Why is Saffire Mix Control fighting with Pro Tools

[dr_daw]

Hey,

It may be that specific drive that's causing you grief. What year is you MBP? Do you not have a Thunderbolt port?

I had my system built as a turnkey, and the tech couldn't get my saffire to play nice in a a daisy chain situation. This resulted in putting my Glyph 800FW drive on my ONLY FW port, and using a THunderbolt/FW 800 adapter and a FW800-400 cable. Things worked that way.

After doing much reading, I just bit the bullet and managed to get the drive and saffire to daisy chain and work. I do get the odd PT crash, but it's very infrequent.

You said the LS56 mix control runs fine in standalone mode? but then gets glitchy in PT's?

Sounds like your clocking is set up properly. How do you have your command 8 connected?

Have you tried deleting your prefs/databases? doing a disk repair and rebooting?

Have you considered rolling back to PT 10.3.2? that seems to be the most stable setup for me

[right beside]

Okay, I did a bunch of different stress tests on all my drives, and its just my main one that creates the problem. So it is a drive specific problem. The drive is qualified and has been my workhorse for the past few years, but for whatever reason, The Saffire doesn't like it.

As a further test, I attached the Saffire through the problem drive, but ran a session from my OS drive, and the Saffire was good. It can use the drives bus, it just won't do it while audio is also passing from the drive.

I've only tried all of this with a single armed track, but will try 8 simultaneous in a few.

Also,

The MBP is brand new

I use the thunderbolt for a monitor about half the time.

The Command 8 is set up at a MIDI peripheral and is connected via a USB hub.

I did a disk repair and my OS drive and FW drive, trashed prefs and databases, did a reboot and still have the problem with that drive.

[right beside]

I just did 8 simultaneously with the Saffire plugged into a different hard drive and all was good. :)

Now I have to learn Mix control, but that's the fun part I've been trying to get to.

Thanks for everyone's help.

[Bill Denton]

Originally Posted by right beside

Okay, I did a bunch of different stress tests on all my drives, and its just my main one that creates the problem. So it is a drive specific problem. The drive is qualified and has been my workhorse for the past few years, but for whatever reason, The Saffire doesn't like it.

As a further test, I attached the Saffire through the problem drive, but ran a session from my OS drive, and the Saffire was good. It can use the drives bus, it just won't do it while audio is also passing from the drive.

I've only tried all of this with a single armed track, but will try 8 simultaneous in a few.

Also,

The MBP is brand new

I use the thunderbolt for a monitor about half the time.

The Command 8 is set up at a MIDI peripheral and is connected via a USB hub.

I did a disk repair and my OS drive and FW drive, trashed prefs and databases, did a reboot and still have the problem with that drive.

The drive is qualified and has been my workhorse for the past few years ...

To each his own, but I would not use a drive that's more than three years old for anything other than backup or archiving purposes.

While I have a few drives around that have been running continuously for seven or eight years, they're only used as backups of backups, or as backups of backups of backups.

In my opinion, after using a drive for three years you're running on borrowed time, and with drive prices being so low, why risk it?

Of course, YMMV...

[right beside]

Agreed. I wasn't saying this is still my main drive. Just that it has been recently and I know it to function properly. I used it to test with because it has all the sessions that I want to see run on my new system.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by right beside

Agreed. I wasn't saying this is still my main drive. Just that it has been recently and I know it to function properly. I used it to test with because it has all the sessions that I want to see run on my new system.

Double check that spotlight indexing is disabled (drive marked private in system settings>Spotlight) for that actual drive. Its easy to miss one drive and have it cause problems. or I've seen folks reformat a drive/rename it etc. and forget to go and remark it private...

Darryl

[dr_daw]

Originally Posted by right beside

I just did 8 simultaneously with the Saffire plugged into a different hard drive and all was good. :)

Now I have to learn Mix control, but that's the fun part I've been trying to get to.

Thanks for everyone's help.

No problem, glad that you were able to narrow it down to a drive. I agree with what Darryl is saying, it's always a gamble with spinning drives as they get older.

Enjoy Mix control, I find it great, especially the 'loopback' feature can be super useful. Let me know if you get the 'play/pause' mode that I sometimes get. I've still been trying to figure out what the issue is and if anyone else if having it. If you do get that, just go into the Mix Control settings, change the buffer size and change it back, and you should be good to go. I think it's an issue if you have your LS56 setup as system sound, and you don't strictly follow the boot up sequence. So far, I haven't had it with MC 3.2, but it was a regular issue prior to that.

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by dr_daw

No problem, glad that you were able to narrow it down to a drive. I agree with what Darryl is saying, it's always a gamble with spinning drives as they get older.

Enjoy Mix control, I find it great, especially the 'loopback' feature can be super useful. Let me know if you get the 'play/pause' mode that I sometimes get. I've still been trying to figure out what the issue is and if anyone else if having it. If you do get that, just go into the Mix Control settings, change the buffer size and change it back, and you should be good to go. I think it's an issue if you have your LS56 setup as system sound, and you don't strictly follow the boot up sequence. So far, I haven't had it with MC 3.2, but it was a regular issue prior to that.

Never had that play pause issue with the ls56 I use, but I do have a loadig problem from east west trying to change the buffer or at times the sample rate of the saffire. All in all though, great unit. Mix control is really a boon to have, also do get the rtas mix control plugin so you can switch the routing from within pro tools tracking vs mixing and mike/line/instrument/ preamp emulation selections.

[right beside]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Mix control is really a boon to have, also do get the rtas mix control plugin so you can switch the routing from within pro tools tracking vs mixing and mike/line/instrument/ preamp emulation selections.

Does the RTAS Plugin work with PT10?

When you go here:

http://us.focusrite.com/firewire-aud...e-56/downloads

and you click 'click here for more details' under the RTAS Mix Control 1.0 heading, it says:

Requirements:
- Saffire MixControl 2.4 or later installed
- Pro Tools 9 installed
Note that multiple Saffires are not supported at the moment. Please consult the RTAS MC User Guide for further information.
Known issues:
- Not loading between tracking and playback snapshot under certain conditions in some systems (Windows only)

I'm not sure if that means you can only run it with PT9 or if you just have to have at the least PT 9.

[dr_daw]

No it works just fine. Emcha seems to have the use of it dialed. I personally don't use it because I find it a PITA. I either just deal with the latency when over dubbing or just nail the parts in one take :P LMAO I mean comp the parts :P