Hi Group.

I hope someone is able to help me with a problem.

I recently (or rather 1 month ago) bought a Echo AudioFire12 audio
device
(http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/Fi...re12/index.php).

I have had serious problems using it ever since. The problem is that I
cannot record or playback at any sample rate higher than 48.000. I can
record and playback perfectly at e.g. 44.1 or 48.000 at 16 bit or 24
bit. (1 channel as well as many channels simultaneously).

If I try to switch sample rate to i.e. 96.000 either in the application
or in the echo console software it seems to work fine. The led on audio
device front panel indicates that the sample rate indeed has switched.
But if I try to do something now, it doesn't work properly. Different
applications give me different errors, but none of them is able to
produce any meaningful output (or recordings) at this sample rate.

I've tried a tons of different trouble shoouting techniques - nothing
seems to work. I've tried getting Echo support to help me, but so far I
have been extremely dissapointed with their support. It seems their
e-mail support has an average response time of 2 weeks or worse. Quite
annoying when the product is basically useless the way it is now.
I was almost giving up, thinking that I'd got a faulty audio device,
when I had the chance to try it out on another computer. Guess what: No
problems at all. Audio recording and playback worked fine at any sample
rate.

This (once more) leads me to think this problem is related to my
firewire port (although I can't know for sure). Unfortunately I have no
more available pci slots (and I would hate throwing away my Powercore
or one of the UADs) so I can't just simply install another firewire i/o
card. And I shouldn't have to!!! I have 3 on-board firewire i/o's - it
must be possible someway to get one of these to work.

Anyway, I hope someone can help me now - it seems the Echo Support
doesn't care much about solving my problem...

I'll include part of my communication to Echo below, so you can find
further details about the problem and my system configuration setup:

------------------------ Part of an e-mail sent to Echo Support:

The problem is to play-back (and record) at a sample rate higher than
48.000. There is no problem recording or playing back files at sample
rates 44.1 or 48 (works fine for 16 bit as well as for 24 bit).
However, if I try to playback or record a file in eg. 96.000 it does
not work. Different applications give me different error messages - see
the detailed info below. The error is the same for any sample rate
higher than 48.000.

I've tried each application on a completely newly clean Windows XP SP2
install with Echo drivers 1.06 AND 1.05 - firmware version 1.04.

Cubase SX3:
If I try to change sample rate in project setup I get error message:
"ASIO driver could not be initialized". I click "ok" and try anyway to
record or playback. When recording, no audio input is being captured
(not visible in meters or on wave-file). When playing back, the
transport line moves, but no audio can be heard (or seen on the
db-meters).

Adobe Audition:
When I try to playback a file at e.g. sample rate 96.000 it seems to
work fine for the first 2-3 seconds (except there is never any audible
audio). But what I mean by "it seems to work fine" is that the db-meter
in Audition actually shows correct movement, but then after 2-3 seconds
it hangs at a random level and stays there forever. The transport line
seems to behave normally, i.e. it moves constantly even after the
db-meter hangs. But at no time is any audio audible.

Auturia MiniMoog:
When the sample rate is set to 44.100 the application works fine. If I
change sample rate to 96.000, there is no sound. There are no errors -
the application seems to work fine - except for the missing sound. When
I change sample rate back, the application works again.

I even tried playing back a 96.000 file in Windows Mediaplayer. The
response was an error dialog box saying:
"There is only a small amount available memory left. Close some
applications and try again" (roughly translated from the danish error
message). It should be noted that the computer was running a clean
install, clean boot and no other applications were running. Task
manager did not show any signs of a memory shortage.

Whenever I switch sample rate either within the AudioFire console or
within an actual application (i.e. Audition) it seems that the
AudioFire hardware device correctly changes sample rate as well
(according to the front panel led).

As noted I've tried echo driver version 1.05 and 1.06 - both with same
results. The firmware has been flashed to newest version (1.04). I've
made sure that the BIOS is flashed to newest version (1005). I've even
done the tests above one more time with a completely new beta-version
of the BIOS firmware (1006 - beta 005). The results were the same.

One thing that puzzles me, though, is that the led "1394" on the front
panel of the AudioFire hardware device has never been turned on (except
at those blinking short ones, when the device is being powered on). Is
this normal that this led is not on? I would assume that it is to
indicate a firewire connection and thus that it should be lit when
there indeed is a connection?

