I just got Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP for a steal price (33 USD) and I am wondering about buying a FW PCIe card
I did some research and I know that TI chipset is the top choice but TI cards are very expensive here and the only chipset that I could buy is VIA, is there any VIA chipset that is confirmed to work with Focusrite Saffire Pro xx?
Some forums said VT6315N is confirmed to be working, can someone verify that?

 

Last edited: Dec 20, 2023

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207546925-Saffire-FireWire-port-compatibility

 

buy them used if you can

 

some guys asked for 38usd which is over the price of the interface Lmfao, and that's the used price. I guess I have to dip my fingers into Chinese listings

 

38? thats cheap
good luck waiting and hoping for a Chinese miracle

 

I found one for 20usd

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2023

I had a Texas Instruments (TI) card that was super basic, cost me about £15 off eBay from some mass produced Chinese type of seller, and had 2 firewire ports and worked perfectly fine once I'd ironed out the glitches.

My post from 2016 about using firewire when officially unsupported (to get a Focusrite Liquid Mix working in WIndows 10/11 in my case) may help you out.

[SOLVED] Focusrite Liquid Mix working on Windows 10 x64 | AudioSEX - Professional Audio Forum

Spoiler: FULL POST FOR YOU

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!

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: Dec 21, 2023

UPD: So the interface decided to finally give up, turn on via FW power like normal but no hardware was detected (the FW light didn't light up). I did plug my VIA (VT6315N) FW card into my other test "bench" windows xp pc and it also has the same issue, no FW light, no device detected

I did try my other interface (TC konnekt 6) and it did show up as other devices in Device manager, installed the barebone driver (I extracted from the installer cus it didn't want to install) and everything sounded normal.

Oh well, I might buy and try the other Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 another time (it's cheap AF)

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2024

here are my pc specs:

FW driver is default from windows
TPM Disable