraging.
Click to expand...

Hi, I'm involved in the same kind of setup... trying to do it on a Windows Vista PC with PCM II cardbus firewire card. > 12 hours on this yesterday! Similar issues... I think I might have managed to record a few times in Audacity, but can't/haven't figured out how to play back. Tried Ableton Live Lite too, don't think I could even record but could apparently monitor through Ableton's software with the track armed to record. Total strikeout with Reaper (may try again...).

I haven't gotten anything to even appear to via ASIO4all, though... had to use MME or Windows Direct Sound (both of which seem to recognize the Saffire as an audio input/output now). Don't know if you have thoughts on the advisability of that (Ableton Live manual and in-program helptext seems to suggest ASIO is superior if you can make it work, also I would've thought that the Saffire driver I installed *was* an ASIO driver but what do I know...).

How are you playing the mp3's? That might be a good first target for me as far as making certain I can get digital audio into the Pro 40 to come out as analogue audio.

Will let you know if/how I get Ableton Live working

Howard
 
RPK said:
Thanks for posting. I was about ready to order a Saffire Pro 40. This would be my first try at computer based recording. I'm not real confident with computers and I worry about not being able to get the stuff up and running regardless of what I spend. The Focusrite website has some good info on how to set up your computer for recording. You probably already know that. Do you think I would have the same issues with my computer?? I have a Dell laptop running XP with duo 2.5 processor and 4 gigs of ram. Thanks for any help and keep us posted on your project.
Click to expand...

i think yours sounds newer than mine, so i would assume its a good fit. firewire port should do it.

g-luck
 
ThunkyMusic said:
Hi, I'm involved in the same kind of setup... trying to do it on a Windows Vista PC with PCM II cardbus firewire card. > 12 hours on this yesterday! Similar issues... I think I might have managed to record a few times in Audacity, but can't/haven't figured out how to play back. Tried Ableton Live Lite too, don't think I could even record but could apparently monitor through Ableton's software with the track armed to record. Total strikeout with Reaper (may try again...).

I haven't gotten anything to even appear to via ASIO4all, though... had to use MME or Windows Direct Sound (both of which seem to recognize the Saffire as an audio input/output now). Don't know if you have thoughts on the advisability of that (Ableton Live manual and in-program helptext seems to suggest ASIO is superior if you can make it work, also I would've thought that the Saffire driver I installed *was* an ASIO driver but what do I know...).

How are you playing the mp3's? That might be a good first target for me as far as making certain I can get digital audio into the Pro 40 to come out as analogue audio.

Will let you know if/how I get Ableton Live working

Howard
Click to expand...

that would be appreciated. i'm going to switch to Ableton and try it, but Kristal Audio Engine works so that was setup for Asio 2 (whatever asio 2 really means? or asio4all really is? or MME?).


the Focusrite "mix control" software plays mp3.... edit> after looking at my earlier posts the MP3/Wavs stuff started playing fine after loading up the asio4all.
 
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just to add a note- the "free" software is a limited version of $329 for the full version required. the lite version of Ableton offers 2 audio inputs and none of the effects per the Ableton comparison list.

maybe its common knowledge to most, but I never realized this "free" software was so limited. Its also limited to 8 tracks.

unless I'm reading this wrong, my free Kritsal Audio Engine offers more, 16 mono tracks and numerous free effects (only 2 effect plug-ins per channel - not including eq which would be 3 per track)


Ableton - Live Intro vs. Live 8 comparison chart
 
Saffire Pro 40 working; thanks for the pointer to Kristal!

CoolCat said:
that would be appreciated. i'm going to switch to Ableton and try it, but Kristal Audio Engine works so that was setup for Asio 2 (whatever asio 2 really means? or asio4all really is? or MME?).


the Focusrite "mix control" software plays mp3.... edit> after looking at my earlier posts the MP3/Wavs stuff started playing fine after loading up the asio4all.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I think "Asio 2" is just the name Kristal gave to your installation of asio4all... it calls mine "Asio 1" (perhaps you have another Asio driver that Kristal has numbered "1"). As far as MME goes, I think roughly it is an audio system or protocol that comes with many computer systems, and is considered not as good as ASIO (I believe also not as good as "Direct Sound" which many later implementations of Windows also have...). Asio4all seems to be a good way to go with Saffire (besides yours, I have seen at least one other post where success was achieved by installing it). So thanks for motivating me to keep working with Asio4all, because...

...IT WORKS NOW! The crucial thing for me was, following instructions on the Focusrite website for "PCI latency issues" or something, to download a free PCI bus latency analyzer (linked on Focusrite's site...very nice) and controller, and reset the latency for my PCI II Firewire card from zero to something like 128 milliseconds. I also cut the graphics card from 255 to 128 or so, but I suspect the crucial thing was getting the firewire card up from zero!

Sound is fantastic, mp3s play through the saffire (I just open them in winamp), Kristal records and plays back (at least at 16 bits / 44.1 Khz, haven't tried 24/96 yet). I don't have any experience with anything else to compare the Saffire Pro 40 to, but I have a decent amount of experience with good home audio equipment (I am using the Saffire with Koss ESP 950 electrostatic headphones) and this thing sounds great...so do my test recordings of sax, acoustic bass, and voice. Worth the 15-16 hours or so total it took to figure out how to get it working. (In fairness to Focusrite, I didn't try to shorten the process by emailing them for support.)