Anyway, it led me to think that this might be a firewire issue and so I
tried to different controllers (one 1394a and one 1394b) - both of them
is "onboard" on the motherboard - both gave the same results as above.
I've even tried with these different drivers for the firewire
controller:

OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394-værtscontroller
Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394-værtscontroller
Asus 1394b Host Controller
Unibrain driver / OHCI Compatible Board
Unibrain Driver / S800 OHCI Compatible Board
The last 3 drivers did not work in any way. The AudioFire could not be
recognized when any of these drivers were active. (However the drivers
worked fine for another firewire device). The first 2 drivers both gave
same results - the results stated above.

I have tried to enable the onboard audio controller (obviously it has
been disabled all along not to interfere with anything). The onboard
audio controller worked well and was able to playback and record at
96.000 without any problems. I've tried to set all Windows system
sounds to the onboard audio device so it wouldn't interfere with the
AudioFire device. Same results.

I'm pretty much out of ideas now. Unfortunately I don't have any other
computer with a firewire connection, so I can test if the results are
the same. [[[Note from today: Now I've tried this and the echo
audiodevice works fine with this computer]]]

---
Complete system info (please also read my notes below):

Motherboard: Asus P5AD2-E Premium
CPU: Pentium 4, 3.4 (socket 775)
RAM: 4 * Kingston 512 MB (totally 2 GB)
HDs: 3 * Barracuda 160 GB - configured with 2 in RAID 0 and 1 in
"solo".
Graphics Adapter: LEADTEK WinFast PX6200 TC TDH, PCIe, GeForce 6200 TC,
128 MB

All PCI's (in order of the slots):
UAD-1 (Universal Audio DSP-card)
UAD-1 (Universal Audio DSP-card)
TC Powercore (MK1)

FW-connection: Echo AudioFire12

- Onboard audio disabled (have tried with enabled - same result)
- USB2-controller enabled (have tried with disabled - same result)
- No other firewire devices connected.
- Have tried change pci timer latency in BIOS setting.
- Some of the applications tested have been demo or trial versions, but
it shouldn't matter as they are suppose to work at these sample rates
even as trial and demo versions.
- No other USB-devices connected (except dongles and logitech wireless
keyboard and mouse).
- Note: Operating system is WinXP with SP2 from CD. Clean install from
CD. Windows Update has not runned - no bugfixes from Microsoft has been
installed. Computer is not connected to the internet and thus not
vulnerable.
- Note: The temperature of the computer and of the AudioFire device has
not reached any level even close to "dangerous", thus this is not a
"heating-problem".
- Note: The AudioFire device has been bought in USA, but I'm using it
in Denmark. I do not expect that this could be the cause of the problem
as it is stated on the back (at the AC inlet) that it can be used for
voltages and currents available in European countries as well.
- Note: I have not connected anything to the "word clock" input or
output on the AudioFire-device. The clocking is "internal".

Hi.

I managed to find the answer myself on RME's website (still no response
from Echo Audio).

The solution can be found on:

http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinfo/fw800sp2.htm

Allthough I'm happy it now works, I'm still almost in a state of chock
over the terrible customer support from Echo. Please keep that in mind
before deciding to buy anything from them in the future.

Best regards
Lars

Lars Vinter wrote:

Allthough I'm happy it now works, I'm still almost in a state of chock
over the terrible customer support from Echo.

Cook it, Lars. This is the week before the NAMM show, and any small
company that has products to exhibit, for the couple of weeks leadingup
to the show pretty much ignores everything other than getting the boxes
painted and the lights lighting up. They'll usually answer the phone,
but e-mail gets put aside until they can breathe again.

Their tech support used to be good. It may have slipped - practically
everybody's has because nobody's paying enough for their gear nowadays
to cover a real tech support department, but give 'em a break.

Mike Rivers wrote:

Cook it, Lars. This is the week before the NAMM show, and any small
company that has products to exhibit, for the couple of weeks leadingup
to the show pretty much ignores everything other than getting the boxes
painted and the lights lighting up. They'll usually answer the phone,
but e-mail gets put aside until they can breathe again.

THIS might be the week before. Last week wasn't, and the week before
that wasn't, etc. I don't mind waiting a week, but waiting more than 3
weeks for an answer to something that turned out to be a KNOWN bug in
SP2 is simply not good enough (and who knows how long I would have
waited more if I hadn't found the link on the RME site)?

