Sony Vaio + Ricoh firewire card + Echo Audiofire 4

So after 6 years I've finally upgraded my laptop to a brand spanking new Sony Vaio. It's an absolute beast of a machine and is quantifiably (is that a word ?) over 10 times faster than my last machine in terms of CPU and GPU performance.

HOWEVER, I can't for the life of me get my Echo Audiofire to work with it. I'm running a 64bit version of Windows 7 Professional and there's dedicated drivers made by Echo that support the OS which installed fine. The problem is that I can only get either a fraction of a second of sound out of it, or no sound at all and I can't for the life of me find out why ....

From research it appears as if the Ricoh firewire controller is kinda problematic, though the issues seem to be mainly just the occasional dropouts on some devices (though usually clear up if you switch to a legacy firewire device driver). However I can't see any reference to it failing to output anything at all so I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong (The last OS I ever used was XP so I'm at least a couple of generations behind!). Anyone had any luck with this card with this OS (and/or on a new Vaio machine). I tried disabling the internal sound device but no luck, it sounds like it starts to output but then gets freaked out by something and then locks up.

Heeeeyyyylp !

i thought firewire was being phased out these days?

i know my mate us still having to use 64bit XP because its the only way he can use his old edirol firewire

Firewire is well and alive on OSX.

I am looking forward to a Thunderbolt soundcard eventually.

Back on topic - Have you tried alternate drivers such as asio4all? Have you tried messing with your firewire's controller to make sure its on a dedicated bus of whater IO you are using? Have you tried to make sure it has negotiated to 400 or 800 depending on the requirements of the sound card? Have you tried upping your buffer to like 128 samples?

  On 2/16/2012 at 4:37 PM, acid1 said:

Have you tried alternate drivers such as asio4all?

Oooh actually that's a bloody good call - I might try that !

  On 2/16/2012 at 4:37 PM, acid1 said:

Have you tried messing with your firewire's controller to make sure its on a dedicated bus of whater IO you are using? Have you tried to make sure it has negotiated to 400 or 800 depending on the requirements of the sound card?

These two things I'm not 100% sure how I'd go about doing - any sites you can recommend ?

  On 2/16/2012 at 4:37 PM, acid1 said:

Have you tried upping your buffer to like 128 samples?

This however I have tried - I even shifted it up to 1024 but aside from about half a second of audio, that's all I managed to get ...

Cheers for your help man !

  On 2/16/2012 at 4:37 PM, acid1 said:

Firewire is well and alive on OSX.

  On 2/16/2012 at 6:45 PM, BCM said:

  On 2/16/2012 at 4:37 PM, acid1 said:

Firewire is well and alive on OSX.

 

 

 

i thought they did away with the firewire ports on macbooks now?

I thought things had gone SATA2/3 or whatever now?

dunno, probably...i got a new imac a few months ago though and it's got firewire800... still got my old macbook too so am all set!