Thanks very much for hipping me to Kristal, it is nice software. May actually be adequate to my needs. I'll go back to the limited Ableton version and let you know how it shakes out now. I'll be trying Reaper as well, maybe go back to Audacity to see if my old projects play now.
 
CoolCat said:
that would be appreciated. i'm going to switch to Ableton and try it.
Click to expand...

Hi CoolCat, I got the trial version of Ableton Live that comes with the Pro 40 working as well. I had to (duh!) set the sample rate in Ableton's audio setup dialog to 96 KHz (to agree with what I'd already set in MixControl). In order to avoid dropouts I had to open the Asio4all control panel and uncheck the option "use hardware buffer (doesn't always work)", and the set the slider (bottom R of panel) for buffer size from 512 to 1024. The latter was probably necessary because I'd already increased buffer size to 1024 in MixControl. I'm not sure which of these was the fix that got rid of the dropouts though. I found the "Recording" tutorial that can be accessed from the help panel on the right hand side of the Live window helpful in figuring out how to record even though I wasn't able to load the sample LiveSet that goes with it. Without the tutorial, it wouldn't be obvious what buttons you need to press, how to get the right view to appear in the window, and so forth... Did you get it working?

VERY impressionistically (and certainly no A/B/X test) I thought I might like the audio quality of the Ableton clips better than the Kristal. That impression is probably worth almost nothing, though...
 
thanks for the input,
I'll be following your lead on the Ableton Live Lite...noticed mine was set at 512 but no recordings yesterday. All the leds are ready to roll etc...just waiting on me to figure out the recording software.
I havent even tried Kristal with 4 IN at the same time, which is the reason I was messing with a new unit. I wonder if my older pc can do it?

you sound like you got it all talking to each other. how many tracks do you have coming in at once? have you tried 6 inputs to 6 tracks? curious to know how taxing that is on the pc.

for the sound comparison, I'm not sure I could tell.

Did you happen to use any of the free Focusrite compressors and eq's, I think I read the software came with several free processor plug-ins?
 
ThunkyMusic said:
Thanks very much for hipping me to Kristal, it is nice software. May actually be adequate to my needs. I'll go back to the limited Ableton version and let you know how it shakes out now. I'll be trying Reaper as well, maybe go back to Audacity to see if my old projects play now.
Click to expand...

I'm open to the different softwares too, Kristal was a first and very simple (and free).. Its limited in plugins and tracks, but handles several free plug-ins like blockfish too etc..no longer supported etc..etc..

A lot of Reaper fans, and my sons messed with Audacity too.

Reaper is easy to take all the old files and load them in to Reaper, I think someone said.
there's others...ProTools...Ableton, Cubase, Cakewalk.... I dont need many tracks but some nice plug-ins and low CPU usage is needed (dont want to be forced into a pc upgrade!)

Let me know how the REAPER plays out.
 
A little more to add here on the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 w/ Recording Software being the focus tonight.

1) to set this up for "all 8 analog inputs" using the default Focusrite MixControl > routing Preset> Zero Latency Tracking
this "default" pretty much did everything leaving me only to turn the analog knobs to set the gain, which is how I'll run it 99.9% of the time. Nice and simple.

2) Immediately after selecting this Zero Latency Tracking default setup... the Kristal Audio Engine Software saw Analog 1 thru 8 to select as Inputs & ready arm all 16 tracks. it was a snap. So did the Ableton Live Lite which is only 8 max tracks for the Lite version.

....no problem....Did a few live drum tracks, using a few mics/multi input and there it was.

Other things noted- the Pro 40 pre's sounded clean, plugs felt solid and tight, plenty of gain for even the Shure 57's and SM7. At 80% gain no common hissing of the cheaper preamps.

Now that I'm getting a hold on this better I might download Reaper this weekend.

A couple questions- I noticed MixControl was set to 512 block and Kristal was set at 512 block...but there was other options. What is this and what would I gain for changing it?
The other is I couldn't seem to be able to change the 44.1khz to 48, or 96 etc.. is this due to my hardware?

I'm using a old pc and need all the help I can get to reduce CPU usage!
 
Hey thanks for taking the time to share. I was really considering this interface to replace my 003, but Im going for the Steinberg MR816X .
 
just to wrap this up....

I started having numerous crashes on this pc. screen-freeze....

I'll go as far as blaming it on the pc, and my lack of knowledge of software, but it's not working for me. Constant screen freeze's requiring powerdowns, enough already.

I came across another 8 IN analog unit that should arrive tomorrow.....less bells and whistles, and hopefully a better fit for this old AMD Athalon with 2gig memory pc etc..etc..Tascam 1641

sumamry- screen freeze,??
I know it wasnt the Ableton because I partitioned that out.

It had something to do with the pos video card or the MixControl and Kristal Audio Engine was too much? wrong Firewire chipset?

hooked up the old super-simplisticTascam US 122 and the screen-freeze thing is over.
 
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