A question about latency and recording.

Drivers and firmware are 5.6.3

3.2.8 is for Windows XP I am running Win 7.

Ah… yes so it is :sunglasses:

Just an update.
I talked to Mackie tech support and they think that it sounds like a driver issue. The only other suggestion was that it could be a compatibility issue with my firewire port. I think this is unlikely and I would have to fine another win 7 machine with cubase installed to test this.

Since the Onyx 400f has been out of production for about 5 years (must have gone out of production a few days after I bought it) it is unlikely that they will be updating the drivers. Boo to Mackie!!

I am seriously considering upgrading to a RME fireface.

Guess they don’t want customers to come back with such poor after sales.
And it seems you are not alone

As an alternative you could try to run you FW controller in legacy mode, sometimes it solves problems when dealing with older drivers in W7 (first part of this tutorial describes how to).

I’m a RME fanboy, so I’m too biased to say something useful.
But like mentioned before by Registered, a FW card with a TI chip is always a good idea, even with RME.

I run a Mackie 1640i and I hang out on the Mackie forum enough to have learned that the generation of interface that you use is plagued by this latency problem. It’s interesting to see that you contacted Mackie and they suggested the driver was possibly at fault. Ha! Since they are slugs in the driver development department you have enough reason to move on to another interface. However, in talking with another Mackie insider, I was told the larger part of the problem was the older AD converter chips. So the message here is that even a better driver would not necessarily help your interface.

On another note, if you do want to keep using the interface, the guys that I talked to that were able to make a go of it were able to use the Cubase software to compensate fairly well. The real problem with this method, as reported by them, was that if they changed the latency of that project after it was recorded to another sample rate setting then things were misaligned. Yeah, a bit more problematic.

FWIW, I am told RME has the best driver team in the business, which is really important. That said, I will also note that my 1640i is a great tool and does not suffer from the problems of the earlier interfaces.

Thanks for your input some great info there on the situation at Mackie.
I’m gonna have to jump ship I think.