• Registered: 2017-09-30
  • Posts: 11

Topic: Problem w/ UFX II USB

I've used a Fireface 800 for 12 years with never so much a hint of a glitch. Never in all that time did I ever have issues with playback or recording via a PCIe firewire interface.

So I thought I'd update/upgrade to a UFX II... and save a little since I don't really need the bandwidth of the UFX+.

However, since I've been using the UFXII... I'm experiencing random dropouts from just playing back jRiver stereo flac via the ASIO MADIface USB drivers, where I never in all the years of using the FF800 experienced any dropouts.

The audio will play back fine most of the time, but then doing something  like browsing the internet, or moving files will cause a momentary audio drop out, out of nowhere... that lasts a fraction of a second, and then resumes playing. Only to possibly momentarily drop out again a few minutes later.

It could very well be mouse movement interrupting or something similar. But like I said... same PC, same mouse, same software... I never ever experienced this problem using the Fireface firewire interface... which also used a PCIe connected firewire port.

Needless to say... I'm more than a little disappointed, as I always attributed never having problems in any scenario to the excellent driver support from RME for the FF800. So when firewire support for the new interfaces was dropped, and RME said they wrote the drivers to specifically not have the normal problems many other USB interfaces experienced... I believed it.

But it seems that the firewire interface was much more flawlessly interfaced than the USB interfaces are now.

Am I missing something? I'm using a PCIe USB3 interface, with only the UFX II on the card. The USB card is a high quality RocketU 1144D. I haven't had a chance to put the UFXII through a normal multitrack session yet... but I'm a little worried, since I'm getting a dropout with stereo playback sometimes that I never experienced with the firewire interface. I had hoped that the change to RME USB interface would be just as flawless as the firewire... but apparently not. I splurged for a higher priced interface from RME, but what should be the "better" interface in the UFX II  is not working as well as the old FF800.

I also have a Benchmark DAC2 DX I sometimes use (off while the UFX II is on), also running on the same system, also on a USB port... that never drops out in stereo play (so why does the UFX II?).

Any ideas? System specs:

Windows 10 Pro
i7 5930k @ 3.7 Ghz
32GB RAM
Samsung SSD OS and Project Drives on internal SATA3
Nothing else on the USB ports except iLok, Syncrosoft, and keboard/mouse... and they're on the motherboard equipped USB ports... not the dedicated PCIe RocketU 1144D port.

Thanks for any ideas or help.

  • Jeff
  • Jeff
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Your USB card is using the Asmedia chipset, this is incompatible to RME USB interfaces. Did you try the built-in ports on the motherboard?

Regards,
Jeff Petersen
Synthax Inc.

Jeff's Website

  • Registered: 2017-09-30
  • Posts: 11

Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Yes, I tried the built in ports. After playing for a about 5 minutes... the audio seemed to lock up, going on and off very rapidly. I had to reboot the PC to get it to stop, and I immediately changed it back to the PCIe card, as it had never had that particular problem on the PCIe USB card. Maybe I need to give it a chance to reboot a time or two on the motherboard USB to see if it clears up.

What USB card has a chipset that's considered compatible with the UFX II? I'd be glad to change it, if that's the problem.

It seems odd that the Benchmark DAC2 DX is compatible, but the RME is not.

  • Jeff
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Virtually any USB2 card will be fine. If you want USB3, that is where compatibility problems arise. The Sonnet USB3 card is known to work well, and the Pro version has a separate controller chip for each port so there will be no problem around sharing resources with other USB devices.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/alleg … 4port.html
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/alleg … 3pcie.html

Regards,
Jeff Petersen
Synthax Inc.

Jeff's Website

5 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2018-03-22 15:27:55)

  • ramses
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

I can confirm this, great cards, I have the Pro.
The drivers for this card under Win7 use a very efficient message signaled-based interrupts.
Unter Win10 no drivers shall be required, didnt look/check there yet, whether the Win10 drivers also use MSIs.

