@Daned thanks for an amazing info.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Sep 30, 2018

I recommend Presonus Quantum for Windows 10. Fast and solid drivers. I wrote about it here:
https://audiosex.pro/threads/presonus-quantum-native-thunderbolt-windows-working.41053/

but of course you need a Thunderbolt port

 

Thanks for the heads up. That sucks ...Too bad you couldn't "try before you buy" hardware!

 

It seems it's a me2 thread lol
I could have tell you too. I have a 18i20 and honestly, it's not sooo bad, but it does worth the price nor the selling blabla about it.

 

I've heard a lot of bad things about setups with USB interfaces having clicks and pops &/or driver problems (not to mention conflicting drivers stealing too many CPU cycles and interrupting the audio flow), which is totally unacceptable in this day and age. These gadgets aren't Plug 'n' Play... they're Plug 'n' Pray! Many issues can be fixed by checking for said conflicting drivers (e.g. network &/or GeForce graphics) and replacing them then optimizing the system for audio.

Besides setting the system to "adjust for best performance of background services", setting the virtual memory to a fixed size and setting the system to "high performance" mode, the other thing is - Don't allow the computer to sleep or hibernate. They generally work a lot smoother when they're not reloading an old session back into memory from a page file. You're better off either leaving it on for longer periods (set it to eco performance when not in use), or shutting down & restarting a little more often. Ideally, have a computer dedicated to audio composition & recording and another one for general, day to day use.

Returning to the subject of consumer USB interfaces, I Never had any such issues with my PCI card (E-MU 1212m) on the operating system it was designed for and I could get latency down to 2ms!!! Unfortunately they never did drivers for it beyond Windows XP unless you had the PCIe card :'( None of the modern USB interfaces seem to be able to get close and only the really expensive ones can get down to around 9 or 10ms, from what I've seen! What can people actually recommend sub £350 that has stable drivers And very low latency?

 

I second everything you have said! But rest assured - you will not make many friends here if you keep that up! BTW - have you tried pcie drivers for your soundcard - they should work - the emu 0404 pci works with pcie version drivers on win7 and they are actually beta drivers for vista - in fact they seem to be the same for all pci emu cards!

 

Last edited: Sep 30, 2018

Firstly, hello!
Yes, I tried the Vista beta driver on Windows 7 with it, but it caused pops & crackles and possibly sometimes didn't load properly, if I recall.
But.. keep what up?

 

Last edited: Sep 30, 2018

I have been using Focusrite 18i8 for over 2 yrs in live situations averaging twice a week..........no problems. Solid as a rock. Until you investigate what was causing your problems, it seems unfair to shame the manufacturer when it could possibly be your computer or using a different driver. So, you just moved on? Did you talk with Focusrite and explain your problem? I rarely have "serious money", but if I do, I know how to get information about something I purchased. Glad your Lexicon is still working after all those years, but either you left out some information in your post, or you just decided it sucked and rushed to judgement, then made it public. Sorry Phloopy, just not understanding your process here. At least, good news about Lexicon though.

 

I think this may be one of the reasons people who can afford to, take the Apple route, because, with fewer variations of components and chipsets like we have in the PC world, things are a bit more likely to just.. work? (However, I digress)
I have read mixed things about a number of audio interface manufacturers. Some say they're brilliant, whereas others have had not such good experiences. But it's amazing anything works well when every system and setup is so different. I'm certainly going to plan my next build very carefully, once I have the money for a long-overdue upgrade *Ponders in contemplation...*

 

Audient seems to be popular in the midrange and RME is the gold standard for stability.

 

I've had some problem with my 18i20 2nd gen, but after tweeking some windows options (energy saving on usb ports, performance mode instead of balanced,...) it's much better, no more glitch & pop.
I must admit that my presonus iTwo didn't need any tweak to work fine with the same computer...

 

What really pissed me off about Focusrite was that you can't plug an electric guitar into the DI input of the Scarlett first gen without getting massive distortion. Had to turn the guitar volume down at least in half to not get any clipping, and I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of complaints about it but of course Focusrite never mentioned this glaring problem on their product page, or recalled the product. In fact they boast about their "award winning" preamps. These guys apparently don't test their products at all, and care nothing about honesty.

