Firewire Problems for Mac 3.2GHZ Dual Quad

[JSonic]

Hi,

I'm experiencing problems with Logic 8.01 on Leopard 10.5.2, its crashing on a regular basis. I use the above with Powercore Firewire, Fireface 800 firewire, 2 uads.

I have 6gb ram so there shouldn't be any problems. I have been told that there is a problem with the 3rd party firewire by an apple expert, but he would say that.

I then spoke to my guy from the former Sound Control who said these machines have know problems with the firewire buses. I then said I was going to sell the Fireface 800 and get an apogee but he said that fireface had the best drivers and that there is a lot saying the apogee drivers have had more problems. I just want to get my mac working as fast as possible keeping the powercore until its pluggins become native (Mostly Character and Real Verb) but need a great firewire card that doesn't create problems.

I'm also using Arturia V collection, Jupitor 8V is very slow, Rob Papens, Waves API, Korg M1, Powercore Virus, Nex Syn, Spectrasonics Trilogy, Atmosphere (Wrappers) and Stylus. All latest Drivers.

I'm very confused, can someone help? DO I need to get rid of Fireface?

I recently got rid of the Duende because this was causing problems even with the new drivers.

Many Thanks

Jason

[R3k]

RME have the most stable drivers for any soundcard.. dont sell it.

I have a FF800 running on Leopard, and any problems aren't due to that.

Just get a FW800 + FW400 PCI-e card, and plug either the FF800, or the powercore into it. It should solve you problem.

Check those cards here: FireWire PCI and PCMCIA Cards at OtherWorldComputing.com

Navigate down to "Firewire 800 and 400 PCI cards"

Cheers

[Clueless]

I had all manner of problems when I treated my Fireface 800 device as an actual firewire device (i.e., tried to string a FW800 disk off the 2nd FW800 port). Turns out that the Fireface uses a firewire cable, but it's not actually a real firewire protocol, but some proprietary protocol that uses a firewire cable.

You can stack RME devices on one leg of your firewire, and you can stack disks off a different interface, but don't mix-and-match disks and interfaces down a single wire.

I praise RME for building what is a really nice product, and I curse them for mis-labeling it as a Firewire device--it's not.

[jeff.petersen]

Originally Posted by Clueless

I had all manner of problems when I treated my Fireface 800 device as an actual firewire device (i.e., tried to string a FW800 disk off the 2nd FW800 port). Turns out that the Fireface uses a firewire cable, but it's not actually a real firewire protocol, but some proprietary protocol that uses a firewire cable.

Absolutely not true. How would the Fireface work with a standard firewire controller if this were so? Using the FF800 with the "Limit Bandwidth" setting changed to something less than "All Channels" may allow you to use your FW drive on the same controller, but this depends on the FW interface built in to the drive.

Maybe you are confusing this with the external HDSP interfaces (Multiface/Digiface) that use a firewire cable for communication to the proprietary host card.

Originally Posted by Clueless

You can stack RME devices on one leg of your firewire, and you can stack disks off a different interface, but don't mix-and-match disks and interfaces down a single wire.

This is good advice for any firewire audio device. Here is a useful article from Focusrite on this same topic: Technical Article: Liquid Mix FireWire Concepts and Multiple Device Connectivity .: Focusrite Answerbase

Originally Posted by Focusrite Answerbase

The Liquid Mix, like the TC PowerCore and SSL Duende, requires a substantial amount of bandwidth from the firewire bus, especially when it is used to its limit. For this reason, it is beneficial to connect additional firewire devices on a separate firewire bus. Apple Macs which have more than one standard firewire port (400MB/s and/or 800MB/s) are actually running them on the same firewire bus. On a PC, any ports on a single PCI card run on the same bus. In order to add a second firewire bus, it is necessary to install a separate PCI firewire card. In order to ensure that each device is running on its own dedicated bus, it is recommended that a separate firewire bus be added.

[mikesilence]

If possible, run your mac with 10.4.10... more stable with Logic as I heard.