[SOLVED] Focusrite Liquid Mix working on Windows 10 x64

Discussion in 'Computer Hardware' started by Bunford, May 9, 2016.

  1. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    EDIT: Solved and look at post #18 for solution to get Liquid Mix to work fully on 64 bit Windows 10 with any 64 bit DAW as a 64 bit plugin.

    Has anybody had any luck with this?

    I love how the Liquid Mix sounds and the EQs and compressors are outstanding in my opinion. However, I am having some issues with it on my Windows 10 machine.

    I load first plugin and it works flawlessly with perfect sync between the plugin and hardware. However, when i open a second instance on any track i get an error saying the hardware cannot be detected and is disconnected and will need to be reset. I then get glitching and need to delete the second instance, then if i unplug and re-plug the firewire cable it resets and works again, but only on the first plugin again. Again, if i try to open a second it goes around in circles.

    The second instance brings up a warning that says:

    "WARNING: No Liquid Mix Hardware has been detected. Please check that Liquid Mix is connected to the Computer and try again"

    When i click OK (only option) it then resets the plugin before saying:

    "LM Hardware has been disconnected or a bus reset has occurred. Please check your connection and allow Liquid Mix to restart. If the hardware fails to reconnect automatically you may want to force another reset by holding 'Save' + 'Load' + 'Go Back' on the hardware. If problems persist, please close and reopen your Liquid Mix session."

    I then click "OK" (only option again) but have two plugins called "Plugin Number 01" with the first plugin the only one reacting to anything and second plugin window just sits there with no signal going through it.

    I have a firewire card in my desktop dedicated to the Liquid Mix, though it is a VIA chipset and I'm wondering whether a Texas Instruments (TI) chipset may resolve it?!?!


     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2016
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  3. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    Still can't find a workaround for this. Anyone?
     
  4. DKB

    DKB Producer

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    Hers a link to the focusrite beta site you may find a beta version of the software that works better for you . I had to sell my liquid mix I couldn't get it to work past OS X 10.5 was a shame I liked it a lot , it's really good eq

    http://beta.focusrite.com
     
  5. Death Thash Doom

    Death Thash Doom Platinum Record

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    Just posting to say hello to a fellow LiquidMix user and enthusiast, I'm still using it as much as when I first bought it Bunford, I was extremely disappointed that whatever the deal was between Focusrite and Sintefex Audio didn't go further than the LiquidChannel and Liquid Microphone Pre amps, I know I am able to go direct to Sintefex to buy their own gear now which is all well and good but I felt/feel that the collaboration between an already established, stalwart of professional audio gear from big name commercial studio through to the home/project studio was the better way and it was extremely well implemented, I wish I knew exactly what happened!?! I'm still using Windows 7 and have no plans/desire to update to Windows 10 anytime soon. I personally always buy the Texas Instruments FireWire Card (the IEEE1349 (IIRC the FireWire 400 model has an 'a' suffix on the end whilst the 800 model has a 'b' suffix on the end, If that helps speed up your search). Really hope that you are able to find the solution to get it running as it ought to do

    All the best your way from a fellow Liquid lover and to all as always

    Dean
     
  6. Death Thash Doom

    Death Thash Doom Platinum Record

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    Just posting to say hello to a fellow LiquidMix user and enthusiast, I'm still using it as much as when I first bought it Bunford, I was extremely disappointed that whatever the deal was between Focusrite and Sintefex Audio didn't go further than the LiquidChannel and Liquid Microphone Pre amps, I know I am able to go direct to Sintefex to buy their own gear now which is all well and good but I felt/feel that the collaboration between an already established, stalwart of professional audio gear from big name commercial studio through to the home/project studio was the better way and it was extremely well implemented, I wish I knew exactly what happened!?! I'm still using Windows 7 and have no plans/desire to update to Windows 10 anytime soon. I personally always buy the Texas Instruments FireWire Card (the IEEE1349 (IIRC the FireWire 400 model has an 'a' suffix on the end whilst the 800 model has a 'b' suffix on the end, If that helps speed up your search). Really hope that you are able to find the solution to get it running as it ought to do

