I had BSOD on W7 x64 when testing firewire soundcards.

The Impact Twin from TC electronics and WDM drivers did that when ever I pressed Echo on an audio input. Every time within a second.

ASIO went fine.

Reaper worked fine both ASIO and WDM so Sonar did something when activating audio inputs that's for sure.

Testing a couple of firewire interfaces I gave up on the idéa of firewire alltogether. To much cpu wasted for just keeping soundcard up. I never got under 7% total cpu on a i7 860 cpu(20% on one core). 4 different firewire cards tested and a couple of different cables.

Firewire on PC= NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

lfm


I had BSOD on W7 x64 when testing firewire soundcards.

The Impact Twin from TC electronics and WDM drivers did that when ever I pressed Echo on an audio input. Every time within a second.

ASIO went fine.

Reaper worked fine both ASIO and WDM so Sonar did something when activating audio inputs that's for sure.

Testing a couple of firewire interfaces I gave up on the idéa of firewire alltogether. To much cpu wasted for just keeping soundcard up. I never got under 7% total cpu on a i7 860 cpu(20% on one core). 4 different firewire cards tested and a couple of different cables.

Firewire on PC= NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm running firewire on my PC with my MOTU just fine.  it depends on the soundcard drivers.

The last time I had an issue with spontaneous reboots it was a dust-clogged fan on the power supply, causing it to overheat. If you keep your computer on the floor and haven't looked back there in a while, best take a peek. Once those little fans get clogged to where they slow down or stop turning altogether, they must be replaced. In many cases, that means replacing the entire power supply.

Also while you're back there with your vacuum cleaner don't forget the air intake vents along the bottom of the case, too.

Beagle

lfm


I had BSOD on W7 x64 when testing firewire soundcards.

The Impact Twin from TC electronics and WDM drivers did that when ever I pressed Echo on an audio input. Every time within a second.

ASIO went fine.

Reaper worked fine both ASIO and WDM so Sonar did something when activating audio inputs that's for sure.

Testing a couple of firewire interfaces I gave up on the idéa of firewire alltogether. To much cpu wasted for just keeping soundcard up. I never got under 7% total cpu on a i7 860 cpu(20% on one core). 4 different firewire cards tested and a couple of different cables.

Firewire on PC= NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm running firewire on my PC with my MOTU just fine.  it depends on the soundcard drivers.

Well, I got it to run but there were too many things I just hated about firewire. If two major brands fail to make decent drivers then something is wrong for one. Focusrite Saffire Pro40 ran just fine, with Sonar as well. Impact Twin had a lot of issues with Sonar and transport, I had to start transport 2-3 times before it eventually ran.

Connectors are really bad design on firewire. Just a slight bend towards the wall from the table suddenly made audio crack up. Connectors type network cables are much better design. I never had such issues with network cables. Firewire have these circuit board long fingers that very easily loose connection.

And the cpu thingy, and special chips in computer for interface cards etc. Tweaking settings like hell, in bios, in windows.

Why bother with poor technical design?

I got an RME internal card with zero cpu waste and work like a clock. No technical issues of any type. Just a lot of time to make recordings and all the cpu can be used for Sonar and plugins.

If to try external interfaces again I think USB has developed more over the years and developers has put a lot of effort into USB. Firewire seems to be forgotten and is disappearing from market.

Firewire seems to be forgotten and is disappearing from market.

Yes, Firewire probably will disappear, but not for another 20 years. By then, its advantage of greater CPU efficiency will have become moot. But for today, it's still viable and I'd have no qualms about buying another FW interface. Aside from more rugged connectors and wider availability, USB doesn't really offer any technical advantage over Firewire.

At any rate, it's unlikely the OP's problem has anything to do with his audio interface.

bitflipper

Firewire seems to be forgotten and is disappearing from market.

Yes, Firewire probably will disappear, but not for another 20 years. By then, its advantage of greater CPU efficiency will have become moot. But for today, it's still viable and I'd have no qualms about buying another FW interface. Aside from more rugged connectors and wider availability, USB doesn't really offer any technical advantage over Firewire.

At any rate, it's unlikely the OP's problem has anything to do with his audio interface.

It has to be something concerning kernel drivers. Graphics card or soundcard is my guess.

My old daw, an with XP 2.8G(P4 with HT) had this kind of sudden BSOD when running firewire stuff last spring( I tested my new daw and my former at the same time). It was very spontaneous, I just needed soundcard active and could work in any app.

An XP SP did this, and then MS has new SP out and reduced normal F400 Mhz firewire down to 100 Mhz and then it worked.

