Liquid Mix problems after moving Liquid Mix to firewire card

[James Steele]

I just installed an Firewire card in my Mac so that I could remove Liquid Mix from my Mac's internal FW bus and connect it to this card. (The reason is that I'm getting an external FW800 drive and I want it to be able to run at FW800 speeds).

So I connected the the Liquid Mix to the card, ran the Liquid Mix software and it seemed fine. Then loaded a DP project and it seemed okay to, right up until the part that the audio system became active and then the Liquid Mix hardware just locked up frozen. Any tracks that have Liquid Mix on the inserts won't play. About to start trying things but if anybody has some ideas, I'm open to them! Thanks!

[KEVORKIAN]

Do you have the very latest drivers installed for that firewire card?

Sounds like a driver issue to me.

[James Steele]

Don't know. It was a cheap card and only disc that came with it is for some video editing software. I thought these were just PCI cards and you just pop them in and that's it.

I did discover more though...

I opened a project that had no instances of LM and added an instant on a mono track and the Liquid Mix worked fine.

I then opened a track that had a couple of existing stereo instances of LM, and soon as the audio soudbites became active, LM froze.

What's interesting is that once this happens, resetting LM, will not get the LM software to see the unit, either will unplugging and re-plugging it. You need to reboot the Mac. I don't know why I can instantiate a instance, but an existing instance gives it troubles. I'm wondering if existing instances created when it was on a different FW bus would give it problems?

I could also have a cheap FW card with incompatible chipset. At this point I'm not sure what I'll do.

[newrigel]

I do believe they have a chart of recommended FW cards and the sonnet with the oxford chipset was recommended.
Man, if I can remember right, there was a FW downgrade to v2.2 or something like that for Tiger. I don't know about SL but I know my G5 gave me hell with my LM (even with the sonnet FW card) and I downgraded the FW driver and it stopped clicking and popping (but it never went away completely) and I ended up getting rid of it for another UAD card. I'm sorry to see you having ANY issues Jim with that LM but I loved mine... I just couldn't deal with the artifacts and I did everything known to man. There was even a time I had the developers on the line and the fixes were band-aids but the issues kept resurfacing... I was just asking too much out of that box! Hopefully, with the better FW drivers and specs of an Intel, you might get better results if you could just put the HD on the card instead. Have you tried putting the card in another PCI slot?

[James Steele]

Thanks for the help. I saw the PDF you're talking about for compatible PCI cards. Link is here:

http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/ ... bility.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well, what's interesting is while LM was attached to the card, I reopened the project with tracks that had been instantiated while LM was attached to the card and it was fine. However, opening the project with LM instances that had been created when LM was on the Mac internal FW bus did not work and froze it again.

So, I put LM back on the Mac's built in FW port, rebooted and it worked like a charm. Worked fine with the project with LM instances created while LM was on the card and all existing projects.

I haven't tried putting it in another slot yet. Currently according to System profiler it's as follows:

SLOT-2: Firewire card
SLOT-3: UAD-1
SLOT-4: MOTU PCI-424

I was under the impression that only one of the slots in my machine was PCI-X and that was slot 4 which I think is physically closest to the AGP slot???

I will try swapping the UAD and the Firewire and see if that helps perhaps?

[KEVORKIAN]

what's the brand of card?

[James Steele]

FYI I'm opening up the Mac now and actually slot 4 is physically the furthes from the graphics card and that's where my MOTU 424 card is. So somewhere ivheard that was the fastest slot on my machine. Hope that was right. I know if I move it I might have to recreate bundles and all that?

[James Steele]

what's the brand of card?

Hehe... some cheap card I got at OWC. Says "For BEST Ports Connection" on the box. Some no-name Chinese card. I got back on the Mac to check into the location of the PCI-X slot. Apple says it is indeed Slot 4 so my PCI-424X is in the right place. I'll swap the UAD and the FW card now and see if there's any love.

[KEVORKIAN]

Hehe... some cheap card I got at OWC. Says "For BEST Ports Connection" on the box. Some no-name Chinese card. I got back on the Mac to check into the location of the PCI-X slot. Apple says it is indeed Slot 4 so my PCI-424X is in the right place. I'll swap the UAD and the FW card now and see if there's any love.

Ahhh... ok... no new drivers for that then.

[James Steele]

I changed slots. No love. I think it's a chipset issue. It's funny though is that in the project that freezes it, I can open the LM AU plug-in and the meters dance an all that, but the track is not passing audio if there is a LM instance on it and the external hardware is frozen. I can only guess is the FW card is not compatible with Liquid Mix.

Now I need to decide if I want to bother with getting a compatible FW400 card or get an eSATA card for my external drive coming and keep the FW400 card on the internal Mac bus as is? Cheaper to get the FW400 card I would think, but don't know if how much for the compatible ones recommended by Focusrite. Ahhh... decisions, decisions...

[newrigel]

I stand corrected... it was the SIIG card I got for it and I still had clicks and artifacts (intermittently) but I also changed my FW driver to v2.2 if I can remember right... was a long time ago he he. You may just have to make presets of all the settings and re instantiate the LM in the older sessions... I know, some work but you may have no choice because those things do have a sound thats hard to part with. I have an SSL Duende that gives me some hell now and then and I love the sound of it too much to part with it... same goes with the LM.

[James Steele]

I stand corrected... it was the SIIG card I got for it and I still had clicks and artifacts (intermittently) but I also changed my FW driver to v2.2 if I can remember right... was a long time ago he he. You may just have to make presets of all the settings and re instantiate the LM in the older sessions... I know, some work but you may have no choice because those things do have a sound thats hard to part with. I have an SSL Duende that gives me some hell now and then and I love the sound of it too much to part with it... same goes with the LM.

Yeah, that's one approach I suppose. I could save presets and then reinstantiate. I may try that and see what happens. It's not that much work, because I don't have that many instances of LM. I'll try and see what happens. The pain is that the FW card doesn't come back online like it should until I restart the Mac!

[NazRat]

A couple of things to try . . . reset the open firmware on the G5 (the Cmd-Opt-O-F at startup then the reset commands), delete the DP audio unit info cache and let DP revalidate the plugs, and the one that finally cured miscellaneous LM problems for me - update to the latest MOTU device drivers dated 2-2-2010. I also would have the unit basically lock itself out, though not with the same symptoms as you. A hard reset of the LM would usually bring it back around though. That is gone with the new MOTU device drivers, but just as basic maintenance I do the other stuff when adding new hardware or updating DP.

[newrigel]

A couple of things to try . . . reset the open firmware on the G5 (the Cmd-Opt-O-F at startup then the reset commands), delete the DP audio unit info cache and let DP revalidate the plugs, and the one that finally cured miscellaneous LM problems for me - update to the latest MOTU device drivers dated 2-2-2010. I also would have the unit basically lock itself out, though not with the same symptoms as you. A hard reset of the LM would usually bring it back around though. That is gone with the new MOTU device drivers, but just as basic maintenance I do the other stuff when adding new hardware or updating DP.

Seems to me it's a path problem... it keeps looking for the LM on the internal FW bus. He could also try trashing the system caches (ONYX) and LM preferences.

[James Steele]

Hey thanks guys! Can't wait to try these suggestions. Might as well give it a shot!