Frankly I don't care if they can't cover their support costs with their
current sales prices. Then they could offer technical support for an
additional monthly fee or simply price the product higher - at least
give the customer an option of getting help rather than just leaving
him alone with his problems. I paid for a product that included
technical support according to the info. There wasn't any small print
stating that e-mails wouldn't be answered in the weeks prior to NAMM or
what have you... ;-)

I do understand that Echo might not be the biggest corporation and that
it all comes down to prioritizing resources - and yes, obviously the
NAMM is important. But you must know how frustrating it is to spend all
you time trying to get a new product up and running, while constantly
telling your clients that you're gonna be delayed... And yes, this
might have been a "once in a lifetime" experience with Echo technical
support and one incident of course isn't enough to just state it as a
fact that their customer support is always no good. But I still feel
that potential customers should know of my experience - even if it is
just due to a bad day (or rather 21 of them) at Echo...

Anyway, I'm a happy camper now...

Lars

Lars Vinter wrote:

THIS might be the week before. Last week wasn't, and the week before
that wasn't, etc. I don't mind waiting a week, but waiting more than 3
weeks for an answer to something that turned out to be a KNOWN bug in
SP2 is simply not good enough (and who knows how long I would have
waited more if I hadn't found the link on the RME site)?

1. Did you try the telephone?
2. Why should you expect Echo to help you with a Windows problem?
3. Did you ask anyone else besides Echo? This is a well known issue.
You and RME aren't the first ones to discover it.

We'd all be better off if this stuff was priced higher to cover tech
support as well as more thorough testing and perhaps some better
engineering, but the horse is out of the barn. As long as there's a
cheaper product, people will buy it, and the guys who have the more
expensive product don't make the sales. You're a perfect example - you
could have bought an RME Fireface, but the Echo cost less.

Would you support RME by returning your Echo, getting your money back,
and buying an RME for a few hundred bucks more? That's a rhetorical
questions as I don't know the price of your AudioFire 12 or even what
RME product, if any, is equivalent. But it's something to think about.
If you want good tech support, put your money with companies that have
proven to you that they offer it.

Mike Rivers wrote:

1. Did you try the telephone?

When you go to their website under "contact technical support", there
is no phone number, but rather a box to fill (that sends an e-mail). I
wrote in one of my e-mails that I would call them as soon as they
clicked reply on my e-mail. The reason for this was that I wanted to
make sure they have read all the info I put in my mail such as system
setup, trouble shooting already attempted etc. I did not want the first
45 minutes of the conversation to go with me explaining my setup,
initial attempts and hear answers like "please reboot your computer",
"please reinstall cubase" etc. when I call long distance. I see e-mail
as a much better medium of communicating technical details such as the
specifics of my BIOS version etc. I was expecting that detailed and
written info would make it easier for them to get the right knowledge
about my system. But as I said, I wrote that I would call them the very
minute they just clicked "reply" on the mail - so I at least knew that
they've read it.

2. Why should you expect Echo to help you with a Windows problem?

Because Echo state that the product is compatible with Windows XP SP2
and a compatible 1394 port. I have both. The product is NOT compatible
with SP2 (without a manual hotfix), but rather with the firewire
drivers from SP1 (which I'm using now with success). I see it as good
customer support to provide such crucial info - if not in the manual,
then on the trouble shooting pages on the net. Apparently, so does RME
:-) Even though Echo can of course not be responsible for other
manufacturers hardware or software they should carry out testing with
different standard type of setups and provide info on this. I'm not
using any proprietary home-cooked linux box here, but a fairly spec'ed
"standard" DAW.

3. Did you ask anyone else besides Echo? This is a well known issue.
You and RME aren't the first ones to discover it.

Certainly not the first ones. I did obviously ask around. No one (I
know) have had any similar experiences, but in retrospect that is
probably because they all use either Pro Tools or "old" firewire cards
with Echo products that don't suffer from this "bug". But if this is
such a known issue, one would think it would have been easy and
possible for the support team at Echo just to write one or two lines
about it either on their web page or in a reply to my e-mail. It would
take them approx 3 minutes.