    All the best your way from a fellow Liquid lover and to all as always

    Dean
     
  7. Death Thash Doom

    Death Thash Doom Platinum Record

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    Just posting to say hello to a fellow LiquidMix user and enthusiast, I'm still using it as much as when I first bought it Bunford, I was extremely disappointed that whatever the deal was between Focusrite and Sintefex Audio didn't go further than the LiquidChannel and Liquid Microphone Pre amps, I know I am able to go direct to Sintefex to buy their own gear now which is all well and good but I felt/feel that the collaboration between an already established, stalwart of professional audio gear from big name commercial studio through to the home/project studio was the better way and it was extremely well implemented, I wish I knew exactly what happened!?! I'm still using Windows 7 and have no plans/desire to update to Windows 10 anytime soon. I personally always buy the Texas Instruments FireWire Card (the IEEE1349, IIRC the FireWire 400 model has an 'a' suffix on the end whilst the 800 model has a 'b' suffix on the end, If that helps speed up your search). Really hope that you are able to find the solution to get it running as it ought to do, I have no idea whether it's the FireWire chipset or some other compatibility, I've never had problems with TI's FW cards nor any of their components for use in DIY guitar pedals...etc. So I just stick to what I know, It's worked well enough for me over the years.

    All the best your way from a fellow Liquid lover and to all as always

    Dean
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2016
  8. coolbeanz

    coolbeanz Platinum Record

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    Liquid Mix was discontinued before there was a windows 10. support stopped around 2010-2011.

    It may simply be a compatibility issue. :dunno:
     
  9. Who Me

    Who Me Producer

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    Are you guys using it on 64 bit windows?

    Not used my Liquid Mix since I went to 64bit, couldn't find a way to get it to behave, no matter what I tried.

    It's probably going on ebay very soon tbh...
     
  10. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    It does sound great on the one instance i can get running fine and I would happily use it as my go to tool if i could get it working!
     
  11. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    Yeah. It was discontinuesd in 2011 and Focusrite have told me they provide support for 2 years after discontinuations, meaning they stopped supporting in 2013 some time. There was obviously Windows 8 then, which has largely the same architecture as Windows 10, and it works on Windows 8 and 8.1 using the legacy drivers. It also works on Windows 10, but only for one instance. Each new instance seems to reset the firewire connection for some reason, which is what i'm trying to work out. Focusrite support provided me with the below, which leads to me to be inclined that some people are using it successfully using this process on Windows 10:

    "The Liquid Mix was discontinued in 2011 and company policy is to continue supporting products until they have been discontinued for two years. As Windows 10 was released 4 years after the Liquid Mix was discontinued we have not tested the hardware or software with Windows 10 at all, and there will be no further development of the Liquid Mix drivers or software.

    The reason that the Liquid Mix will not work with Windows 10 is that requires the Windows legacy firewire driver which is not part of the Windows 10 architecture. You can download a Legacy firewire driver for Windows 8, and though there is no specific Windows 10 version available you can try downloading the Legacy driver for Windows 8 onto your Windows 10 system.

    If you are able to successfully install the Legacy firewire driver then you'll need to ensure that you are running a 32bit DAW or use a bridging app such as jBridge to wrap the Liquid Mix software so it appears as a 64bit plug in within a 64bit DAW.

    Obviously this has not been tested at all so I cannot guarantee that this will work, but I hope this is an adequate explanation as to why the Liquid Mix doesn't work immediately with Windows 10 and some useful guidelines for getting it to work should you choose to attempt to.

    Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.
    "

    Then, once tried and it failed i got:

    "Unfortunately this set up is completely untested as the Liquid Mix is not supported on Windows 10 at all, so I am unable offer any further suggestions to get this to work better. It is interesting to hear that you have been able to get the Liquid Mix software to open at all!

