Ableton Forum

Does anybody have problems when using live 4 and the m-audio 410 box disconnects often?

Yep for the past 6 months... Just discovered yesterday what is causing it.... When the CPU fan on my laptop kicks in the FW410 will drop it's connection (midi/audio).... This took 6 months to sort out after reloading drivers installing new drivers ETC....

If I change the ASIO to MME then back to ASIO when this occurs it sometimes works... Really good when playing a gig...

In beginning I thought this was due to dasiychaining the FW410 to an EXT HD to the FW port of my laptop.... So to fix this I bought a PCMIA FW card so both devices had a dedicated FW port still the same trouble... Yesterday I try'd the FW410 with PCMIA FW card and it seems to work I play'd for an hour and no dropping... Note EXT HD is now on USB... Just to prove the dedicated FW port on my laptop I plugged the EXT HD in and it worked fine it did not drop...

So the FW410 is very sensitive to FW port power fluctuations or something... I did a GOOGLE last night for FW410 issues and this trouble is very common.....

I would return it and I will be doing the same except I don't have the box anymore...

GoodLuck and now you can stop pulling your hair out.... BTW Maudio has not been very supportive on this issue from the posts I have reviewed .

Hmm, if I would use Firewire 410 live, I would use the external power supply rather than feeding from firewire, just as a security issue as things could indeed fluctuate over Firewire... --Kent

kent_sandvik wrote:Hmm, if I would use Firewire 410 live, I would use the external power supply rather than feeding from firewire, just as a security issue as things could indeed fluctuate over Firewire... --Kent

Fogot to mention PCMIA FW cards do not support bus power even though they are 6 pin config... The dedicated FW port on my PC laptop is 4 pin it does not support power... I always use the wallwart...

I have the FW410 on the laptop's in built 4pin port and have my External hard drive on the cardbus port and I haven't had a problem

Could it be dodgy laptops at fault?

I'm now going to do some testing and see if I can recreate this problem as well!

It's got me scared

i use the 410 with out the power supply and have had no problems other then a coulpe small dropouts. even for 2 plus hours continuous.

forge wrote:I have the FW410 on the laptop's in built 4pin port and have my External hard drive on the cardbus port and I haven't had a problem

....same here and no problems

Same here! I use it without the power supply & it has never failed me! I use it both live & in the studio!! Great product!

i get the drop outs. It's not killin me though. In a performance setting I always have sum synths, records, vocals or what ever as a back up while I get things back on line.

I also power it off the FW bus and haven't had any problems...apart from whenever my PB went to sleep, but they fixed that about 6 months ago with a driver update.

Lot of FW410 users here!

Mine disconnects plenty, but it seems to be something with having my external fw hardrive and the maudio on the same card of my laptop. I think I'm going to try to go out of my built in four pin connection with either the hd or the maudio and put the remaining external on the card and see if that resolves the conflict.

Otherwise I have problems when starting up too. I have to turn the maudio on and off again and turn on the hd only after the os has booted up, do a couple spins in my chair and wait to see if this works.