11 Troubleshooting
The FireWire Audiophile has been designed to give you high performance and
professional quality audio. It has been tested under a wide range of systems and
operating conditions. In the real world, however, there is a nearly infinite number of
possible operating scenarios, any of which could affect your system’s performance.
Much like owning an automobile, “your mileage may vary.” This section cannot begin to
cover all possible issues you may encounter . However, we want to give you some
suggestions on common problems you may experience.
One thing to avoid is connecting too many devices. The FireWire bus is a dependable,
high-speed, high-bandwidth protocol that is ideally suited for digital audio. Nevertheless,
it’s important to remember that audio and multimedia streaming places considerable
demands on your processor and the FireWire bus. Although it is theoretically possible to
chain many multiple FireWire devices in series, doing so may potentially degrade your
audio performance.
Generally, FireWire devices do not suffer from the IRQ conflicts sometimes encountered
with PCI cards. If you are having trouble getting audio into or out of your FireWire
Audiophile, please check the following.
If you have no sound:
•
Check to see if the FireWire Audiophile drivers are properly installed. In Windows
XP, go to the Control Panel and double-click the System icon (under Performance
and Maintenance if you’re in Category view). Select the Hardware tab and click the
Device Manager button. Click the plus sign (“+”) next to Sound, Video and Game
Controllers, and locate the FireWire Audiophile listing. If you see a question mark or
exclamation point next to it, or if you don’t see it listed, you may need to reinstall the
driver software.
•
Make sure your audio software has been set up to use the FireWire Audiophile.
Open your application’s audio settings page and check to see if the FireWire
Audiophile’s ASIO or WDM drivers have been selected.
•
If you’re certain the FireWire Audiophile is correctly installed and configured for your
audio software, check your signal path. Make sure your inputs are routed correctly by
verifying that your application is receiving audio signal. Make sure your outputs are
routed correctly so that your signal is sent to your headphones, amp and/or monitors.
•
Check your audio connections to make sure everything is plugged in correctly.
If you are trying to record a digital input to the FireWire Audiophile and have no sound:
•
Make sure your audio software is configured to receive digital input, and that the
input source is set as clock master.
If you are experiencing clicks and pops in your recordings:
•
Make sure your input levels are not too hot, as this can cause distortion and clipping.
Check the input level meters in your audio application.
•
If you are recording a digital input source, make sure the FireWire Audiophile’s sync
source, as well as the sync source in your audio software, are set to
external
.
•
You might want to try using a larger buffer size. Larger buffer sizes can increase
input latency time, but if you’re mixing, for example, this is not an issue.
Increasing the buffer size can be helpful, particularly in the case of older or
lower-powered systems.
