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I've had a Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 (the oft forgotten model) for years, and when I was doing gig recording out in the field, I always promised I'd pick up a further 8 channels if I ever saw one cheap. On my travels I spotted a Behringer ADA8000 today for the bargain price of £50 so picked it up. I hooked a mic up to each channel and got it to peak on the unit, so I know all the inputs are at least taking signal. However, I plugged it in to my Focusrite and I can't see the device in the software, it just remains greyed out. * The SaffirePRO software is, in a word, shite. It's not been updated since 2009 and I'm not convinced it's playing well with my OSX Mavericks. It's sluggish as hell and in the 5 minutes I got to test, even at full whack my SM58 input on Ch 1 wasn't coming in too hot even with the input fader dragged up and the gain on the unit maxed out. Does anyone know if the Pro 40 software works? Or any other 3rd party one perhaps? * I'm just using a bog standard TOSLink cable, I'm presuming this is fine for ADAT connections as well as S/PDIF? The output on the ADA is glowing and I'm getting the light coming through the cable, so I know that much 'works' at least. I've never used the ADAT IN on the interface before either. Is there any way of doing a quick check to see if the ADAT Out is working? I don't have to rush luckily as there's 6 months guarantee on the unit, but I'm curious as to where the problem might lie. I'll probably never use the drat thing now, but it's nice to know if I do a gig in the future I won't have to take a group of 6 drum channels down into a single input. If I can get the bloody thing to work properly... e: And typically after a long post, all resolved. After trying the setup again, a handy pop up told me the settings on the device/software didn't match and one of them was a 'Disable ADATs to Minimise CPU Usage' option I had no idea about, and hadn't seen any posts reference. All working now it seems! (SaffirePRO is still terrible, unusable garbage mind...) EL BROMANCE fucked around with this message at 19:55 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 19:10
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Yeah the software. The Pro 40 UI looks about 10x better than the Saffire Pro Control does.  I'm on my phone so I can't see how bit that pic is, but it's about 300px wide on my 27" 2560px display. It lags, you can't make out whether some buttons are on or off, can only see 8 channels at a time, rotary markings are awful. It's just an ugly mess. Interface has always done me fine, although I've never done anything particularly complicated. Nice bit of kit.
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May 22, 2014 00:54
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Has anyone got any success/failure stories with firewire-era Focusrite hardware and modern macOS installs? I bought a Saffire Pro 14 which arrived the other day, and not getting any joy. I've got the Catalina appoved drivers installed and I'm getting a positive result when running kextstate | grep "Saffire" which is good, but I'm getting the dreaded 'No Hardware Connected' logo and no FW light on the interface (power/locked both coming up). I have it connected to a 2012 Mac Min via an FW800 to 6pin cable, and have tried another cable to the same result. It seems a lot of things can behind this lack of handshake which really doesn't help, but I'm not seeing much from people in the last year or so trying these things. I have a spare external HDD so I could try a fresh install of a rolled back OS to that, but I'm not holding out much luck right now. I dug out a Vista era Windows laptop to test via the 4pin FW port on that and getting the same result. I've messaged the seller to see if it came out of a working rig, or if it had been put aside and hadn't been tested since it was last used.
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May 23, 2020 18:18
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Yeah, I had a Saffire Pro 26 back years ago (the full length rack unit, I think they then named another product the same thing just to confuse) and I remember the software was always an rear end an needed a dance. I tried a whole bunch of reboots yesterday, the one thing I don't think I tried is having the PSU connected and rebooting with that to keep the power running at all times rather than waiting for the bus to providing it. I spent a few hours last night trying to get it to work so it should've been sufficiently warmed up, but I'll give it another whirl tonight. I'll also use Mojave as my testbed OS if it gets to that point, thanks!
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May 23, 2020 19:43
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Speaking of plugging and unplugging, I see the warnings about plugging a firewire cable into something while the machine is running, but is this genuinely a cause for concern on something running as expected? I'm guessing it's a 'covering our asses' thing, as if it was really something you absolutely should be following at all times the interface I was looking at would at least having a power button and not just be on all the time. I don't use firewire a ton, especially the last 5 years, but I don't think I've ever cold connected things then booted up regardless of what it was.
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May 23, 2020 21:57
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