Any PC NOT having problems with M audio FW ?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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nolus
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Post by nolus » Sun Nov 20, 2005 10:11 am

i used to get the 'disconnecting' problem with my 410 all the time, it got worse and worse and eventually packed up alltogether. towards the end just touching the fw cable would kill it.
i got a cheap, generic 6 pin fw card and a 6 pin cable and now it works perfectly.
i think the problem was caused by using a heavy duty 'pro' fw cable. this was too heavy for the little 4 pin socket, which is soldered directly to the mother board.

as far as other problems go:

the mixer app is buggy; somerimes the meters stop working, the 'soft' volume knob hardly ever works and the gui gets sluggish or locks up completely.

any buffer size bellow 512 is not usable with live for more than a few minutes before the sound starts to break up in horrible ways.

it's ok if you don't care about latency.

all i have to compare it to is the terrarec pci card in my desktop pc, this sounds noticably better than the 410 and works reliably with a buffer size of 64.

i desperately need better performance at low latency, but there seem to be no guarantees, and i can't afford to punt another £300+ on the off-chance :(
"That very perceptive of you Mr Stapleton, and rather unexpected... in a G Major"
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eyeknow
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Post by eyeknow » Sun Nov 20, 2005 12:35 pm

So mostly it's unhappy people on this thread.......with a leaning towards disliking maudio.

The "other" host I use insists on having an maudio card, so I got the audiophile 192. Now that has been a peach............7 months of bliss (a record for me)

Guess I'll not put up a grand for the project i/o 8O
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rikhyray
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Post by rikhyray » Mon Nov 21, 2005 11:58 am

Too early to say if I amde it work but definitely I made it better, Spend whole weekend tweaking Windows. One thing is sure Recovery XPs are shit , from any company. Nlite is the way to go. If it makes M audio work will report later ( my XP Pro is just 400MB instead of 2 G and default Ram use 83 in stead of 290 MB with original install)
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Smashed Hat
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Post by Smashed Hat » Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:54 pm

nolus posted:
i used to get the 'disconnecting' problem with my 410 all the time, it got worse and worse and eventually packed up alltogether. towards the end just touching the fw cable would kill it.
I had mega-problems of this type earlier in the year. The cause wasn't my M Audio FW1814 card though, it was a nasty loose fw connection on my Carillon laptop. It took 5 months for carillon to sort it out, but the soundcard has performed fine since then.

nolus posted:
the mixer app is buggy; somerimes the meters stop working, the 'soft' volume knob hardly ever works and the gui gets sluggish or locks up completely.
I get this fault a lot too, but it doesn't really affect any performance or recording so I've never given it much thought.
Scan 3xs Power DAW, Quad Core 2.66Ghz, 2 meg RAM, 3x500gig 7200rpm HDD's, M Audio FW1814
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strippy
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M audio

Post by strippy » Mon Nov 21, 2005 2:50 pm

I have no problem with it, if u r in berlin maybe u can try mine...
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distraub
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Post by distraub » Mon Nov 21, 2005 5:00 pm

I use a FW410 live without trouble...on a sony vaio z1wa notebook.
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rikhyray
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Post by rikhyray » Mon Nov 21, 2005 8:41 pm

distraub wrote:I use a FW410 live without trouble...on a sony vaio z1wa notebook.
I wouldnt mind to see some details of your setup. PCMCIA or 4 pin built in?

Problems are mostly hardware specific, so interesting for me since you have Vaio. I have now wonderful lean XP Nlite and it all runs now perfectly, question how long.
Definitely too long cable are not good, M audio says shorter is better, makes sense to me.
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chris vine
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Post by chris vine » Mon Nov 21, 2005 8:48 pm

Hi Everyone,
I have used the same FW410 with an AMD athlon desktop, a generic PC laptop (4 pin fw cable), a Toshiba laptop (pcmcia FW card) and a G4 powerbook with no major problems at all. Am I just lucky, or what?
Yes, the mixer app IS a bit wierd at times, tho.

Sorry for the guys having problems, hope you get them sorted.
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nolus
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Post by nolus » Mon Nov 21, 2005 9:49 pm

if you're running this card without problems , what buffer size and sample rate are you using? and which version of live?
"That very perceptive of you Mr Stapleton, and rather unexpected... in a G Major"
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dwnwrds
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Post by dwnwrds » Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:02 pm

I got no problems here with my FW 410. I use it on my desktop and my laptop. For my desktop PC I have 2 Xeon CPU and 4 gigs of RAM (built in FW). For my laptop I have a Sharp P4 3.2 Ghz and 512MB RAM (built in 4-pin FW). Both use XP Pro, Live 5. But I do agree with some of the above posts that it seems MAudio is heading away from serious Pro Audio.
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jeebustrain
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Post by jeebustrain » Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:10 pm

I'm using a FW410 with an HP Athlon 64 3000+ laptop w/ a 4 pin firewire cable (actually it's a special cable bundle I made w/ a usb cable going into the usb port right next to it, that way I can keep all of my devices in my rack connected with one cable bundle). I haven't had one problem with my FW410, and I've been pretty rough on it. I gig on it about once a month, but I'm usually schlepping it around twice a week to practice, along with keeping it on 24/7 when it's at home. I have never had any problems related to that (or frankly, any of my M-Audio gear, and I have A LOT).
Alesis Fusion 8HD - Yamaha Motif6 (w/ PLG150-AN)- Korg MS2000BR - Access Virus A - Moog MicroMoog - Korg TR-Rack - Redsound Darkstar XP - M-Audio Oxygen8 - Yamaha DTXpress - Roland SPD-20
Panasonic Toughbook - M-Audio Firewire 410
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drez
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Post by drez » Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:29 pm

No problems with my 410 either.
http://www.soundcloud.com/dreznicek
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djk
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Post by djk » Tue Nov 22, 2005 12:16 am

I had a problem with my current Ozonic a couple of months ago (first one was returned because of a faulty headphone jack). It would cut out and the like. Turned out to be the included FW cable. Called M-Audio and they sent me another one. It's been working fine ever since with my ThinkPad (using a cardbus FW port that I picked up from CompUsa). I know the Ozonic is not a fav of this forum, but it's been fine for me. Latency has been fine too. I don't gig, so it hasn't had to withstand too much.
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subterFUSE
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Post by subterFUSE » Tue Nov 22, 2005 12:44 am

I have M-Audio FW Audiophile, and a PC.... and it works great.

No problems to report.
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sonorous3
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Post by sonorous3 » Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:53 am

Works fone on both my laptop and PC. Only after I resolved IRQ conflicts though. Only weird thing is when i open up Live with it it defaults to ~8ms latency for the audiophile FW :cry:
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