Wow, what a glowing review. 8-/

For some reason, the headphonejack on the front of my computer which hooks up to my SB Audigy soundcard plays those mouse/harddrive noises too. Luckily my RME PCI card doesn't do this.
Do you have a PCI firewire card that you could move to a different slot? Maybe it is picking up interference by being too close to your video card or some junk.
I think it is a bit extreme to blame your problem on Windows PC's or RME until you check some things out. You can't expect EVERY soundcard to work with EVERY piece of crap computer some company threw together.

I don't think moving the firewire card would do anything because the signal comming from the firewire card is digital not analog like your headphone.
Furthermore it happears to be link to access to the hard drive.

have you downloaded the latest drivers?

and also try turning off windows sounds.... most of them are 32 khz, so when they play they throw the word-clock out on your interface.

Yes of course, I downloaded the lastest drivers and yes all windows sounds have always be turned off.
And yes I have tried to "tune" windows as suggested on other site with the result that I have now a squeletton bone windows that can basically do audio (actuallly, can't do audio!) and pretty much that's it.

After a week of trying pretty much everything, I have come to pinpoint to some kind of bus overload create by my video card and audio since I can create the problem simply by moving windows around and opening, resizing, closing application windows.

Somehow a 2.8 cpu and 2 gig of ram is not enough to handle the display and the audio !

A marked improvement came when I removed the "clear type" display setting effect and used 16 bits color instead of 32 bits color.

Everything else tried was useless.

thats so weird...
i was really thinking about buying one to...
hmmm.....
might hold off for a bit, let us know how you go.

good luck, rme make so great stuff, its a pity this is happining.

what clock are you using?
are you using the internal?
do you have a digital mixer connected or other tool that uses a clock?

THe only thing connected to my computer is the rme fireface (set to auto-sync) and the yamaha p90 keyboard (but not being used)
The mixer used it the TotalMix software included with the rem fireface
The clocks automatically adjust to 44.1 when windows media player plays

RMEfireface

I have the same experience with the Fireface, no sound go to the PC laptop and the preamp dont sound terrible, I return the unit to the store

have you tried it on other computers?
sometimes the problem is on the firewire card!
try e-mailing rme support with what happens and your computer gear...
they may say something is producing a conflict!

Do you have a video card or is the video built into your motherboard? if it's built in, you might try picking up a cheap low-end video card (like the ATI Radeon 9200) to take over the video tasks. Built-in video often shares resources with Windows (stealing your precious RAM and CPU cycles) and can just mess things up in general

I have a very high-end video card: the matrox parhelia hr256 and a ultra-high resolution monitor (viewsonic vp2290b running 3960 x 2400 at 41 hz !).

So this might be part of the problem as the data involved in refreshing the screen is typically 7x more than what is required for a typical 1280 x 1024 screen.

It would be a good idea to try eveything on a typical card and monitor but none is availabe right now to me. However I do have a laptop (with a slower processor) running a 1920 x 1200 screen and I will try the fireface on it to confirm it is (or is not) a video bandwith problem.

However I will only be able to do this in a few days from now but I will let you know about the result.

Meanwhile if anybody can suggest anything that could put audio in a higher priority than the display or if anybody know how to change anything on bus or have a burst of genial ideas to solve the problem, please let me know

Time for the latest news on my problem

Well it seems (cross my fingers...) that my problem is under control now with change in the video settings. I also limited the bandwidth to analog 1-8 which permits me to get back the highly desired "clear type" display special effect. (I initially misinterpreted the bandwidth setting as some form of limiting of bandwith passing through those channels, while it actually means limiting the bandwith TO those channels (to the EXCLUSION of others).

I must amend what I said about RME support. They list a few email address and the initial one I used took a long time for reply leading me to write that I didn't receive any reply (which was true at the time I wrote that). However another one I used proved much better, with knowledgeable helpful replies within 24 hrs, which is excellent and thoroughly appreciated (thanks Daniel).

So far my fireface is working with windows. At this point I have only tried it playing back windows media player and record through a microphone (the sound was excellent and actually I never thought my voice could sound like that! ... no, it is not what you think!). I have yet to try now the rest and will let you know if problems returns.

I am much less frustrated now than when I started this thread...

You can find on RME's Website:
- Some firewire chipsets don't work good with the Fireface (or the MOTU for example).
- If you have XP SP2, you need a patch
- there is a user forum. Some people from RME are answering every days.

I've heard that often networkcard are making trouble wth firewire devices.

I had a much more positive situation, albeit I'm using it on a Mac. It's funny that this thing was designed around Windows platform yet I've heard so much grief!

When I first got it (1 week ago), I hooked it up to my Powerbook with horrible results. I couldn't flash it and I was getting pops and clicks like mad. I was frustrated and, like musicguy, I was ready to return it. It wasn't until I installed it on my G4 desktop and reflashed it with the update that I got it to work. And thank God I did....this thing is amazing. The I/O is unmatched with anything in it's price range and signal routing is spectacular! The pre's are good for what they are, better than any AI's that I've heard. The only thing I wish it had was attenuation on the rear inputs.

I also e-mailed tech support. They responded within 24 hours and suggested many different solutions. Even though I got it working on my own, it was nice to have a polite and non-demeaning tech answer my concerns.

Just thought I'd share this and spare RME's name a bit!

I just want to add....
i know it is maddening when something doesnt work out of the box...
but its also a pleasure when it does...
most of us dont rant about the good experiences because we are busy making music.
My fireface with my g4 laptop has been better than I ever expected.
Im completely happy with it. Have had no problems at all since day one. I also hear on the forums that there are lots of happy users as well on Windows platforms using cubase,nuendo,samplitude etc

musicguy wrote: I have a very high-end video card: the matrox parhelia hr256 and a ultra-high resolution monitor (viewsonic vp2290b running 3960 x 2400 at 41 hz !).

dear god, 41hz ? that is terrible. i think anything lower than 60hz refresh and you get that weird blinking effect

I have an rme Fireface 800, works perfectly on my pc and mac.

Actually its indenspensible to me now... shelved my hardware mixers and use it as a digital mixer.

The problems mentioned are not due to the Fireface.

I should mention, I'm using the FW 400 port. Haven't tried the FW800 port. But considering the fireface800 is named after it, can't imagine it wouldn't work fine.

musicguy wrote: I purchase a rme fireface 800
I use it in a pc environment (2.8 cpu, 2gig memory)

What pc make did you use? Dell, Compaq...?