Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP and Cubase

[Ulf]

Hi everyone,

is there anyone out there who works with a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP in conjunction with Cubase? I'm sure there must be.

Do you have or had any issues with that Focusrite interface? In a different forum some user reports crunching/crackling noise in the audio as soon as Cubase 9 is running (even in the audio output of other programs).

Could people please speak out that even don't have any issue with their Saffire and Cubase?
(and please also tell which Cubase version you're on)

Thanks,
Ulf

[Steve Helstrip]

Works great.

[tarbey]

I have a Sapphire Pro 64 and it works fine.

[Steve1977]

My Saffire Pro 40 works fine with Cubase 9.

[amt]

I still have the Pro 24 DSP connected to the DAW but have not used it for audio some time as I'm using the UA Apollo Twin USB primarily. I'll switch over to the Focusrite and test it out with 9.0.1 at the weekend and report back.

[Lati]

I have saffire pro 14 and Cubase 9 won't work. Everything is fine a few minutes and then audio just goes away, with few random crackles (and meters show red +200dB input :O) When i change asio buffer size from saffire MixControl a few times (which resets audio in a way I think) it starts to work again for a few minutes... but all in all, Cubase pro 9 is unusable. Cubase 8.5 works great.

[Ulf]

I have saffire pro 14 and Cubase 9 won't work. Everything is fine a few minutes and then audio just goes away, with few random crackles (and meters show red +200dB input :O) When i change asio buffer size from saffire MixControl a few times (which resets audio in a way I think) it starts to work again for a few minutes... but all in all, Cubase pro 9 is unusable. Cubase 8.5 works great.

Okay, sorry to hear that. Could you please elaborate a little more on your system? Win or Mac, computer spec and the like?

[Johnny]

Hi everyone,

is there anyone out there who works with a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP in conjunction with Cubase? I'm sure there must be.

Do you have or had any issues with that Focusrite interface? In a different forum some user reports crunching/crackling noise in the audio as soon as Cubase 9 is running (even in the audio output of other programs).

Could people please speak out that even don't have any issue with their Saffire and Cubase?
(and please also tell which Cubase version you're on)

Thanks,
Ulf

Glad to see this is noticed.

I've got 2 saffire interfaces here. I'm on Mac. Pro 14 and 40. I actually had a second pro 40 but I exchanged it for a Scarlett, because there's some problems with the midi output on the Saffires.

The saffires worked perfectly with cubase until about a year ago, at which point they both became a lot more fussy about a) clocking and b) multi-client operation.

Browsers, iTunes, CV tools etc can have distorted / crackly operation while Cubase is running, even if cubase itself is working fine. It's less likely to happen if cubase uses a longer buffer setting. But still can happen.

Frustrating ..... but I usually end up routing system sounds away from the DAW interface to work-around. Didn't used to have to do that, but something changed and I never found what! And it's a solution that doesn't work for every job.

A quick try of C9 shows them behaving same as C8.5. But I'll test more over the weekend!

John

[Lati]

I have saffire pro 14 and Cubase 9 won't work. Everything is fine a few minutes and then audio just goes away, with few random crackles (and meters show red +200dB input :O) When i change asio buffer size from saffire MixControl a few times (which resets audio in a way I think) it starts to work again for a few minutes... but all in all, Cubase pro 9 is unusable. Cubase 8.5 works great.

Okay, sorry to hear that. Could you please elaborate a little more on your system? Win or Mac, computer spec and the like?

I have now actually successfully run Cubase 9 a few hours without audio disappearing... I don't know what I did. But the direction is positive But still getting audio cracks from time to time (like every ten minutes or so). It comes randomly (i.e. even if I'm not doing anything)... I have to give this more time and see what happens and if I can elaborate more. Nevertheless, I haven't had these issues with 8.5.

I am running Windows 10 with i7-6700K 4x4GHz and 32Gb RAM.

[Lati]

So the audio drop makes a weird scary crackling sound wich sounds oddly reverbated... and it lasts 4 seconds or so. During that time there is no audio playback, BUT when I was recording audio with microphone during that dropout it didn't affect at all the recorded audio

[amt]

OK, I switched over to the Focusrite Pro 24 DSP driver in Cubase Pro 9 in a recent project started in 8.5 and working well in 9. Hit play and the project played back perfectly - no crackling glitching at all. Not a conclusive test I know but it seemed work smoothly on my setup. I'll test further on other projects this week and report if I find any issues.

[Ulf]

Thanks very much so far.

So with the postings so far, it doesn't seem that we have a general problem with the Saffire, but we do have issues on different individual machines.
It will be difficult to track all this down, but please keep reporting.

[gravehill]

No issues with my Saffire 24 DSP. I'm on Win10 64 bit with latest drivers and Cubase 8.5 and Cubase 9.

[Johnny]

Thanks very much so far.

So with the postings so far, it doesn't seem that we have a general problem with the Saffire, but we do have issues on different individual machines.
It will be difficult to track all this down, but please keep reporting.

Thanks for this, I think the problem I have will be worse for those using the bigger interfaces and those in dual interface mode, because I notice that increasing the latency can help avoid issues. But there is something about cubase's interaction with Saffire drivers on MacOS that wrecks normal browser/iTunes playback on my system (even if cubase itself works fine). This is an issue when using other audio apps alongside cubase (e.g. CV tools).

I previously had problems with apps that try to force output streams to 44.1kHz (I'm on 48kHz) and I wonder if it's less problems of this kind if I stick to 44.1kHz for everything in the future. I think maybe something changed on the Mac OS side that means mixed audio rates playback is not handled properly.

Happy to help with more information if needed, I already tried a lot of different things to try to improve this situation. I'd really like to be able to get back to how things were in terms of stability.

John

[Pouncer]

I have issues with cubase 10, windows 10, firewire focusrite pro 24 and it's driving me mad!

[skijumptoes]

'which' issues? And have you latest mixcontrol (3.7) and latest firmware on your Saffire?
https://customer.focusrite.com/support/ ... d_type=all

Most likely to be the Firewire chipset on your machine if it's system wide.