    Apologies for the inconvenience, please let me know if you ever require any other assistance.
    "
     
  12. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    Yeah, i'm using 64 bit Windows. It seems to work on 64 Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 though, so i think it shouldn;t have issues related to it being a 32 or 64 bit Windows.
     
  13. Who Me

    Who Me Producer

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    How are you running it on 64 bit....through jbridge, 32 bit DAW, or another way....?
     
  14. Cav Emp

    Cav Emp Audiosexual

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    Might be a silly question but, have you tried running it in compatibility mode for Win 7?

    Mackie stopped making drivers for my interface at Windows 7. When I tried to run the installer on Windows 10 some time ago it gave me an error message about how there's no support for my OS. Then I ran it in compatibility mode for 7 and everything has worked fine since.
     
  15. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    Using jBridge to bridge 32 plugin to 64 bit.
     
  16. banaan_j

    banaan_j Noisemaker

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    Back in the day of the powercore, my powercore worked more stable on an alternative firewire driver by thesycon. You might want to try it. I think you can still download them from here: *edit the link a gave you was to some malware driver download program or something..
    Anyway, thesycon used to make an alternative firewire driver till 2015, but they took it off their site..
    *edit 2: In windows 7 there was a regular firewire driver and a legacy one, one worked and one didn't. Did you try this?
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2016
  17. banaan_j

    banaan_j Noisemaker

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  18. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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  19. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    Best Answer
    SOLUTION!!!!!!

    EDIT (26/03/2017): I recently reinstalled Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, version 1607 (build 14393.969). In reinstalling Liquid Mix after the install, I personally did not need to install the legacy driver so could skip step 6 below. However, I cannot verify if this is an oddity or whether the latest Windows build means you don't need the legacy firewire driver.

    I have also tested this in Studio One 3.3.4 and Ableton 9.7.1 and it works fine, so should work in the latest build of any other DAW too.

    EDIT (08/04/2017): I have just updated to the latest Windows 10 Pro 64 bit, version 1703 (build 15063.13), also known as the Creators Update. This reset a few things and broke the Liquid Mix. I needed to carry out the step to disable signed drivers again, reinstall the Liquid Mix drivers and then the Liquid Mix device was detected properly instead of being under 'other devices'. I also needed to unplug the device and reconnect for the PC to pick it up properly. Once this was done, it then worked as it did previously, i.e. flawlessly and tested in Studio One 3.3.4 and Ableton 9.7.1.

    EDIT (08/04/2017 - 2): I have been having issues in that the device doesn't always appear in device manager and seems to randomly drop, even without powering down the PC. Going into Device Manager, right clicking my firewire interface to update driver and change it to the Legacy driver seems to have fixed this and it is now staying connected at all times and working fine.


    Here it is for anyone wanting to get one of these to work on Windows 10 with 64 bit DAWs, with full 1-to-1 control from the hardware over all plugin instances.

    1. Uninstall all Liquid Mix stuff from your machine if you have installed it and unplug the hardware controller. Use something like Uninstaller Pro or Revo Uninstaller if possibly to delete registry entries etc too.

    2. Go here and download the legacy firewire drivers for Windows 8.1, but don't install yet.

    3. Go to Start > Settings > Update & security > Recovery > Advanced startup > Restart now

    4. Now to disable the driver signature requirements. When the blue screen appears, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup settings > Restart

    5. On startup press F7 or number 7 to select the options 7) Disable driver signature enforcement. Your computer will now startup as usual, just without the driver signature enforcement feature enabled.

    6. At this point, once back into your computer, install the legacy firewire drivers by double clicking the .msu file you downloaded in step 2. It will install them in C:\Program Files (x86)\1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy). Go there, into the x64_driver folder, right click on Legacy1394.inf and select install. The legacy drivers are now installed.

    7. Now right click on your Start button and select device manager. Find your firewire interface under IEEE 1394 host controllers and right click and choose Update driver software. Now choose Browse my computer for driver software, then Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer and then choose 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy) and click next to replace the existing driver with the legacy version.

