Firewire Expresscard for Windows 8.1

[colejustesen]

Hey guys, I might be picking up a Steinberg MR816CSX interface locally and am needing to add a Firewire port to my laptop. I have been looking for a TI chipset based Expresscard, as Steinberg recommends TI for this device. To get this to play nicely in Windows, do you have any recommendations on which Expresscard would be ideal...

I found these on Amazon.com that use TI for the chipset:
http://www.amazon.com/SIIG-Firewire-Car ... press+card
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Expr ... roduct_top

Any suggestions???

Cole

[newholland]

i've had two siig cards that worked real well with interfaces-- one similar to that card for a laptop, but the bigger version. they've done me really well and were both glitch free. the other one i have is pci-e, and it's a la cie.

[colejustesen]

Awesome! I will order the Siig card then! Thanks newholland

Cole

[newholland]

Awesome! I will order the Siig card then! Thanks newholland

Cole

right on-- good luck! have fun with the steinberg too.. need a full report

[colejustesen]

I will definitely let you know what I think... I ordered the Siig card just a minute ago. That Steinberg has caught my eye! I am eager to see how this will work under the Linux Studio OS too... I really like Ardour, but alas it isn't available on Windows

Cole

[colejustesen]

I picked up the interface tonight and now waiting on the firewire card to show up (thanks to Amazon Prime) it will only be a couple of days! The current issue I have to figure out is where I am going to put it... I built a monitor/screen stand that has rack rails attached and I only made it 9.5" deep due to desk size limitations with my laptop (also the ART Pro MPA II is only 8.xx" deep that I am waiting to receive). The MR816csx is 12" deep. I am needing to get creative with this

Cole

[colejustesen]

Got confirmation, my FireWire card shipped today, so I should have it tomorrow! Then I can get this sucker installed, drivers updated, and my MR816csx up and running

Cole

[_ej_]

Thats awesome Cole.

Btw, tracking drums has me sold on the Art

[colejustesen]

Thats awesome Cole.

Btw, tracking drums has me sold on the Art

That is good to hear! I still haven't received mine yet... I ordered that one off of reverb.com 23 days ago and it still hasn't shown up. The other one (a demo unit) I ordered in lieu of that one was supposed to ship 24 hours after payment, but it didn't. I emailed them up Monday and this was overlooked somehow; upon further research the unit I ordered was defective and hence not shipped. They are taking care of me though, ART is shipping new products to them this next Monday and I will get one of those units. So now I am getting a new Pro MPA II for a used price I also ordered a Pro VLA II, which should be here next Monday I really think that the two will play nicely together!

I am pretty stoked to have some other gear to record with, and with my last mic purchase (KEL Audio Song Sparrow) I look forward to being able to track some solid acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and vocals!

Cole

[colejustesen]

So I got the FireWire card today and have been trying to optimize my laptop to work its best with this connection... Seriously, it is a bitch! I am getting higher latency with the FireWire ExpressCard than I did with my USB 2.0 Scarlett... I have looked a bunch of different sites to help me increase computer processing power, but I just don't think my i7-Q720 processor is up to the challenge. I am half tempted to order a new desktop with a more modern CPU... Hell even the new AMD FX chips would stomp this CPU

I tried running my guitar directly in, but between the high latency and what sounds like a ground loop hum, I am able to get a recorded sound but nowhere to the quality of the Scarlett 18i8. I have a feeling though that using a mic will be a different story.

Can any of you give me some tips???? I would love to take advantage of this interface, but right now I am having a hard time believing that FireWire was considered to be the better of the two connections

Cole

[_ej_]

an i7 should be able to handle anything dude.

[colejustesen]

My i7 is a 1st generation, and honestly it is slow as a snail! If you look at benchmark scores, you can see just how poor this CPU is. I was blinded by "i7" when I bought my laptop, but in all actuality it is slow. There are newer generation i3 processors faster than this.

Anyway, I found that that the newest firewire driver for Windows 8.1 is poor. I had to install a legacy driver to get the performance I was expecting.

Cole

[newholland]

gah.. man, sorry to hear you're running into problems.. but glad you seem to've worked out the latency issue with a driver, anyhow.. i'd make sure youre on ASIO too-- IIRC that made a significant speed difference to my machine as well.

now.. SONICALLY.. there shouldn't be a difference other than the preamps with the connection.. firewire can move a lot more tracks concurrently without bogging down.. and an i7 should seriously have PLENTY of bandwidth given enough ram!

[colejustesen]

I have done some more things this morning to help with the latency, and it seems to have stabilized a lot more. I still don't know what is going on with the ground loop hum that I am getting when I try to use my guitar direct in... Using a mic on my guitar cab yields fantastic results! After a period of getting things setup, I can now truly say that I am happy with my results!

I am still half tempted to get a desktop PC for recording instead of a laptop, just because of ease of access to interface. The way I have it setup now, is that it is mounted in a monitor/rack case I built that is sitting directly behind my laptop... makes it kind of hard to access when I need to.

Cole

[colejustesen]

Latest Update: I thought I had installed the legacy driver, but I found out that it was not the legacy driver. I got that installed officially and now I can run this at super low buffer rates without any issue! This interace is now beyond stable!!!



Finally, I have this working as it should! Getting this stabilized and optimizing the way my laptop processes information has greatly improved the recording experience! I was starting to consider just getting the UR824 and selling this, but that thought is gone!

Cole

[newholland]

right on! that's awesome-- any progress on the ground hum?

i suspect you oughta be able to get down well below 10ms for latency if you tweak it right-- i run about 7 most times, even with upwards of 16 tracks full of vst's and never run into troubles bogging down.

[colejustesen]

No, that ground loop is still there... I was hoping maybe the driver issue would fix it, but it didn't. I really need to figure that out... It sounds like when the noise you get touching the jack of a hot guitar cable, just a very loud hum.

Cole

[newholland]

No, that ground loop is still there... I was hoping maybe the driver issue would fix it, but it didn't. I really need to figure that out... It sounds like when the noise you get touching the jack of a hot guitar cable, just a very loud hum.

Cole

have you tried multiple cables and guitars? i figure you probably did.. only thing i could think is that there's some sorta grounding on the 1/4 input inside the critter that isn't connected well if it isn't your cabling/guitar... :/

that'd kinda suck, but might fall under warranty claims. i'd call steinberg !

[colejustesen]

I have tried a couple different cables, different guitars. What is interesting is that I didn't hear the ground loop hum when I used my preamp out of the Ultra Plus going direct into the same input. I have reservations about whether the unit is faulty... I have had electrical noise issues in pedals, which I think is due to my house's electric wiring.

I haven't tried an XLR through it yet, which I plan on doing sometime this weekend.

Cole