What's wrong with the Firewire 410

roby · Post by **roby** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 4:16 pm

I've never had a problem with mine. I even hook it up through a 4-pin FW port on my PC with no problem.

unusable · Post by **unusable** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 5:05 pm

I went with the saffire and have been very very happy. I've used it many many hours and have had nothing but great results. It is more expensive than the 410 though but quite a margin.

tomperson · Post by **tomperson** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 5:56 pm

roby wrote:I even hook it up through a 4-pin FW port on my PC with no problem.

same thing here.

CWoodOne · Post by **CWoodOne** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 6:24 pm

The Saffire was a huge waste of time. Not only did it fail (and I had 3 replacement units) it totally hosed the contents of my computer's hard drive. Tried it on a Mac, tried it on a PC, it SUCKED on both.

The Firewire 410 is pretty much a piece of Garbage, honestly. Better than tha Saffire, but it pops and crackles, and their tech support is WORTHLESS.

Buy something from Motu or better yet RME. Honestly both pieces of gear are crap, and I"ve had both.

ultrasource · Post by **ultrasource** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:20 pm

As I said in my first post, I've had very little luck with my 410.
That being said, since I've last tried it, I've had my laptop shipped back to Apple for a replacement hard drive so I reinstalled the latest drivers today and here are my findings with a fresh config and the latest Live 5.
For the past hour I've been playing bass along with 2 simple impulse kits (an 808 that came with the Live 5 Power paperback and one from trackteamaudio). Granted, it's only 3 tracks right now with around 5ms latency BUT I'm not getting any popping or crackling.
I've also realized that my channel one mic input crapped out so.... I'm hooked up line in (which works fine) from an external mixing board.
Sure the driver is mad cpu hungry compared to my built-in powerbook soundcard BUT I am at 48khz and there are no spikes.
Overall bad cpu performance (hovering at steady 45%) with only 3 active tracks, however, keep in mind that I have a highly inefficient setup for Ableton - 1ghz G4 12" powerbook.

CWoodOne · Post by **CWoodOne** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:42 pm

ultrasource wrote:As I said in my first post, I've had very little luck with my 410.
That being said, since I've last tried it, I've had my laptop shipped back to Apple for a replacement hard drive so I reinstalled the latest drivers today and here are my findings with a fresh config and the latest Live 5.
For the past hour I've been playing bass along with 2 simple impulse kits (an 808 that came with the Live 5 Power paperback and one from trackteamaudio). Granted, it's only 3 tracks right now with around 5ms latency BUT I'm not getting any popping or crackling.
I've also realized that my channel one mic input crapped out so.... I'm hooked up line in (which works fine) from an external mixing board.
Sure the driver is mad cpu hungry compared to my built-in powerbook soundcard BUT I am at 48khz and there are no spikes.
Overall bad cpu performance (hovering at steady 45%) with only 3 active tracks, however, keep in mind that I have a highly inefficient setup for Ableton - 1ghz G4 12" powerbook.

As pathetic as the Firewire 410 is, the drivers seem to work a little better on my Mac. The Saffire though, was the worst piece of garbage I ever had. Plus the interface is just stupid, with controls so small they're unreadable. The other issue was trying to do the required firmware update to load that software. It was compatible with the Mac, so I had to go to a PC to update the firmware to go back to the Mac!
It was a nightmare, ruining a perfectly good chance to do some serious recording over the holidays.

CWoodOne · Post by **CWoodOne** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:44 pm

ultrasource wrote:
tomperson wrote:
ultrasource wrote:I've had one for a little over a year now. Strange random cpu spikes which cause the dreadful ableton-slow-down-static-crunch sound. Had to use old drivers with a new system in order for it to work at all. Haven't tried since Tiger but I don't really feel like wasting my time.
Are you sure it's the FW410's faults? My 410 with some particularly big and intensive Live 4.0.4 sets worked just fine, and the same set on 5.0.2 had glitches and stuff every now and then with the same set. That's Live 5 fault, not the 410.-
I'm not sure of anything
I have the day off so I'll hook it up and get back to you....

I tried Cubase SX3 and had all the same stuff happen, both PC and Mac.

bottha · Post by **bottha** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:01 pm

I have a FireWire410 which I'm using with a Dell XPS Gen2 laptop. I had problems with hiccups and stutters from day 1. After weeks (no, months!) of trying to figure out a solution, I bought a PCMCIA Firewire adapter and connected to that instead of the built-in FW port. Since then, no problems. Seems like it was an IRQ conflict. I wish the M-Audio tech support had suggested that.

poindexter · Post by **poindexter** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 1:04 am

maybe some people can give me a suggestion with the follow specs that i want:

it must be a extern soundcard because i using a laptop.
2 headphone inputs
gitar input and mic input
offcourse inputs for my monitor speakers
and it must give more powerfull sound than my laptop

Maybe there is a easier soundcard tht you prefer?

register · Post by **register** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 2:22 am

I've used both the fw410 and saffire and was unimpressed with both. The saffire moreso.

The m-audio is poorly designed, and is infact, as mentioned a 2 input device. The 'level output' knob is designed to rotate in, how u say, a 'jagged' manner, however when turning it down, the volume would leap right up momentarily before dropping. Plus I don't like the in / out mixing done by software, I'm happier doing as much as possible with a real dial.

Saffire was appauling. I got it for the appealing built in DSP. The reverb is 'foldback'... you can't actually record into software with the saffire's reverb, it is only for monitoring. A very bad decision i think. My arse emulates a more genuine distortion than the built in amp sim. The build quality also feels very cheap, fragile feeling plastic knobs that I was almost scared to touch in fear of causing damage. The built in DSP seems very gimmicky in hindsight.

I've found happiness in the edirol FA-101. Built like a tank, works perfectly.

eyeknow · Post by **eyeknow** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 8:13 am

That's the bitch about the fw410.........that dual headphone was such a kick-ass idea!!!!!!!!! Also, and this is a bit old school, but when I was using spidf it was really nice to have coaxial and optical.............I HATE YOU MAUDIO YOU (insert word of choice here) JERKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, that's out of the way.

btw is there anything other than allot of JD to kill the pain of driving down to see your cousin, who just tried to kill him self and having his wife refuse you to see him?

poindexter · Post by **poindexter** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 8:16 pm

anyone else.

Maybe the firewire solo is better?

aviavi · Post by **aviavi** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 10:26 pm

I just got an M-Audio FastTrack Pro, and it seems to work really well so far. It's USB, though maybe that's a good thing: easily bus powered, no firewire drive conflicts. It's a little on the cheap-feeling side, but it's low cost (around $200) and has four outs, and you can switch headphones monitoring between the two output pairs. And it has an easy to use zero latency monitoring feature. So far, so good on my iBook G3 900. And I tested it on an IBm Thinkpad with fine results. Someone said it's "noisy" but I disagree. It seems very quiet.

Avi

poindexter · Post by **poindexter** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 1:21 am

oke i go for the FW solo

ultrasource · Post by **ultrasource** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 2:29 am

Figured I'd report that I'm on day 2 with no problems with my 410. Still too much CPU but I am being productive and not getting pissed. 8 tracks, good enough latency to record guitar and bass.
Because I'm running a 1ghz powerbook, thank god for track freeze.