They fixed the problem with the 2nd gen, but there's a lot of complaints about the drivers with this one... in any case I'm done with them for the near future.

 

Did you tried MixControl 1.10b3 and firmware version 1056 ? You have to manually update device using ScarlettDfu. All clicks and pops including crashes finished for my 1st gen 18i20

 

It's not uncommon for devices to struggle with coming out of sleep mode. Disconnect the USB before waking PC, and then connect device once PC is awoke. Hassle, but saves crashing etc.

 

@mithat - thanks, but yes I keep up to date with their beta drivers and firmware updates regularly - they do get better, but overall the performance is still unreliable on my machine. Perhaps it's just the combination of other computer parts and peripherals that are the actual root cause for the instability, but there are so many threads on the internet (here too) that are rife with complaints about focusrite's drivers in general.

I will say, if the general consensus was that their drivers were rock solid, the focusrite line would be phenomenal, especially for the price as per Olymoon's comment.

I'll try that if I can remember to do this upon each time I choose sleep mode. Wish I didn't have to worry about this extra step on the day to day though. Thanks for the tip anyway

 

Being to smart and honest and direct etc . i don't have that card so I cannot help more. Hello to you too! and as so happens some old members have just packed up and left (or maybe you are them?) so new blood is welcomed; but keep it down to gear and you will be fine - start with music knowledge and you won't

 

Yes, I find it a little hard to believe Focusrite is so bad when it is so common among professionals. Numerous things can be causing clicks and pops. USB power settings tend to cause driver crashes or the driver not being recognized from sleep. Nvidia's recent drivers are ALL fucked. You need to manually disable all the telemetry and special backdoor Nvidia "experience" services to drop DPC latency back down to acceptable levels. Google how to do that. Then there's Microsoft's cancerous trash like Defender, Whoretana etc., which are constantly scanning your realtime processes and logging things. I really despise Microsoft, I'm not going to be nice. You have to turn off a lot of services in Windows to get it to run smoothly. If you run Windows 10 I suggest Enterprise, because not even Pro let's you shut off all those things anymore. Then there's power management. Turn off all the USB powersaving features and run the CPU at 100%. You know why you can? Because Intel CPUs (and AMD too I assume) have their own internal power management which means even though the speed is 100% it isn't using any extra wattage. The speed doesn't matter in modern CPUs, it's CPU usage that determines how much power is consumed. So throttling down to 25% does nothing but add DPC latency and possibly cracks and pops from Windows' power management overhead instructing the CPU after every thread completion to throttle down! There's more, but that depends on your hardware, BIOS settings, storage, drivers, updates, emulators, viruses, etc.

 

I recently added a second-hand Edirol UA-1000 that I got for $100 (!) to my Zoom UAC-8, and I'm surprised how good it sounds and how well the drivers still work under WIn 7 and MacOS 10.12. Man, it can even double as an 8 channel mixer controlled by the editor software from Roland! And it has word clock, ADAT i/o, opto+coax digital i/o and four inputs with phantom power.
Even though it's 14 years old, it's a rock-solid 24bit/96kHz interface.
Latency is very, very low on a current machine, and I wonder what else an expensive RME interface would add to that.

 

What kind of DAW do you use on windows (Zoom UAC-8). The reason I ask is because I had the same interface on Ableton Windows 10 and it was unstable and crashed all the time. I had to sell it
Made a video of it here:

My new interface Presonus Qauntum is stable as a rock on same DAW and same Windows

 

Ableton 9 on MacOS 10.11 and a few DAWs on iPad via USB CCK3.
I also work under Win 7 but only with Alesis io/2 and E-Mu 0404 USB.
I've heard about the driver issues that gave the UAC series a bad start under Windows, but I hope they're fixed now.
It's now the third time in the past few weeks that I hear of driver issues under Windows where for the same product, the Mac driver is stable. I would have guessed that driver development under Win is easier and there's more support available, but surprisingly the opposite seems to be true...

However, I might test the UAC under Win soon - out of plain curiosity.