• Registered: 2016-07-23
  • Posts: 4

Topic: Brand new UFX II - Constant sound drops, screeching, and Fifo Errors

Hi I'm a bit upset,

I've been dealing with a problem where my brand new RME Fireface UFX II keeps dropping audio, some blips of distortion here and there, stuttering, and screeching during playback after a few minutes. Looking at the diagnostics, I keep getting Fifo errors and will get number codes like 30, 60 , and right now it's at 270.

Before you ask, I did do a lot of searching. My native USB controllers on my motherboard are Intel Based aka Intel C610 on an X99 motherboard where I have two seperate controllers. I'm plugged into the USB 3.0 port and not the USB 3.1 port. All ports return the same outcome. This is a Windows 10 x64 system.

Just for safekeeping, I JUST purchased a Sonnet Pro PCIe card which has 4 separate USB 3.0 controllers on it. I have nothing but the RME plugged into it. After about 2 minutes of playback, I got the same exact result...you can imagine how frustrated I am now.

I then tried to diagnose things around it maybe. I took out all USB based devices accept the mouse and keyboard (and even tried without the mouse and keyboard while playing the session), same thing. I'm running Cubase Pro 8 so I tried with and without ASIO Guard. Same thing...

The last thing I should note is that I am running the latest NVIDIA drivers, I'm using an GTX 1080 because I occasionally do video on this system as well. All drivers are updated. What also should be mentioned as well is that I do have the Intel I7 6800K OCed to 4.0, but I think I removed the RAM overclock. Granted, those settings shouldn't have an effect on USB performance especially when I'm now running the RME through a dedicated controller away from the motherboard controllers.

It's weird because the same session plays absolutely fine when I was using ASIO4All as a substitute playing through an MBOX till I got this hardware.

Desperately need help fixing this else I may have no choice but to send this back.

2 Reply by Timur Born (edited by Timur Born 2018-05-08 00:55:13)

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Brand new UFX II - Constant sound drops, screeching, and Fifo Errors

Try to disable XHCI handoff in BIOS/UEFI and turn on "Mouse Trails" in Windows' mouse settings. X99 + NVidia causes USB issues than can be worked around via these steps. Report back if it works.

Alternatively switch to the Microsoft VGA driver via Device-Manager to see if it helps.

  • Registered: 2016-07-23
  • Posts: 4

Re: Brand new UFX II - Constant sound drops, screeching, and Fifo Errors

Ok,

So far doing both disabling XHCI handoff and Mouse Trails seemed to have worked. I ran a 7:30 project with about 275 tracks twice without any USB failures. Is there anyway to disable mouse hardware acceleration without the annoying mouse trails though? I know this is no longer an RME problem now but an NVIDIA problem so I will be searching around, or at least a way to replace the mouse pointer with trails on but hide trails...or something. Just wondering if you have a solution directly.

Thanks again for the help. I very much trust RME hardware. I had a Fireface 800 for 10 years before the capacitors bloated and was stuck with an MBOX for a while, so I very much trust their hardware. I just find it odd that this is such an issue, with NVIDIA drivers none the less...

Anyways thanks. Looks like I have some hack digging to do.

4 Reply by XTREEMMAK (edited by XTREEMMAK 2018-05-08 06:14:30)

  • Registered: 2016-07-23
  • Posts: 4

Re: Brand new UFX II - Constant sound drops, screeching, and Fifo Errors

Another question,

Does this same problem persist with the UFX+ variant?

UPDATE: Just enabled XHCI again and no problems as long as I have mouse trails turned on. If you know a registry hack that keeps it enabled but prevents trail images from showing, that would be great help. That, or a .bat script to enable/disable trails when I need to use the Fireface (definitely not ideal...).

UPDATE 2: Found an entry that said to set the Mouse Trail value to -1 in the registry. I had originally tested with 1.5 to see if it accepts any value as an override. Seems -1 was a better choice as I've run multiple tests with a live session, and let a loop of songs play for at least an hour. Returned ZERO errors big_smile. I'll keep close watch on stability but I'm sure with a success to fail ratio like that, it's pretty passable atm.

5 Reply by Timur Born (edited by Timur Born 2018-05-08 10:26:30)

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Brand new UFX II - Constant sound drops, screeching, and Fifo Errors

Yes, -1 is the correct value. If I remember correctly then a simple logoff/logon should switch the pointer once you change the value in the registry.

The reason why this helps is because it disables GPU hardware accelleration of the mouse pointer and the NVidia hardware is the culprit here. The added benefit is that the pointer will now adhere to "Night Mode" or "F.Lux" kind of white point changes. Some software (usually games) may not show a pointer, though.

My old GTX 780 does not suffer from this using the same hardware and driver combination, neither did an AMD card that I tested, while the 1080 (and 980 I think) caused the problems in my tests. For some reason the more recent NVidia cards cause USB 3 errors when GPU hardware accelleration is used on (some?) X99 boards. The same GTX 1080 based card worked in my AMD Ryzen based rig without USB dropouts.

I would keep XHCI handoff disabled, because this also solves dropout issues on X99 + NVidia. These may just manifest in other software where the mouse pointer workaround alone does not work. XHCI handoff enabled means that the BIOS/UEFI handles the  USB 3.0 control, disabled means that Windows gets full control.