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

6 Reply by javahutaudio (edited by javahutaudio 2018-03-22 15:04:40)

  • Registered: 2017-09-30
  • Posts: 11

Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Update:

So... I changed to the Allegro Pro USB 3.0 PCIe. It is much less problematic than the RocketU 1144D. However, there are still the random dropouts while browsing the internet... and there are still times that the audio "locks up", i.e., at some point it starts toggling on/off quickly, and can't be fixed without disabling the UFX II and re-enabling in Device Manager or rebooting the PC. It does, however, happen much less often with the Allegro Pro PCIe than it did with the RocketU 1144D.

I will say, though, that for me, this is quite unexpected. In the 10+ years I used the Fireface 800 with a TI chipset PCIe card, I never had these problems. Never. I don't think in all that time I ever had to reboot the PC or toggle the driver on/off to fix ANY problem at all... because there was never an audio lock up or dropout... ever. I expected no less with the RME drivers for the UFX II USB. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There are still dropouts and lock ups with USB that NEVER occurred with the FF800 firewire interface.

Any other suggestions by anyone for finding a fix for this would be greatly appreciated. I gotta say, though, that even though I'm quite happy with the UFX II conversion, the stability of the USB interface is disappointing so far. I expected the zero problems I had in 10+ years with the FF800, and I expected the zero problems I have with the Benchmark DAC2 DX USB... and that's just not the case with the UFX II USB as it stands at the moment.

7 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2018-03-22 15:34:35)

  • ramses
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

You need to find out what driver is blocking your CPU ..

Or it is the Win10 problem that became known since a while (after 2 years!).

Please see this blog article where I tried to give a good overview about this:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … ing-EN-DE/

BTW .. which version of Win10 do you use exactly ?

Since Windows 10 is now "Windows as a Service" and instantly updated you need to deliver a build number to be more specific about what you use ...

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

8 Reply by javahutaudio (edited by javahutaudio 2018-03-22 19:53:28)

  • Registered: 2017-09-30
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

ramses wrote:

You need to find out what driver is blocking your CPU ..

Or it is the Win10 problem that became known since a while (after 2 years!).

Please see this blog article where I tried to give a good overview about this:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … ing-EN-DE/

BTW .. which version of Win10 do you use exactly ?

Since Windows 10 is now "Windows as a Service" and instantly updated you need to deliver a build number to be more specific about what you use ...

So I'm now using Win10 build 17127.rs4, as of an hour or two ago.

Thought everything was looking (sounding) good... until my mouse cursor skimmed over a text entry form on a forum, as it had just done a number of times prior, only this time it appeared to be the cause of the audio locking up and skipping in and out again.

While I would love to find out exactly what's causing these intermittent problems, my point kinda is, though, that 1) the Benchmark DAC2 DX is on USB... it doesn't exhibit any of these problems, and 2) all it took for the FF800 to work flawlessly from day one was to install the TI PCIe card and plug it in. No driver conflicts, no software conflicts, nothing... it just worked. Since the USB interface is supposed to work just as well as firewire, with no drawbacks that USB has sometimes been known for in the past... why isn't it?

But thanks for the info and help.

  • Registered: 2017-09-30
  • Posts: 11

Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

I'm back!

Finally found a setting that cures most, or possibly all, of the problems I was having with momentary audio dropouts, and stuttering lockups sometimes. It's just really odd, and wondering if anyone knows what this might indicate towards solving the REAL problem with the audio dropouts.

So after looking all over the internet, I came across quite a few posts indicating they could cure their USB audio momentary dropouts by enabling mouse cursor trails. And whadda ya know... it seems to totally resolve the USB audio dropouts I was experiencing with the UFXII. And that's great... but this doesn't seem to be the root cause of the problem in the first place. Why would enabling mouse pointer trails stop USB audio dropouts on Windows 10? I turned the trails back off, and the audio dropouts come back. Turn the mouse trails back on... fixes the audio dropout problem. What's going on here? Maybe someone has an idea? I don't mind turning on the mouse pointer trails (too much), as I set them to as short as possible, so barely even notice it. But it's rather odd that this seemingly unrelated setting fixes the USB audio dropouts problem. Anyone know what's going on with this?

