How many Firewire devices soon to be doorstops.

It's sad how M-Audio went from great to lame. I've used their Delta 44 for over 10 years and only once had an issue with a driver. At one point, all my gear was M-Audio - midi controllers, preamp, monitors, audio interface... They made solid budget gear and their support was always great.
 
Even under AVID, I couldn't say a bad thing about them - heck, I got to run Pro Tools w/o buying any other hardware while the people who'd bought their Digi 001 at the same time as I'd bought my 44 were left behind.
 
But sometimes around the time when AVID let them go, things seemed to start going downhill... I can't recommend their product anymore - and anyway, there are now many alternatives for that specific market where they excelled in the past.
 
 

kitekrazy1
I have yet to find a person who runs W8 with no problems.
 

 
Now you have.  I installed a version back of Win7x64 Delta drivers and my 66 screams with no problems, no hiccups.  Running 6.8ms RTL at 48K
 
That's not to say that Avid isn't lame for letting support drop for my 13 yo audio interface  :)

Rain
It's sad how M-Audio went from great to lame. I've used their Delta 44 for over 10 years and only once had an issue with a driver. At one point, all my gear was M-Audio - midi controllers, preamp, monitors, audio interface... They made solid budget gear and their support was always great.

 
I dunno, they were always somewhat flakey with regards to drivers. I had a Delta 1010 back in the day and it was a lot of grief. First thing was it wouldn't share IRQs. If something else was on its IRQ it went nuts. Thing is, IRQ sharing is part of the PCI spec and ACPI spec. So you had to fuss around with your system to make it work.
 
Then Windows 2000 happened and man, with getting drivers for that. They first said "There will never be native 2000 drivers, WDM is not acceptable for pro audio it is too high latency." Of course WDM/KS was part of the spec from the word go, M-Audio just didn't read the spec I guess. Finally they got aware of KS and made drivers... which supported 2 of the 10 channels. They said "This is an inherent limitation of WDM, nothing we can do!" I couldn't believe that so I e-mailed MS about it and I think they were sufficiently surprised with the stupidity of my question that they actually responded with links to Technet documentation about how WDM could do with single devices with more than 2 channels or multiple 2 channel devices like 98. Sent that on to M-Audio, no response, but eventually their multi-channel WDM drivers came out.
 
I wrote them off long before the Avid thing. Focusrite and RME make me happy these days.

I wish more companies would simply include removable cards to swap Firewire, USB, Thunderbolt, Dante, etc.  It is something you see at the high end level, but not on advanced or "pro-sumer" level interfaces.  I went with RME because of their long history of supporting everything they ever made, even discontinued products.  
 
USB is going to be around for the foreseeable future, it is a pretty safe bet for future proofing.  
 

I will not be buying any hardware from M-Audio, Tascam, Yamaha and Presonus. Part of it is quality and long lists of legacy products.

 
Just a quick note that Steinberg interfaces are Yamaha built and designed products.  The quality is actually excellent as is the higher end Yamaha pro audio equipment.  Though driver support is historically not that good as you pointed out.    

batsbrew
my Maudio Audiophile 192 is rock solid on Win XP.
 
what am i missing?
 

About three updates and twice as many headaches....

I would not consider any firewire device to be obsolete as long as it is still working with you OS.  I say this because so many of the firewire devices/interfaces I know of and some I own, work via Thunderbolt.  I don't see TB going away for a very long time and it will only get better (can't wait until we have fiber optics as originally planned).   The only thing lacking in this respect is a fuller featured hub.  (TB can carry USB also.)
 
Just my 2¢.
 
Kind regards,
 
tecknot

I'm still using my Focusrite Saffire Pro26IO from 2007 and do not intend to change it until it breaks.

I've been considering a Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 and a Thunderbolt 2 card for my new 4790k PC, as a budget entry to TB. I could get a Clarett later.....   Firewire seems "not quite dead yet", just sort of in "rehab" LOL
 
The only usb units that I'm waiting to read reviews on are the Tascam us16X08 and Arturia's AudioFuse, which could be quite the solution (it is almost twice the Saffire with a FW card).
 
For me, RME is/has been high class/price I/O, along with Antelope's Zen Pro Studio, but at that level the Black Lion stuff gets really interesting conversion-wise. When I read that Mutt Lange was using BLA stuff, I started checking into it. The Sparrow Mk II Red can be upgraded to White. Since I do mostly one track at a time, I am plotting an I/O improvement for now, with that top level quality conversion as soon as I can.
 
