KVR Audio

frankjcc2003 · Post by **frankjcc2003** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:34 am

I'm sorry, I was at 256 buffer(this is the file system buffer), I'm still getting everthing back to what i had before. This truely is a fresh install. I just switched to 128 buffer(file system) 48k(for you) it's reporting 6.7 ms roundtrip. Hope that helps . AS far as mixing latency/buffer goes, it's only in ms as stated earlier, with samples reported along side it.

sqigls · Post by **sqigls** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:35 am

i'd only recommend RME personally. my fireface 400 has been rocking for almost 10 years. I've put it through all kinds of gigging extremes. ROCK SOLID.

hibidy · Post by **hibidy** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:55 am

frankjcc2003 wrote:I'm sorry, I was at 256 buffer(this is the file system buffer), I'm still getting everthing back to what i had before. This truely is a fresh install. I just switched to 128 buffer(file system) 48k(for you) it's reporting 6.7 ms roundtrip. Hope that helps . AS far as mixing latency/buffer goes, it's only in ms as stated earlier, with samples reported along side it.

That's awesome! I think maybe USB is better then.

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:30 am

This is what I get at 128 samples using an i5/W7-64 setup with a generic PCi Firewire card and my Liquid Saffire 56

Even at 512 samples it's still only 10-12ms each way.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 6:49 pm

The 128 samples at 44100 on my AudioFire claims to be 2.902 ms buffer time. I don't know what the measured latency is, though.

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:35 pm

BertKoor wrote:Take my advice: avoid all FireWire interfaces for audio. On paper it's better than USB2, but in practice it's far worse! You got to have a good FireWire chipset, and even then your motherboard can make it a nightmare. This is Plug&Pray territory...

So turn back from firewire while you can.

If you want rock-solid drivers and money is no issue: take an RME interface.
On a budget I can recommend ESI cards.

This is false.

I've only used Firewire interfaces except for a few times trying devices that had a built in USB interface and my luck with both Macs and WIn/tel boxes has been a lot better using Firewire, so take that for what it's worth. I will say that up until recently I've only used MOTU 828s and the drivers up until Windows 8 were solid. They still actually work, but I can't get two 828s working at the same time for some reason.

So I switched to a Presonus 16.0.2. Works like a charm with a lot of audio channels going in and out on a very generic Dell machine.

Note: you have to be very careful you buy a Firewire card that has the right Texes Instruments chipset. Other manufacturers' chips don't always work right for some reason.

So... before you do anything, make sure you spend $30 on the right Firewire card. Something like this is probably what you need:

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-Profile-PCI- ... ewire+card

If doing that doesn't help, contact your interface manufacturer's customer service because it really should work correctly and a lot better than a freeware driver. If you still can't get satisfaction try one of the Presonus interfaces. My brother has the cheap 2 channel one and he says it works well.

Gonga · Post by **Gonga** » Tue Feb 25, 2014 10:27 pm

USB relies on Windows to master it's buses, so various Windows processes can and do interrupt USB I/O. Once a Firewire system is properly set up, nothing can interrupt the bus because the Firewire device handles all mastering duties, independent of Windows. That's why measured throughput in Firewire 400 is always faster than USB 2.0. Also because of this Firewire is theoretically generally less subject to audio glitches than USB 2.0.

So yes, unless you go with a proven card such as the SIIG DP FireWire 2-Port PCIe, Firewire can present installation issues, but with USB you have to have an interface that works well over USB (quite a few don't), and you have to tweak Windows to minimize USB activity on that bus during audio sessions. So really it's apples and oranges, but for many seasoned veterans, Firewire is the more reliable. Once it's set up and running, nothing will ever mess with that interface. With USB, changes in your system can result in a loss of USB performance.

frankjcc2003 · Post by **frankjcc2003** » Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:04 am

I'm going back to firewire based on the success I had when things did work. This USB is not cutting it for me. Thanks for posting the link to the ti chipset card, Just ordered today.

The mix control had more options than this one, such as loopback which I did use often. and now they say because of limited dsp that feature is removed. They say(somewhere online) I can just use the spdif out and back in which I already tried and it's not quite the same. It records everything playing along with what I'm actually trying to record.

In Sonar, I don't have the routing flexibility that I used too with the older mixcontrol. Among other things. Guitar Center told me that this unit has better pres, which I find not to be true.

I get crackles just playing true pianos, which never happened before. just tested this again and it's okay now so i don't know. I still wonder how this would handle a large project.

Thanks to all who posted success and recomendations

Gonga · Post by **Gonga** » Sun Mar 02, 2014 2:08 pm

Good luck

Best firewire drivers for Windows?