Hey Guys,

2 weeks ago I upgraded my RAM to 64 Gb for my i5 9600 Processor, and since then my old Tascam 08 16 Mk1, which had Distortion Issues from time to time, worked excellent in Ableton: When i had 12 Audio-Stems open,plus FX-Plugins, it just had about 5 % CPU-Usage and an by 48 Samples, like about 7ms lateny in total.


So, was happy, and thought, i even can improve the CPU-Usage or the Latency-Situation by getting an Fireface 400.

Now, using the FF 400 with my PCIe-Firewire-Card, the same 12-Stem-Project in Ableton takes 35 % CPU-Usage, which is, of course, an unacceptable situation. I tried different Asio, and Asio4all has the best latency of all - AND 35 % CPU-Usage.

I got the newest BIOS on my System, re-installed all softwares several times, but the Fireface 400 still takes 7 times more CPU-Usage than my rusty old Tascam 16 x 08 MK1 USB Interface.


So, is it just normal, that RME+ Firewire may have good Latency, but very heavy CPU-Usage? I mean, I really can expect from an pricy RME-Firewire-Connection, that its at least usable like an cheap old second-hand Tascam 16 08 Mk1 from Ebay.

Or am I wrong, and cheap old Tascam USB-Interfaces are just more CPU-Friendly - even 7 times more CPU-friendly?

I still believe in the RME to firewire setup, and cant believe my Situation, right now, is the norm.


Thanks for help,

and have a great start in 2024 :-)

HI, try some tweaks:


- First Create System Restore Point
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/create...ndows-11.3602/

- Disable Core Parking
https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

- Disable Windows Hibernate
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

- Disable Core Isolation and Memory Integrity. (Use the registry)
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/enable...ndows-11.4942/

- Disable Widgets
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/enable...ndows-11.1196/

- Disable Microsoft Edge from running in background
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-p...und-windows-10
Maybe disable the other stuff too https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

- Set the Windows Priority Separation to 26hex
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl]
"Win32PrioritySeparation"=dword:00000026
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/proce...in-windows-7-8
Or double click the REG file https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ckl...usp=drive_link

- Set the currently active power scheme to Processor performance time check interval = 5000
(Click in the image to download the Windows power plan settings explorer utility)

IF want the details, look at https://youtu.be/n9xAG3nb9XQ
Also unselect "Processor idle demote/promote threshold"
and set the AC value = 100 for BOTH "Processor idle demote/promote threshold"


- PCI Express Link State Power Management = OFF


- Go to Settings>Personalization>Colors = Disable Transparency Effects


- Go to Settings>System>Multitasking = Disable Snap Windows


- For the drives, enable the "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device"
Step 1. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog.
Step 2. Type devmgmt.msc and hit Enter to launch Device Manager.
Step 3. Expand Disk drives and right-click on the disk drive you want to enable/disable disk write caching to choose Properties. Here, we select an internal storage drive.
Step 4. Under the Policies tab, choose from "Enable write caching on the device" and "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device".


- Reboot and verify if it is better

- Now Create a second System Restore Point
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/create...ndows-11.3602/

- Disable Threaded DPCs(Windows XP behavior).
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...-threaded-dpcs
Open Powershell as Admin. Copy/Paste/Enter the following:
reg add "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\kernel" /v ThreadDpcEnable /t REG_DWORD /f /d 0
Or double click the REG file https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Om1...usp=drive_link

- Reboot and verify if it is better.

UPDATE
I forgot the principal...
Does the sampling rate and ASIO buffer was the same?
Verify if the RME firmware is updated.
What chipset does the FireWire card uses?

After the tweaks I would also go back and try the RME ASIO driver again.

Sound like a bug/incompatibility issue to me - 5>35% CPU usage isn't going to be down to tweaks!
The last firmware (1.71) is 13 years old for Fireface 400 and the last windows driver was 2019.

Despite RME having an almost godlike status for drivers, I couldn't use Firewire with my 802 and PC (Windows 10) - it just glitched and popped whatever I did (My UA Apollo 8P over Firewire was faultless) - I even tried changing Firewire card and chipset. In desperation I ended up switching to the USB2 connection which has been good. I still use Firewire for a couple of satellites - I upgraded my Apollo to Thunderbolt which I use for location recording with a MacBook.

FireWire is working great here on Win 11 with a UCX ver1+ADI 8 (adat)+2 channel DA (spdif).
I am ready to switch to USB if needed but so far, everything is stable.