The BLA mods are also something to consider for "dated" or even current gear. It's really an exciting time, gear and software wise!
Michael

I purchased 2 Yamaha 01x digital desks a few years back. 1 year later they discontinued the product and never wrote another driver! I had to replace them as there were no functional 64bit drivers. They also relied on a Texas Instruments firewire chip, so when express card slots were dumped it was very near impossible to find a laptop to run them. I would never buy Yamaha again - or firewire for that matter

kitekrazy1
M-Audio FW 410 - no W8 support.  I have yet to find a person who runs W8 with no problems.
[...]
I will not be buying any hardware from M-Audio, Tascam, Yamaha and Presonus. Part of it is quality and long lists of legacy products.

Struggling to understand how lack of W8 support could be an issue given the product. I have de-installed W8 more times than I have installed W7.
 
My FW-410 is quite an old device now as these things go and I had no hope that it would be useful beyond XP however M-Audio produced the goods with the Vista x64 drivers when I moved to it and to my surprise made W7 x64 drivers available which I am using as I type this. My FW-410 has been rock-steady for a long time now and if M-Audio decide not to produce W10 drivers I will not think badly of them - it seems unreasonable and not a little naive to expect manufacturers to produce drivers for legacy products for ever. I won't have any qualms about buying another product from them. I can't speak for the others you mentioned and am not associated with M-Audio other than as a user.
 

Like I say, a little naive. If you think you can reprogram a driver after a major OS re-jig by just 'twiddling' it over a weekend (and btw TEST it satisfactorily to commercial production standard) with a couple of chaps with nothing better to do you clearly know a lot more about software development than the rest of us and enough of the conspiracy theories already - few companies will donate their IP (some of which is still in use in later products) to the PD so their competitors can just pick it up. Like I say, a little naive.

batsbrew
my Maudio Audiophile 192 is rock solid on Win XP.
 
what am i missing?

 
Ditto on my Focusrite Saffire firewire... on XP pro

If it ain't broke ....don't fix it.

The A/D buisness is a nasty one for sure.  The biggest problem I have is quality vs functionality.  However don't fool yourself into thinking this is only a problem for FireWire.  It's a problem in the industry for not supporting newer platforms and newer OS's, so either you don't upgrade or you have a several hundred (or thousand) dollar paper weight.
 
I like PreSonus' hardware and innovation.  Dollar for Dollar they have some great deals for the functionality.  However their driver support sucks.  I'd read somewhere that they outsource their driver support, which would explain why updates take forever, and often times don't work at all.
 
My long story with my relationship with the AudioBox 18x18VSL, goes back to buying it after talking with a PreSonus Rep.  I was really impressed with the Studio Live functionality, and the ability to get EQ, compression, and gating on every channel before recording the signal, that was huge!  Especially on my limited budget.  However it really sucked when I had to buy a new laptop and discovered their driver was incompatible with the newer Intel USB 3.0 ports.  Their advice to me was to plug it into a USB 2.0 port, the only problem being is my laptop had all USB 3.0 ports.  That was back in mid 2013, and they only recently resolved the issue.  I had since sold the unit and moved to a FocusRite Scarlet 18i20.  I love the mic-pre's on this, but to be honest I hate the layout of the thing compared to the PreSonus.  I hate having 2 inputs on the front and the remainder on the back, it just makes cabling more difficult and I don't like the look of it.  The PreSonus having all the inputs on the front was very convenient for me.  The bigger problem was not having the VSL effects, which FocusRite offers nothing like this on USB interfaces.
 
Since the problem was resolved with the VSL.  I bought another 18x18 VSL and use my FocusRite through ADAT.  However I worry about what kind of support it will have for Windows 10, since PreSonus is so bad about sustaining their older product lines.  And when I say "older", I mean stuff that was introduce 2-3 years ago.
 

I've just built a new PC. The X79 Sabertooth MOBO has an FW port. I have also added a PCI FW card. I plug in my Mackie Blackbird to either, and it's not even recognised. I've been trawling through pages of forums trying to find an answer. I've loaded the 8.1 legacy driver, but still nothing. I'm awaiting a response from Asus (MOBO manufacturer) to see if they have any suggestions regarding set up, or if there's something I haven't done.
 
As an experiment, I removed the PCI FW card an installed an ancient Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 card, because it has a FW port for connecting it's I/O box. I plug in the Blackbird to it and it does at least see it. Incredibly frustrating.
Could anyone on here who is successfully running FW on Windows 8.1 x64 please tell me what they did to get it going please, if they are using a card or plugging directly into their case or MOBO.
Really regretting going for 8.1 now. If I cant get this to work then I either go down the USB route, or uninstall 8.1 and go back to W7 x64.

TC Impact Twin still sounding and working above it's price point here.
 
Speaking of price and not being made of money, I can hardly be too mad in future years if I have to make a change after getting several past years out of a $300 audio interface. I got over 12 years out of a delta 1010 that I could still be using if I wanted. I also remember the price I paid for an ISA Card-D plus. Ouch.