Cian and Merak,
Here's a little snapshot of what I've been dealing with regarding the driver and 8i6 Scarlett. I went through all of the driver fiasco and blue screens. I'm not actually a Calkwalk user, but created an account here to share my Scarlett experience which has yet to be resolved.
I purchased the unit from Sweetwater and pretty much exhausted tech support options there. They've done everything they can do. I've not had the opportunity to even try the mic pres and line inputs because I've been doing so much focus on the midi issues I've encountered.
I may very well be the one person having midi issues that tech support referenced when speaking to Cian. Although I haven't directly spoken with Focusrite's tech support, I have relayed and updated the following to them through e-mail.
As far as audio performance, it sounds and works great along the lines of audio output. I will have to take time to record through the inputs which I hadn't done yet. I'm trusting that they work fine.
Primary issue: I bought this so that I can trigger my Superior Drummer sample kits realtime via MIDI with my Roland V-Drums through my laptop and split that midi information out to record on my primary DAW.
For the brief time that it actually works, the latency at 3 ms works great. The problem is that the driver completely drops out and I lose all sound and midi after about 3 to 5 minutes. The USB connection LED indicates that it's connected, even though the driver is completely dropped out.
The interesting part is that when I go into device manager of Cubse it sees the driver but still doesn't make a connection even after I re-select it.
The only way I can get it to work again as two completely unplugged power cord to the unit, because you can't just pull the USB or else it will blue screen (a lesson I've already learned). I also have to shut down the software. Pulling the power cord to the unit pretty much makes pulling the USB cable a moot point. I've pulled the USB after pulling the power, and I've left the USB in as well, and it doesn't seem to matter.
After plugging the power back in and restarting my software and attempting to record midi it has about 3 to 10 minutes of life before it blows everything out again. By that I mean it loses total functionality and sound. Basically repeating the same issue.
What really sucks is that I purchased it specifically so that I can trigger the samples realtime with low latency while recording midi to my primarily DAW during a full session. So far, mission un-accomplished!!!
I know that it has got to be either hardware related, firmware related, or driver related. I hope it's just the latter. I'm still waiting to hear back from Focusrite's tech support team.
I really just wanted to share my experience on this form to see if anyone else is having the same issues regardless of the application being used.
Again, when I'm just using audio with no midi connections, it works great. I tested playback for 5 hours straight and by letting a project play repeatedly on a loop, running internal samplers and audio tracks with no problems.
For my purposes, this unit is completely useless until I can get midi working without issue. I love the way it sounds, but for all practical purposes I've already got top industry converters coming out my ears.
I will watch this post as I am trying to get this resolved. If things get resolved through my interactions with Focusrite, I will be sure to post my findings here.
System specs: HP Pavilion dv7-4285dx
Windows 7 Home premium
i5 2.53 CPU
6 GB RAM
Cubase 5.53 (Latest Update)
Cheers!