Rme Fireface Iii

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Jaunita Rousu

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Aug 3, 2024, 6:12:46 PM8/3/24

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Every now and then my fireface will drop its asio driver and revert back to that red host light, indicating that the fireface has lost connection. Now I dont think its a firewire bus problem because the actual hardware doesn't lose connection, just the asio driver. Now this problem is easily fixed by switching off and on the interface but as you can see this can be quite annoying.
Now I have already had some product support from the Australian distributer who suggested I do the following things:
Turn off raid
Turn off my lan, serial and parallel ports because I'm not using them
Also because I am streaming off an external hard drive sometimes I should buy a new Sata drive and run off that instead.
Are there any other things I should do that could solve this problem?
I have recently formatted so shouldn't be a driver conflict?
Any help is appreciated,
Thanks,
Joel Heffernan

I've been getting that with my FF400. Playing along fine then the red light comes on and audio drops out. I don't even need to unplug and replug it to get it started again, just waiting 10-20 seconds and it syncs back up. I do have a firewire drive plugged into the 2nd firewire port, but I have had one plugged into it since I got it several months ago. This has been happening consistently for the past week. Could it be that I updated to OSX 10.4.10? I'll spend an entire evening with the FW hard drive not plugged in to see if it happens, I haven't had much time to troubleshoot it yet. Thanks.

Hey,
I know these posts are 5 years old, but I've got a FF800 and this issue happens to me exactly like "nickshelestak" explains above. If I'm working at my sequencer for 6-8 hours, it probably happens 2-3 times in that span. Very annoying.

Hey Jeff,
Any and all other FW devices? I'm just curious what that will determine, as I obviously need whatever's plugged in via FW. If I remove those devices and this doesn't happen anymore, what are we finding; a conflict b/w those devices?

Hey Jeff,
I unplugged the external hard drive from the neighboring FW800 port on the back of my MacPro, as well as the Apple iSight camera attached via FW400 + 800 adaptor to the front of my cpu and the RME worked well all day. My guess is that's it's prob the drive in the FW800 port right next to the port where the FF800 is plugged in, and not the iSight camera. Assuming this is correct, should I install a PCI FW port in an open slot on the back of my cpu? I obviously need this drive plugged in, but can't have it interfering with my music. Thanks-

I bought an RME fireface UC 3 days ago. Everything was perfectly working until right now after booting up my computer for the first time of the day. The fireface UC has the red led on host and it seems that my computer doesn't recognize the card anymore. Given that everything was working fine last night, i don't understand what is going on.

So after trying all of that, i tried installing the fireface uc driver on my macbook pro (which i hadn't do before), and the fireface uc works perfectly fine there. (piouf, it's not the card being dead, thanks..).

So now i am back on my windows computer, installing for another time the driver, and still red led on the host.
I know my computer recognizes the card, but something is weird because in the device manager, it seems that my PC recognizes the fireface as "Fireface UC mac". See the image Why mac? did my fireface uc keep in it's settings my try on my mac?

Check the correct firmware version by a double click on the rotary encoder button. The
display PC means Windows, the display AP means Mac. The double click automatically
switches between both versions. Note: a change of state is only possible when the unit is
not connected to the computer.

I have this exactly same problem, but have pushed the rotary encoder button to A.P many times over. Host button stays red. Have tried different usb ports, different cables. For some extremely strange reason the UC was visible for a time in Ableton and in the computer audio preferences, while host button was red. This means my computer recognized the device, but still not. USB Manager only flashes but doesn't open, same with Total Mix.

I'm a proud owner of the Fireface 800 and I'm starting to build up my first professional recording-studio - but now I need more output-channels. Does anybody know, if it's possible (and a good solution) to extend the Fireface 800 with e.g. a Focusrite Scarlett OctoPre Dynamic (I used it once and I really liked the quality)? And if so, could I use its inputs too?For now I want to stay with the Fireface as my master-interface.

The standard Octopre or similar things by Audient or even Behringer are a great way to add more inputs. And have only ADAT outs, meaning they can't accept digital audio inputs from your master interface, they are just used to add more A/D inputs to your system.

However some models of the Octopre also accept ADAT inputs which can be routed to the units analog line outputs on the rear panel via the 'ADAT > line' button. These can be used simultaneously to the units ADAT outputs > recording interface. Such versions of the octopre (eg. the Claret+ Octopre) can add 8 additional inputs and 8 additional outputs to an interface equipped with ADAT ins and outs.

Apart from the higher end Octopre's with this feature the only other device I know of (though there may well be more) is the RME ADI-8 MkIII which is also a 2 way expansion to the RME fireface, but should work with any other ADAT equipped device.

One ADAT cable will carry 8 channels of audio at lower sample rates (44.1Khz, 48Khz), each cable only carries 4 channels of audio at higher sample rates, hence they tend to get provided in pairs, and you will need to use both for 8 channels at higher sample rates in either direction.

Each ADI-8 or suitably equipped Octopre would add 8 inputs and 8 outputs via two ADAT cables (one in, one out) ADAT at lower sample rates, and 8 inputs and outputs via dual ADAT cables (two in, two out) at higher sample rates. Unfortunately you can't use both ADAT's at lower sample rates to get 16 channels of audio in a given direction because at that point you are limited by the physical number of analog connectors these two particular devices have.

You also have the option of getting an extra couple of outputs from the SPDIF I/O's, on top of the analog I/O's and ADAT. If an interface has both SPDIF and AES/EBU then often they are tied, so the same signal goes to both.

As pointed out by one of the other answers, things have moved on, in terms of features of the gear available compared to my experience when I first wrote this answer. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more standalone ADAT D/A A/D converters around now other than the RME unit and the higher end Octopre's, it's not before time too!