Why is Saffire Mix Control fighting with Pro Tools

[right beside]

I'm having trouble with my new Liquid Saffire 56 and Mix control.
My set up consists of

MBP 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB Ram
OS X 10.8.3
PT 10.3.5
Saffire Mix Control 3.2
Oyen Digital bus powered firewire drive
Command 8

I have the firewire drive plugged into the computer and the Saffire plugged into the drive.
I start the Saffire first. Then mix control. Then the command 8. Then Pro tools.
Everything boots okay. I open a session. All still okay. But when I play the session and actually engage Mix control, it becomes suddenly very slow to respond. I click it's window and it won't come to the foreground. After 45 seconds or so, it does. I try to move its window and the same thing, I move the mouse and 45 seconds later, the window moves. Then the spinning ball of death. Then everything breaks down.

Does anyone have an idea about what could be causing it? I hope its just a setting I've overlooked. Mix control works fine by itself. Very responsive. It just doesn't like to play with Pro Tools.

In Mix Control I have the Sample Rate at 44.1 kHz, sync source set to Internal
In Audio Midi I also have its clock sourcen set to Internal.

Thanks.

[dr_daw]

Hey,

Have you turned off spotlight and done all PT optimizations? Is you MBP turned on before booting everything up? I always turn the MBP on LAST.

Have you tried just having the LS56 plugged in the FW port by itself? MY Saffire pro was very tempermental at first with a daisy chain set up. I have since been able to eliminate my Thunderbolt/FW adapter and daisy chain, but have to follow the boot sequence in order for things to play nice.

[right beside]

Yes, spotlight is disabled on the drives I work with.

I did all the optimizations in the installation guide.

I've tried powering things on in all different orders, but yes, have tried booting the mac last. I remember you or someone else mentioning that in another thread.

I haven't tried plugging the Saffire into the firewire port by itself. All of my audio/session are on various F/W drives, none are on my system drive. I could move some there temporarily for a test, but I never run sessions that way, so really need it to work like it's supposed to. I have a single F/W port on my MBP.

Is my clock set up right? In mix control, set to internal. In Audio/Midi set to internal. I read in a thread that in Audio/Midi it should be set to ADAT but that didn't make sense to me.

[right beside]

Ok, I just tested it with the Safire as the only thing plugged into the firewire port and it seems fine that way.

But I do hope this doesn't mean that if I want to keep and use the Saffire, I am not going to be able to use my firewire drives at the same time.

The manual does say that having it as the only thing on the bus is preferred but not required. Even more confusing is the fact that there are 2 firewire ports on the back of the Saffire.

Pro Tools has always recommended that audio be on a drive separate from the system drive. I have a stack of neatly organized firewire drives from the last 10 years of using Pro Tools.

[Emcha_audio]

The LS56 requires a firewire 400, so when you have that plus all the HD that are sending all the audio data through the same firewire port/controller, it just can't cope (the controller) at least that's my understanding. So yes that will mean that you will have to have your external HDD on an other port and not daisy chainged.

The reason why you have two ports is if you actually use the dual unit options like the LS56 and a saffire pro 24 dsp or lower. You would connected the pro 24 dsp into the second firewire port of the LS56 and use the 1rst port to connect to the computer.

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/...le.php?id=1047

[right beside]

Well, there isn't another port on my MBP.

That's really too bad. Ive used a Digi 003 for the past 7 years or so. It was firewire and allowed me to daisy chain drives, no problem. I could arrange them in any order, mount and unmount different ones at any point in a session, and had no problems. And it was acting as both an interface and a controller.

[right beside]

From:

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/...le.php?id=1141

"Can I use a firewire hard drive with my Saffire?
Yes, firewire hard drives can be daisy chained with our firewire interfaces.

Is the order that they are connected together important?
The devices can be connected either way around. Either the Saffire can be connected to the computer, with the hard drive daisy chained off of the interface, or the vice versa. However, in the first case, the firewire drive should be powered externally, whereas it doesn't need to be, when connected before the Saffire.

Can I use a firewire 800 hard drive?
You can use a firewire 800 hard drive. However, all daisy-chained devices must run at 400Mbs speed (i.e. using a cable with at least one firewire 400 connector). If your computer has a firewire 800 port, you should use a firewire 400 to 800 adapter such as the Sonnet adapter to connect the devices together."

AND

"I can't power a FireWire device from my Liquid Saffire 56's FireWire port, is my unit faulty?
The Liquid Saffire 56 does not supply bus power to its FireWire ports, therefore you will not be able to power any other devices from the FireWire ports. This is not a hardware fault and can be overcome by using an external power for the other FireWire device."

[Emcha_audio]

He can use it, as I said in his case the port is being maxed out with the audio data.

[right beside]

I get what you're saying.

I'm just showing that the focusrite site says that F/W drives can be daisy chained, in any order, and that the port on the back can be used for another firewire 'device' so long as it has its own power. But in practice, that is clearly not true.

The session I am trying to run from my FW drive has 16 tracks, no more. And the firewire is already maxed out with that? What size sessions does Focusrite expect one to run, while still being able to daisy chain a drive with their hardware? I ran 50+ track sessions on my Digi 003 without a hiccup.

[right beside]

What are my real world options to be able to use the Saffire 56 with Pro Tools on my current MBP with 1 FW port and 2 USB ports? Where then should my audio be stored?

Must I buy a second internal drive and remove my optical drive and put it in its own enclosure?

Must I buy an array of USB 3 drives? Or just one to work with and then transfer everything at the end of the day to FW drives that I'll never be able to hook up to my computer?

How do you users of the Saffire 56 have your data arranged?