Thanks.

  • Jeff
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Wow, that's a new one for me too. Thanks for coming back with that info. Do you have Nvidia gfx card?

Regards,
Jeff Petersen
Synthax Inc.

Jeff's Website

11 Reply by javahutaudio (edited by javahutaudio 2018-04-26 23:37:18)

  • Registered: 2017-09-30
  • Posts: 11

Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Jeff wrote:

Wow, that's a new one for me too. Thanks for coming back with that info. Do you have Nvidia gfx card?

Yes, I have a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. Does NVIDIA cause problems? I have had Radeon in the past. But that's what's so frustrating... when I had the FF800, I had NVIDIA, with a PCIe firewire card... never a single problem. Both USB and firewire on the PCI bus... you'd think you'd get the same performance.

Let me know if the NVIDIA is known for problems with RME's USB driver. I'll change the graphics card, too, if it'll help. What graphics are supposed to work well with RME's drivers?

Thanks.

12 Reply by MC

  • MC
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Switching off the mouse trail to reduce USB2 bandwidth problems with nVidia cards has been mentioned here by Timur several times.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

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13 Reply by javahutaudio (edited by javahutaudio 2018-04-27 12:21:20)

  • Registered: 2017-09-30
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

MC wrote:

Switching off the mouse trail to reduce USB2 bandwidth problems with nVidia cards has been mentioned here by Timur several times.

Except... it's NOT switching them off that solves the problem... it's switching them on that solves the problem. There must be an underlying problem that causes this that's not being considered. What is it?

And please tell me... ASmedia USB drivers cause problems, and now apparently nVidia graphics cards cause a problem... what graphics card does NOT cause a problem? I'm willing to switch to whatever works.

Still odd that none of these caused problems with the firewire interface, and none of them cause problems with a Benchmark DAC2 via USB. But the USB port is apparently much more sensitive to audio functions for the RME interface. Why build an interface around a USB connection if there are so many problems with it that can't be solved via the RME USB driver design?

14 Reply by MC

  • MC
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

Our hardware is low latency optimized, which also means the buffers reserved to cover USB bus dropouts are quite small. On the DAC that is not necessary at all, and we could change this with a firmare update, for example to double the current size.

But doing this needs a test system that fails, like yours, and we do not have such in our disposal.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2017-09-30
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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

MC wrote:

Our hardware is low latency optimized, which also means the buffers reserved to cover USB bus dropouts are quite small. On the DAC that is not necessary at all, and we could change this with a firmare update, for example to double the current size.

But doing this needs a test system that fails, like yours, and we do not have such in our disposal.

Respectfully, I don't see how this particular dropout problem is due to the low latency of the UFXII. If turning on mouse trails causes the dropouts to go away, it seems more likely there's a process causing the dropouts that is interrupted by the mouse trails being on... thus the audio dropouts stop. It doesn't really make sense that turning on mouse trails would cause the USB bandwidth to increase.

I'd still like to know what you recommend for graphics if, as you seem to indicate, nVidia can cause problems.

  • Registered: 2019-02-18
  • Posts: 2

Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

I have the same problem. And I'm using a iMac late 2013. I have reinstalled the macOS, reinstalled the driver, but it won't help.
I unplugged all the other usb devices, won't help.
It happened randomly, almost 50% when I boot up the computer. The only way I can escape the dropping outs is restart the computer, sometime it really helps.

17 Reply by MC

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Re: Problem w/ UFX II USB

You reinstalled which Mac OS? Driver version and firmware version of UFX II?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website