    8. Now, go to Focusrite website here and download Liquid Mix 3.0.exe and ALL the emulation files for 44.1, 48, 88.2 and 96kHz. It's important to use all emulation to guarantee it to work faultlessly, though it may work without all of them.

    9. Once downloaded, select the .exe for all Liquid Mix installers, right click, choose properties and change the compatability to Windows XP SP3 and tick to run as administrator. Then install Liquid Mix 3.0.exe, which will also install the 32 bit plugins for you.

    10. Halfway through installing it will ask you to connect the device. Do so and click next to finish installer. It may sometimes require a bit of a pause to register the device before allowing you to click next. Then, once the main software is installed, install all the emulation files.

    11. As in step 7, get into your device manager. Check to see if your Liquid Mix is recognised. It should show up with a white icon and some orange inside it (under Display adapters and above Human Interface Devices on mine). The drop down will show the device with a black software device symbol and question mark bubble next to it. You can ignore this and all is normal. If it has shown up like this skip to 13, if not go to 12.

    12. If it hasn't showed up like this, click the drop down arrows to show devices until you find the unknown device (usually under IEEE 1394 host controllers or Software devices). Once found, right click and choose Update driver software. Now choose Browse my computer for driver software, then choose the Browse button and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Focusrite Liquid Mix\Driver and click ok. Click next to finish installing the device driver. It should now show up as explained in step 11.

    13. Now you have it all installed and it will work as it is in Reaper by pointing to the location of the 32 it plugins in the location you selected in step 9.

    14. For other 64 bit DAWs, I recommend using jBridge. Create the bridge as you usually would. Open up your 64 bit DAW of choice and load the plugin. It will now work, but not fully yet. Click on jBridge's settings and check the box that says Run in existing auxhost (per plugin only, requires plugin restart). Close the settings window, remove the loaded plugin and close your DAW. Now re-open your DAW and load the plugin. It should now let you run multiple instances without a problem.

    15. That's it! Now, with everyone selling these for pennies on eBay because nobody thinks they work on Windows 10, go grab yourself an amazing sounding bargain! :wink:

    FAQ:
    • I have tested in Reaper 5.25, Ableton 9.6.2, Cubase Pro 8.5.10, Studio One 3.3.1 and Harrison Mixbus 32C 3.6.0 and it works in all of them
    • I am using a Texas Instruments (TI) PCIe firewire interface card
    • I only have the Liquid Mix plugged into that card
    • I do have other firewire devices, but on a different VIA bus, being my MOTU 828Mk2 FW
    • I am using Windows 10 Pro 64 bit build 1607 (14393.187); you can check your build by pressing Windows Key + R and then type in winver and hit enter. If you need latest build, go to Windows and download their Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant tool and update
    AND

    as a bonus if you read it this far, here is the real name units to put in you snapshots folder. Just unzip the attachment, open up Windows Explorer, search for %APPDATA%, which will open your roaming data folder, go down to Liquid Mix and then put the unzipped files in there. In the plugin, click on the disk icon in top right and select EQ or compressor, and choose the named unit you want (don't choose "full" as that only gives you option of default snapshot presets).
     
    Last edited: Apr 8, 2017
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  20. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    Forgot to add, if you try this and it works, grateful if you could leave a message here just so it can verify that this fix works.

    Cheers :wink:
     
  21. MargeryMusic

    MargeryMusic Noisemaker

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    Man o Man...... Dude thank you so much for this. Just bought a LM off eBay and spent about an hour trying to get it to work with windows 10. I almost returned it but then made a google search and landed on this forum. You are a life savior man. Got it to work on Reaper 5 and Studio One (with Jbridge). Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. LOL I owned a LM years ago but didn't have much use for it due to the overwhelming amount of outboard gear i had at the time. Now that i have a smaller hybrid set up I needed a Varimu Emulation. LM is a steal....... Focusrite should update their site with your solution for Windows 10. Their site is worthless when it comes to Liquidmix help


    Cheers,
     
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