Sydney Posted May 13, 2013 Report Share Posted May 13, 2013 Have just installed two seperate shows, both comprise two edge-blended HD displays and six channels of audio. The audio is an uncompressed, extensible WAV. The show is 55 minutes long and is repeated in the timeline for continous playback for six to eight hours during exhibition opening times. About once or twice a day the audio disappears, usually after a few hours of running. The picture continues running. There's no consistent pattern to the exact time this happens, its unpredictable. We have to restart the show to bring the audio back. The display PC is connected to an Echo AudioFire 12 via a PCIe Firewire 400 card (without onboard power). In turn the AudioFire outputs six analogue audio outputs to our sound system. We've ruled out the obvious such as PC overheating and errors in the timeline, so things are staring to point to a possible issue with the Firewire breakout. Anybody had similar issues, or any thoughts?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Dannert Posted May 14, 2013 Report Share Posted May 14, 2013 Why no onboard power? The manual states: If you have AudioFire 8, AudioFire Pre8 or AudioFire 12, plug the power cable firmly into the interface and a power socket, and then turn on the interface by pressing the power button. If you have AudioFire 2 or AudioFire 4 and your computer’s FireWire port has a 6-pin connector, your AudioFire can be powered directly through FireWire. No external power supply is needed. http://files.echoaudio.com/manuals/audiofire_windows_manual_v2.2.pdf I would suspect that the FireWire power is not enough to power the the device. /jonas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sydney Posted May 15, 2013 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2013 Hi Jonas, the Echo AudioFire 12 units for both installations are connected to mains power. Its the internal Firewire 400 PCIe card which doesn't have an onboard molex or sata power connector. I'm not sure if this has any effect on stability of data streaming ? We have two seperate shows, both with the same setup and both suffer from intermittent loss of audio. Yesterday one of the shows lost audio after only five minutes and after a restart was okay for the rest of the day! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonas Dannert Posted May 15, 2013 Report Share Posted May 15, 2013 I see. The internal Firewire 400 PCIe card takes it's power from the PCIe-slot, which normally should be enough. As far as I've heard the AudioFire8/12 cards have not had any earlier issues reported? /jonas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sydney Posted May 15, 2013 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2013 Is there anything else which could cause this unpredictable behaviour? Bearing in mind that the same thing is happening on two separate show systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jfk Posted May 18, 2013 Report Share Posted May 18, 2013 Is there anything else which could cause this unpredictable behaviour? Bearing in mind that the same thing is happening on two separate show systems. Yes, search Echo's support, they indicate the Echo driver is sensitive to the Firewire interface type. (item 6 at that link) We have encountered issues with Asus motherboard Firewire interface and have used PCIe Firewire cards to overcome it. May not be your issue, but worth looking into. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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