This is the card I use..
SIIG NN-FW0012-S1  TI XIO2213BZAY

thx mate, tried the tweaks but it didnt help.

ordered 2 different firewire-cards yesterday, checked them out, nothing changed. dont know which chipset it was.

sampling rate was similar, tascam had 9 ms in total, rme like the same.

rme firmware updated. reinstalled all drivers a couple of times.

honestly, i gave up. I ll go with usb again from now, get a simple focusrite-scarlett, upgrade the ram to simple i9 9k - and just focus on doing music on a very stable PC...

thanks for the tweeks, will use them again!

Is your PC setup with UEFI BIOS or traditional? If the latter I wonder if there some sort of interrupt clash? But I feel your pain - been there with Firewire RME!

The ones with Texas XIO2213B are the ones that work well.
https://www.amazon.com/Syba-SY-PEX30.../dp/B006DQ0KD2
https://www.amazon.com/LinksTek-Fire.../dp/B07Q2G79QG
I'm glad to help, but don't give up!
Are you using the integrated GPU?
If so, the first large slot next to the CPU is
empty, install the FireWire card into it.
IF it is already there, try another SLOT.

If you are using a Nvidia GPU, enable MSI(Message Signaled-Based Interrupts)
You can use this program.
You can not enable MSI for USB 2 or FireWire or older WiFi.
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/wi...i-tool.378044/


But first Create System Restore Point!

Thx mate,

this Texas Card is atm in the PC, and i already tried with the same model in new + another one. Worked fine, but super heavy CPU.

I already send the FF 400 back to the seller.

Thanks for your help mate,
hope this works out for another user struggling with Fireface + Win11 + CPU-Usage.

Have a great new year man!

IMO, you should have replaced your PC instead of returning the Fireface.

This is your fatal error: RME is famous for their drivers and you chose to use Asio4all instead - which has a very dodgy reputation.

RME Drivers:
https://www.rme-audio.de/downloads.html

Getting a firewire card with the Texas Instruments chipset (see links from Pictus above) is imperative.

I've still using a RME FF800 aquired in 2006. It has made the transition through multiple DIY DAW Builds from Windows XP to 7 to 10 and just recently 11 on both Intel and AMD systems and still works perfectly. It has bested other Audio Interfaces I've used from Frontier Design, E-Mu (Creative), M-Audio, Universal Audio and others.

If you chose to use Asio4all instead of the RME drivers they are famous for, you can hardly lay the blame at their feet. Some details matter.

As I pointed out earlier my RME 802 on my Windows 10 PC ran like a dog on firewire - all with the correct RME drivers - I changed to a recommended TI card to see if that was the cause - nope. FW was faultless with My Apollo 8P on the same PC. Ended up swapping to the USB 2 connection and stayed there - RME are a great company but there's no such thing as perfection! Sometimes there are combinations of whatever that cause issues, RME or not.

I do concur that Firewire itself has always been a dicey thing - RME and Universal Audio seem to be some of the few companies that got it working. I remember a studio friend of mine will get angry all over again if I mention an early Presonus Firewire audio interface that he bought and caused him no end of trouble. To add insult to injury, he got no help whatsoever from their customer support.

And yes of course (as you mentioned) there are particular combinations of hard and software in our bespoke DIY DAW's that could throw a *wrench in the works.

But I thought it odd that felixpatek would lead with RME being the problem while ignoring their drivers and using the known troublesome Asio4all drivers.

(*Actually one thing that comes to mind for Windows, is that at one point in time (during the introduction to Win 10 I think?) you had to ensure to check in Device Manager to make sure that the Firewire Adapter was using the Windows LEGACY driver. But I think that's old news now.)

As an experiment I could try flipping back to Firewire to see how things have progressed several years on (or not!) - but to be honest, I hate the sockets and connectors for Firewire they just don't stay put!

As DEA states, ASIO4ALL is the main culprit, regardless of perceived latency. As we know, ASIO4ALL is merely a wrapper for the PC's WDM driver, and consequently not an ASIO driver at all.

Side note: I have been using RME UCX with a TI-chip-equipped FW-card on my PC for almost a decade. No issues.

And as I stated I had tremendous problems on RME drivers with Firewire under Windows 10.

I suspect that for FireWire to work well we need:

- A Firewire card with Texas XIO2213B chipset.
- The motherboard/Windows must configure it without sharing IRQ.

