Focusrite Saffire 56 audio stutters...(SOLVED with 3.4 beta driver)

User here, bought mine 18 months ago after my Presonus FS 26 died.

No problems, i have a Lacie FIrewire card (which has a TI chip on i)t, working fine with standard W7 drivers (NOT the legacy ones).

I/O buffers 512 in Sonar, hardware set to match. No stutters nor problems (touches wood) as yet. Runing latest Focusrite drivers/software v 3.2.

Typical set up : mainly audio (20 odd tracks) plus midi drums (Toontrack EZ), midi bass (Dim Pro with Craig Anderton's wonderful bass sounds), midi keyboards of some sort and occasionally midi strings.

Cheers,
Jerry

512, 2 buffers in playback cue (grayed out), 512 playback i/o, 512 record i/o, 1000 ms midi playback, i7 proccessor 8 gigs ram win 7 64 bit, focusrite saffire 56, sonar X3 all the way back to sonar 2 every other version. Most of Vienna's software, Native instruments, East West, Waves, Antares, plethera of Roland keyboards and modules, Yamaha wind controller, Maschine, Traktor, Homemade digital drums...

In addition to Alex's tips...
 
- Is the TI Firewire card FW only?  (It's not recommended to use one of those FW/USB or eSata combo cards).
- Make sure to disable the onboard Firewire.
- Run DPC Latency latency Checker to make sure nothing else is using up resources:
http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml
 
BTW, I have a Saffire Pro 24 DSP, and it has run glitch-free since day one out of the box.

FWIW, the current version of Mix Control is 3.3. It came out in late September of 2013, I've been using it with my Saffire Pro 40 since October with no issues. (Actually, Alex, your footer indicates version 3.3.)
 
I'm running a Studio Cat i7 4770 at 3.9ghz with 16gb of ram on Windows 8.1. I can often use the 32 sample ASIO buffer for tracking, this gives me a round trip latency of 3.6ms as measured by Oblique's RTL utility, so I am thrilled with that. I increase the ASIO buffer if required to handle a few sophisticated VST instruments or mixing a bunch of tracks with effects, but I never need to go above 256 samples.
 
If you get other things sorted out, you should also be able to get similar performance.

I got my Focusrite last October, and it is pretty forgiving for somewhat drastic swings in buffers/latencies. My gut feel with your experience is a system conflict like JonD mentioned above (either a combo card, or competition with any onboard FW). I have been running mine with the onboard VIA chipset without issues.

http://uk.focusrite.com/downloads/saffire-mix-control-33
 
"The latest version of Saffire MixControl. This installer includes all necessary drivers and software to run the firewire Saffire range of Focusrite interfaces."
 
I just don't think they updated the 56 page, you could drop Focusrite an email about this in case they removed it because of some specific issue.
 
I would suggest a clean install with a reset as per my previous post (and always backup).
And please supply the full make/model of the Ti firewire card, also please play with your settings as in #5 (but no point until you've updated mix control), plenty of stuff here about tuning the latency side as well.

Why the heck do they state "The latest version of Saffire MixControl. This installer includes all necessary drivers and software to run the firewire Saffire range of Focusrite interfaces." on my link...?
 
Focusrite definitely needs to amend this... thanks for feedback Jerry.
 
Previous advise still applies then only with v3.2 - Cheers (I didn't have any issues with 3.2 either).

The only other thing to verify I may have missed is any onboard FW adapter disabled in BIOS?
 
I just looked at the Focusrite site and indeed the 3.2 version is the last for the 56 (http://us.focusrite.com/firewire-audio-interfaces/liquid-saffire-56/downloads).
 
It may be well worth it to contact Focusrite directly about this issue.
 
Edit: Alex said he already did. Thanks Alex.

My money is that it was supported in 3.3, then they found a major bug with it and the 56, so they edited the 56 web page to state just 3.2 and forgot about the other pages.
 
Not including drivers (or reliable drivers) in 3.3 makes no sense otherwise. If they wanted to drop support for the 56 then you would have expected that to happen in MixControl 4.x
 
Either way it's a bit amateur, but then again they've never had the best looking support website. Best hardware and drivers though.

The statement that the Liquid Saffire 56 'does not work' with Mixcontrol 3.3 is not exactly accurate.  We did remove the 3.3 version from the LS 56 download page due to it causing the second bank of ADAT inputs to be distorted.  Since the Liquid Saffire 56 is the only unit in the line that suffered from this issue, v3.3 was left on the other product pages.  The issue with the second ADAT bank is now corrected in MixControl 3.4 which is now in the public beta phase and can be downloaded here:
 
http://beta.focusrite.com/releases/saffire_mix_control/
 
In regards to the OP, I do not believe that running MixControl 3.2 is the cause of your issue.   You have already tried quite a bit of troubleshooting, but I didn't see you say whether or not you tried checking for DPC latency as was previously suggested.  Aside from testing for DPC latency, I think the best thing will be to get in touch with the Focusrite Support team so that we can work with you 1 on 1 to resolve the issue.  You can contact us with this form:
 
http://global.focusrite.com/answerbase/contact

That is rather cool that Matt posted in the forum directly. I have gotten more and more respect for Focusrite since buying their gear.

I have checked the DPC latency and it hovers round 90 Us max of 200 us, so all green. I emailed focusrite support last week, got an email today. Sent in my specs, haven't heard back again. case 27227. Thanks!

Make sure you have your latest video card drivers. I've reviewed a ton of Focusrite gear over the years, always worked as expected ...except for one time, when there were pops, crackles, and horrible latency settings. When I updated the graphics card drivers, it worked exactly as it should have.

This has been an interesting thread for me, as I am currently shopping for a new interface to replace my dead MOTU 828MkII and the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 currently tops my short list of candidates. MOTU's support is notoriously bad - is it the general consensus that Focusrite is more responsive to customers?

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