• Registered: 2019-03-18
  • Posts: 14

Topic: Excessive Static Fireface UFX II

Hello,

I may be having an issue with my Fireface UFX II and hopefully someone can shed some light on my problem.  I am getting a good bit of static with a buffer setting of 128.  It gets horrible at 64 and starts to clear at 256.  I have maybe 18 tracks going with all but 5 muted with a couple plugins per track.  I am running at 96K and the driver is MADIface usb.

I spent some time troubleshooting the system and this is what I have concluded so far.  I used a different computer with the same project loaded and then used my Babyface Pro.  I used the same cables, same instrument, ect.  All I did was move the cables from the Fireface UFX to the Babyface and the static all but cleared.  I ran a buffer setting of 128 on the Babyface and it was totally clear.  When I dropped the buffer down to 96, it was also clear with maybe some slight static.  It was much much better than the signal I was getting from the Fireface UFX.  Everything was the same except for the Babyface, the drivers and settings.  The driver I have loaded for the Babyface was Fireface USB.

I rechecked to make sure I had the correct drivers loaded for each product and I tried to adjust the settings on the Fireface UFX and nothing worked.

Hopefully someone can give me some insight on this issue and that it is not something going on with the Fireface UFX.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
John

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 12,041

Re: Excessive Static Fireface UFX II

Am wondering that the static you are talking about should depend on ASIO buffer size.

Ensure, that
- the internal sound card of PC is disabled in BIOS and nothing is connected to the PC's or laptops soundcard
- you use the RME ASIO driver for testing

Keep the buffersize for the time being where the static is most significant for your ears.
Do you hear the static also via phones ? Then you can use phones for troubleshooting.
Otherwise it's related to your monitors...

Disconnect every cable to your recording interface piece by piece.
Listen/observe whether it makes a difference in static.
Try to identify where the static comes from.

Do you still hear the static,
- if nothing is connected anymore to your recording interface, only the USB connection to the PC ?
- If you remove the USB cable from PC and have only phones connected ?

If the root cause for static can not be isolated by this, could you kindly post a video,
what kind of static you hear and how it changes with ASIO buffersize ?

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

3 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 24,823

Re: Excessive Static Fireface UFX II

The 'static' is dropouts or crackling due to samples lossed (audio system overload or USB problems). Does the Settings dialog list USB errors? Did you try the Resplendence Latency Monitor tool to check your computer?

Note that the BF Pro has much less channels than  the UFX II. Also the audio is transmitted in a different way. The UFX II uses the default audio standard, isochronous streaming. Your computer seems to have a problem with that right now.

On the other hand you expect too low values, it seems. 256 at 96 kHz = 128 at 48 kHz. For lots of channels and a medium CPU load that is fully ok. Are you aware that at double speed the buffers must be doubled as well to buffer the same 'time', and to give the same latency?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2019-03-18
  • Posts: 14

Re: Excessive Static Fireface UFX II

Thanks gentlemen, I really do appreciate your responses.  Considering I am a hobbyist and still fairly new to the game, I learned quite a bit from your answers.  I believe Matthias is on the right track here.

Using just the usb connection and headphones, I was able to see that with the BF pro I had a clean signal at 128 and with the UFX II I had a clean signal at 256.  At 256 the UFX II worked fine.  I may have been asking too much and I didn't realize that I would have to double the buffer with a sample rate of 96khz.

I searched and read up a little on isochronous and it makes more sense to me what the difference between the BF pro and the UFX II is in my case.  Matthias had a response on another thread and it cleared up why there was a difference.  I realize his answer was a response to another question entirely but the idea should be the same in that with ischronous streaming all channels are transmitting regardless of if you are using them.

"Another way to lower the risk is to reduce the number of transferred channels. Unfortunately this is not possible with USB isochronous streaming, all channels are always transmitted, even if they are not used. As you do only a stereo playback, a more simple device with less channels (ADI-2 DAC, Babyface etc) might have continued to work in that moment."

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I guess I could safely say then that with the UFX II, I could have something active on all 30 inputs at 48Khz, a buffer of 128 with minimal plugins and all should be rocking.  It should also be similar if I had 5 active channels at the same rate and buffer size since all channels are transmitting anyway.

Anyway, again, I appreciate your responses and it got me to researching something new again.

John

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 12,041

Re: Excessive Static Fireface UFX II

On a well set up system, then the streaming of all channels doesn't matter that much.
I can drive for example  two UFX+ and an ADI-2 Pro FS, channel count: 194 IN, 196 OUT.

I am using a big Cubase project for testing whats possible in terms of audio playback without audio loss
with only 32 sample ASIO buffer size.
It's good for me to have something like this for testing to see whether something changed on my system
performance wise over time or i.e. to compare different Windows settings and versions.

I am able to playback a large Cubase project with this setup with
- 400 tracks
- 1 EQ and 1 compressor per track
- with 32 samples ASIO buffer size
- @44.1/96 kHz without audio loss.

https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

If you setup your system right component/performance wise, use good BIOS and system settings, then it should be none of an issue to use an UFX II with "only" 30 channels.

Be aware of, that 32 samples ASIO buffersize is nothing that you use every day in production. The lower the ASIO buffersize the higher the CPU load because the CPU will be more busy to get all the audio packets in time.

For "every day use" you will use higher buffersizes like 128, 256 or even more to have more safety that no audio loss happens.

If you record only with Mics then you can even use much higher values as latency in this case does not really matter.

If you connect a guitar to an Instr Input and play over an VSTi (virtual guitar amp in your DAW) then you need lower ASIO buffer settings because you need then a RTL (round trip latency) of under 10ms to be able to play in time.
With more delay than approx 12ms you start immediately to slow down while playing.
Some drummer are even more pickier about RTL.
With the excellent RME driver this means for i.e. an UFX, UFX II, UFX+, that you you can use ASIO buffersizes up to 128 and for me personally 256 is still possible to play through such a virtual amp.

My system setup as an example for components, here: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … mponenten/

If you are not familiar with hardware selection, BIOS and Windows finetuning, then there is a possibility to buy a turnkey system for audio. For people with IT background it's an interesting journey to put together a high performance silent system suitable for recording, video editing, gaming, office work, virtualization.

One of the most important factors is to
- get good hardware
- performant CPU with high number of cores but also high single thread performance over approx 3.5 GHz
- avoid bad drivers
- avoid bad add-on tools from mainboard vendor like blower control, BIOS updater, etc (they usually slow down performance)
- turning off energy saving in the BIOS
- try to keep the CPU stable on one clock rate (frequent clock changes also slow down performance a little)
- high performance profile in Windows
- Windows optimized for background tasks
- Disabling CPU core parking
- Disabling auto update of Windows and Programs/Tools
And, to prevent randum startup of programs while recording:
- Disabling some automatic windows background tasks
- Disabling some Windows Services

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13