Firewire and older USB2/WiFi controllers are not compatible with MSI.
Basically, old stuff isn't compatible with MSI.
Why the NVIDIA driver is/was installing with MSI disabled is a mystery to me.
Without MSI compatible hardware the chances of a Firewire card having to share IRQ are high.
Therefore, an older motherboard with USB2/WiFi/NVIDIA is a prime candidate for not working well with Firewire.

Thanks for the info but I had all those bases covered.
I switched to a Sonnet Allegro FireWire 800 PCI Express Card with a Texas Instruments XIO2213 chipset which was the recommended go-to of the day. Motherboard was (still is!) an Asus X99 Deluxe v3. I was very careful with interrupts and the PCI slot to ensure the card wasn't clashing with anything else - but it is an MSI (plug and play) card and Windows reported no resource clashes with this device. It work perfectly with my Apollo 8p and 2x FW satalites (the former I upgraded to Thunderbolt but I still use the FW satalites without issue.) The only firewire issue I had was with the RME802 (which I still use over USB2).

I'm carrying my Firewire setup over to my AMD 7950X Windoze 11 (boo!) build - it'll be interesting to see if it still works fine.

One interesting thind I spotted whilst rereading the manuals for the two interfaces is UA claim that Firewire is more efficient than USB due to taking load off the host CPU. The RME manual says modern USB is capable of matching PCI for performance and Firewire ISN'T. Plus Firewire will demand more CPU. Interesting divergence. Perhaps these are the differences between generic drivers and RME ones?

nah man.

asio4all had the best cpu-usage, but just used the main rme-asio, since the routing was the best.

it worked absolutly fine, in terms of stability, sound, no crackles etc, BUT it had 6 times more CPU-Usage than my old shitty tascam 16 08 mk1 usb-interface.

thats it.

never talked bad about rme.

just about the game between rme, my mainboard and firewire.

You are welcome. OK, but MSI is not always enabled by default even with modern stuff, NVIDIA and
Realtek audio are primes examples.
https://www.igorslab.de/en/interrupt...errupts-msi/2/
That is why we use the MSI utility.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/ewpy1p...il_v3.zip/file
I bet it will work very well!
Maybe.

Well I certainly don't deny your experience - each of us can tell our own anecdotal stories and they are valid to us.

The tricky part is drawing grander conclusions regarding Brands with all the variability in each of our DIY DAW Builds.

I had an AMD Shuttle XPC (if anyone can remember those) in 2006 that had built-in Firewire (not the TI Chipset) on the motherboard. It worked fine with my RME FF800 (though with fairly high latency). But around the same time I got a Solid State Logic DUENDE hardware unit with a Firewire connection that never quite worked out: The only way I could use the DSP VST effects with it, was to record the output in realtime I also had the units connected in a firewire chain or something weird like that.

Though I consulted with SSL many times and tried many software and driver fixes, I never could resolve it and just moved on to new DAW hardware that *actually worked at some point.

So I do appreciate the many variables involved in our DAW Builds. But over the decades its been my experience with audio interface configuration that the fault (if any) has always been with other hard and software variables rather than RME.

But at the end of the day we each have projects and/or work to complete and need our DAW configuration to work for us. So I totally respect you gotta do what you gotta do to get your working configuration back in the sweet spot.

XIO2213 and XIO2213B could be two different chipsets. Check your card out.

Sure - but it was faultless with my Apollo 8 - as was the original card which got the blame when my RME misbehaved over Firewire which prompted its replacement.
My PC + two different Firewire cards + Windows 10 and Apollo 8 (+ 2 FW satellites that are still in use) worked faultlessly at relatively small buffer sizes - the only issues were introduced with the RME 802.
I like my interface and I will probably replace it with an RME UFX III – but I’m not buying the RME is god narrative as I have had latency/real-time spike issues that I can isolate to my RME interface over Firewire and only my RME interface.

Here's the model that worked for me through multiple different DAW builds. Seems to be getting a bit scarce and expensive now:

Syba Low Profile PCi-Express 1394B/1394A 2B1A Card, Ti Chipset, Extra Regular Bracket SD-PEX30009

Style: TI XIO2213B Chipset

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00...e?ie=UTF8&th=1

I notice one of the models Pictus suggested has an added Molex Power connector.

For our (RME) purposes it shouldn't matter as no power is used over Firewire.