Fireface Giga Sonar Playback Timing Troubles

Hey all -
Just checking to see if anyone has had a similar situation come up and can offer a bit of expert advice

I've finally got my RME Fireface 800 "running" with Sonar 5.2 PE and Gigastudio 3, using a standard 1394a (regular FW) PCI card...

All buffers are set to 256, ASIO drivers (seem to play nicer than WDM for me) and I have a Audiophile 2496 card installed taking SPIDF sync from the Fireface.

THE PROBLEM: Audio playback is "clean" (no pops, clicks or distortion) but plays back choppy, with MIDI stopping and stuttering along the way and playing out of time. You can actually see the position bar slowing down, speeding up and stopping on the timeline.

So my question is, could this be an issue with my firewire card/cable or perhaps a sync setting I have off? There is absolutely NO problem when I use the Audiophile 2496 to do the same tasks, so it's not a processor issue - I've experimented with various buffers/settings to no avail, any help/thoughts would be awesome!

Thanks!

Hi thanks for the reply!

The Audiophile is being used for MIDI (control surface) and media player type duties...
I've tried disabling the Audiophile, and and it seems to help a bit but i'm still getting dropped MIDI notes and playback timing issues that were never there before installing the Fireface...

I'm just not sure where the weak link is, I'd be surprised if it was the FF itself - which leads me to believe it's either the firewire (although on the FF unit itself the 'host' light is staying off and appears to be stable) or possibly an overlooked setting (maybe even something MIDI specific?)...

I know Giga is very finicky, but I did have everything working with a $100 soundcard, so it should be doable with a FF ;) !

Yep, everything is up-to-date...
Someone on another board suggested it could be a MIDI conflict of some kind (I am using Loopbe, a virtual MIDI port to go to Giga) but I'm not sure why this would surface with the FF specifically....
The FF is such a great unit, I hope I can get it to actually function in my set-up!