"ASIO properties changed" Focusrite Saffire Pro 40

[Caatalyst]

I've also put in a support ticket with focusrite about the same problem with my saffire pro 24. Hopefully our voices will be herd!

[graveleye]

caatalyst, njpianist, let me know soon as you hear from them, especially if it is something none of us has tried yet.

Hopefully they will come through with a fix. I put my vendor on notice that I would probably be returning the unit, but I want to at least give Focusrite a chance to reply.

Dear Focusrite... I do not want to return your product because I love what you make... but it does not work as advertised. I would rather have it work than not, but I have to have a system soon..

[graveleye]

Still haven't heard from Focusrite, but I managed to get through over two hours of non-stop play last night with no ASIO shutdowns. That's good.

I reverted the driver back from the legacy driver to the TI driver. Could that be it? I have no idea.

Also, and again I'm not sure if this helped or not, but I reinstalled Mixcontrol without the Saffire hooked up, with PT 10 already installed of course. This is opposite of what the PT 10 installation guide says to do. In the installation guide it specifically says to install the hardware and hardware drivers first, then install PT so that's how I did it initially. Again, I am not sure if this has anything to do with the problem.

The other thing is I can't seem to recall a single instance where the ASIO shutdown occurred when I was actually working on something. It seems like it only occurs for me when PT has been sitting idle for a long time, as in 30 minutes to an hour or longer. If that is the actual trend, I can deal with that. When I am working it usually will not idle longer than the time it takes for a bathroom break.

I'm going to keep messing with it, but I feel more hopeful than I have in a week now.

[Milko71]

I had the same problems with my LS56. Replacing my nVidia graphicscard by a (cheap) Radeon HD5750 solved the problem for me.
Sometimes my LS56 loose connection. Putting is off and on helps.

I worked with my setup (with PT10) for several hours without any crashes!!

[arhall]

Originally Posted by graveleye

Still haven't heard from Focusrite, but I managed to get through over two hours of non-stop play last night with no ASIO shutdowns. That's good.

I reverted the driver back from the legacy driver to the TI driver. Could that be it? I have no idea.

Dont no but when I runned a dverb test I discovered that the legacy driver did'nt cope with the workload. TI driver did. I'm using a TI chip.

[graveleye]

arhall, did you get the ASIO message?

I'm going to push it tonight and see how it goes and how long I can work it with no errors. Fingers crossed. I think my wife is ready for me to get the rig out of the living room and into the studio where it belongs.

[Raggi]

Milko: This is exact the same thing that happend to me, and what I have tried to tell people here. I belive it's the display port audio carrier that causes this.
When installing the AMD driver I can choose not to install the audio feature, and it works for hours at end after maybe 1 loss of connection at the begining.

What I do before a session is to play some music/movie to see if the audio setup works, then use PT10.1.

[arhall]

Originally Posted by graveleye

arhall, did you get the ASIO message?

I'm going to push it tonight and see how it goes and how long I can work it with no errors. Fingers crossed. I think my wife is ready for me to get the rig out of the living room and into the studio where it belongs.

Yep, I getting the ASIO if not using ASIO4ALL.
I'm not using spdif & adats so ASIO4ALL suits me quite well for now.

[Caatalyst]

Hi James,

Thanks for getting in touch with us.

This issue appears to be down to the way that Pro Tools works with 3rd party interfaces. It appears that when it's launched it doesn't use what sample rate the driver is currently set to and instead its audio engine first restores the sample rate to the sample rate that it was using previously. This results in situations where it requires launching Pro Tools twice in order to switch to a new sample rate.

If you are having to do this multiple times it looks like there could be some sort of sample rate switching issue or the Saffire's sample rate is getting switched again.

So, if you monitor Saffire MixControl, can you tell me if the sample rate is changing when this problem occurs? What sample rate are you trying to use? What sample rate is shown?

Also, is the Saffire in use as the Windows sound playback/record device? This may have an affect on Sample Rate switching.

Best regards,

Focusrite Tech Support Response. They are aware of the issue. Hopefully a fix will be on the way.

[graveleye]

I got a reply from them as well, only totally different from yours:

Thanks for your email and sorry to hear of this issue.

I have seen this occurring as a result of DPC latency spikes. Just to confirm, before we start, are you receiving this error mid playback/record?

Could you download the DPC latency checker from this website : http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

If you run it in the background, can you see any spikes occurring? How about when the error message pops up?

Is it a built in FireWire port that you're using? By the looks of your report it is. Do you know what chipset it has?

In Saffire MixControl, from the settings button, what is your FireWire driver latency set to? If you increase it does it help the issue?

Best regards,

I repsonded... I get an occasional DPC spike only when Pro Tools is idle. Is that weird or what? When I am working, tracks armed, playback rolling, editing, etc it works like a charm. But let it sit for a spell and boom, DPC spike, and I have to save, shut PT down and restart it. Thank goodness it gives you the chance to save.

The DPC laterncy checker says the only way to figure out which driver is causing the problem is to go into devices and shut them down one by one until you find out which one is the culprit. For me, given that it takes a long time just to get the message, this could take days of non-stop staring at the computer.

I'm waiting to hear back from them. I hope you're right and that a fix is on the way.