There is an article at MS about this. They had a fix to turn it back to 400 Mhz if you absolutely needed that but they did not recommend it. That says a lot about how firewire is treated in PC, they set down speed for 400Mhz to 100Mhz because XP cannot handle it obviously.

So I would not rule out firewire card in computer or interface or drivers or servicepacks.

Since firewire often share irq with diskcontroller it could be related to that just by coincidence.

I would at least borrow and test an USB interface and see if the same thing occurs. Would be a start to narrow it

down.

I think USB has an advantage being built into mobo. Not much firewire is there from start anymore. That's an advantage.

But I think USB has as much cpu overhead as firewire still, so there's not advantage. I was about to test RME new babyface but has not got around to it since I got the RME internal cards and is never going to leave that technology.

AS for OP question, I would also check if computer vendor has updated chipset drivers or bios firmware.

Hi guys, just an update.
 
BSOD disappeared for about a week, then since yesterday  went back to back immediately at 6 or 8 consecutive startups (just after Windows boot). Then ok, then again today. I opened the desktop for a check and realized a ''seek'' on the optical drive (blu-ray writer) immediately after boot-up triggered that BSOD.
 
I disconnected that drive and (cross my fingers): this is the fifth startup and... no blue screen (yet).   So hopefully this is the problem. What I am worried about though is when I got this machine a few months ago, I had another optical drive (a DVD) which I had moved from my old machine (so I had 2 opticals).  And there was a freezing problem when I tried to use it, so I removed it.  I am wondering if this is the drive itself... or something the mobo does with it (the drive I removed was installed in another machine with no glitch at all...)

lanstrad


Hi guys, just an update.
 
BSOD disappeared for about a week, then since yesterday  went back to back immediately at 6 or 8 consecutive startups (just after Windows boot). Then ok, then again today. I opened the desktop for a check and realized a ''seek'' on the optical drive (blu-ray writer) immediately after boot-up triggered that BSOD.
 
I disconnected that drive and (cross my fingers): this is the fifth startup and... no blue screen (yet).   So hopefully this is the problem. What I am worried about though is when I got this machine a few months ago, I had another optical drive (a DVD) which I had moved from my old machine (so I had 2 opticals).  And there was a freezing problem when I tried to use it, so I removed it.  I am wondering if this is the drive itself... or something the mobo does with it (the drive I removed was installed in another machine with no glitch at all...)

When I tested firewire the controller card shared irq with disk drive controller. This was when pci-express type of firewire card was installed. And for some reason my newer computer could not set this, it was fixed for that pci-x1 slot. If you have other card, I bought normal pci cards as well to test what runs the best.

So make a check which irq your BD/DVD uses and see if any conflict. A conflict might even be shown in devices list if os finds it. Anyway you can find out through which hardware it's used.

 

When I tested firewire the controller card shared irq with disk drive controller. This was when pci-express type of firewire card was installed. And for some reason my newer computer could not set this, it was fixed for that pci-x1 slot. If you have other card, I bought normal pci cards as well to test what runs the best.

So make a check which irq your BD/DVD uses and see if any conflict. A conflict might even be shown in devices list if os finds it. Anyway you can find out through which hardware it's used.

Wow... Thanks for this. I have selected that FW card based on serious recommendations (Avid website, RME forums). If this is the case, I have no clue what to do...  Must add then when BSOD happened these last 2 days, the RME unit was not even under function - but I guess the FW card would load anyway, right ?  As I don't see myself replacing that card (it is so accurate), I would see nothing else but to get an external drive that would be connected just when needed.... But BD-RW external are certainly still quite expensive...
Thanks, I will try to see.
Rob

lanstrad

 

When I tested firewire the controller card shared irq with disk drive controller. This was when pci-express type of firewire card was installed. And for some reason my newer computer could not set this, it was fixed for that pci-x1 slot. If you have other card, I bought normal pci cards as well to test what runs the best.

So make a check which irq your BD/DVD uses and see if any conflict. A conflict might even be shown in devices list if os finds it. Anyway you can find out through which hardware it's used.

Wow... Thanks for this. I have selected that FW card based on serious recommendations (Avid website, RME forums). If this is the case, I have no clue what to do...  Must add then when BSOD happened these last 2 days, the RME unit was not even under function - but I guess the FW card would load anyway, right ?  As I don't see myself replacing that card (it is so accurate), I would see nothing else but to get an external drive that would be connected just when needed.... But BD-RW external are certainly still quite expensive...
Thanks, I will try to see.
Rob

They are very helpful at RME so ask them if their driver loads anything when not finding the soundcard unit. All drivers must load very shortly as I see it to see if hardware is connected and up or not, this under os boot process.

I would still have a look at IRQ for BD/DVD and see if conflict with anything else.