We'd all be better off if this stuff was priced higher to cover tech
support as well as more thorough testing and perhaps some better
engineering, but the horse is out of the barn.

Agree.

As long as there's a
cheaper product, people will buy it, and the guys who have the more
expensive product don't make the sales. You're a perfect example - you
could have bought an RME Fireface, but the Echo cost less.

I was very much considering the Fireface. The final reason for not
choosing the Fireface was actually not the difference in price, but
rather the fact that there are more analogue ins and outs of the
AudioFire12 and that I don't need the preamps on the Fireface (preamps
on an audio device have always annoyed me).

Would you support RME by returning your Echo, getting your money back,
and buying an RME for a few hundred bucks more? That's a rhetorical
questions as I don't know the price of your AudioFire 12 or even what
RME product, if any, is equivalent. But it's something to think about.
If you want good tech support, put your money with companies that have
proven to you that they offer it.

You are right. Rather than just crying about this on newsgroups, it
would be better if I would put my money where my mouth is. The thing
is, to be honest, that there (to my best knowledge) really is no
product that can "beat" the AudioFire12 (looking at the specs). I need
exactly 12 ins and 12 outs, the high sample rate, great signal-to-noise
etc. The specs are great on this product and I do appreciate that Echo
can produce such a product and even keep the price on a very reasonable
(if not to say cheap) level. I personally would just have preferred to
pay an extra hundred buck and then have my problem solved a lot
quicker. A hundred dollars extra for the AudioFire12 and I'd still have
bought it - in fact, from the time I decided to buy the product and to
the actual purchase the price dropped almost a hundred dollars. So
don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the product. I was just
expecting better customer support even at that relatively "low" price.
But I do agree. In the future, I will do just what you wrote: Put my
money with companies that have proven to me they offer good tech
support - and avoid putting my money with companies that have proven to
me that they don't.

Have a nice day.

Lars

I managed to find the answer myself on RME's website (still no response
from Echo Audio).

The solution can be found on:

http://www.rme-audio.de/english/techinfo/fw800sp2.htm

Allthough I'm happy it now works, I'm still almost in a state of chock
over the terrible customer support from Echo. Please keep that in mind
before deciding to buy anything from them in the future.

In Echo's defence, I've had a few convo's over the phone with them, never
had any trouble getting a hold of someone or getting my questions answered.

Lars Vinter wrote:

When you go to their website under "contact technical support", there
is no phone number

Try 805-684-4593, or fax 805-684-6628

I agrree that e-mail is probably a better initial approach, but you're
right - they have to read it and responds, and if they don't, this is
weak support. The thing is that they may be flooded with hundreds of
e-mails a day (remember that Echo makes built-in sound hardware for a
number of computers and some specialized software as well as external
interfaces) and a phone call, assuming you can get through, will get
you in touch with a real person who can be looking for your e-mail with
details.

You are right. Rather than just crying about this on newsgroups, it
would be better if I would put my money where my mouth is. The thing
is, to be honest, that there (to my best knowledge) really is no
product that can "beat" the AudioFire12 (looking at the specs).

Well, you see, you need to consider "support" as one of the specs along
with the number of inputs and the signal-to-noise ratio. It's rare that
any one product is exactly what any single user wants - either it has
too much of something or too little of something. Most opt for
accepting too much rather than too little, but compensate by choosing
the too-much that's cheaper so they pay what they expect. I don't konw
if this was part of your decision process, but it's often typical.

I need
exactly 12 ins and 12 outs, the high sample rate, great signal-to-noise
etc. The specs are great on this product and I do appreciate that Echo
can produce such a product and even keep the price on a very reasonable
(if not to say cheap) level. I personally would just have preferred to
pay an extra hundred buck and then have my problem solved a lot
quicker.

Unfortunately they didn't offer this option. On the other hand, if you
need 12 ins and outs today, maybe next year you'll need 16. Maybe
Apogee's AD16 and DA16 units might have been a better investment in the
long term. But there's nothing wrong with your choice of the Echo. It's
only a support problem, and the way to solve that is to just dig in and
dog the company until they pay attention to you. In this case your
problem was simple to solve and you didn't really need their help since
you found the solution elsewhere. Next time might not be so easy.

But one thing you should understand is that while a few manufacturers
read newsgroups, they almost never respond in newsgroups, And many
don't read newsgroups at all (same problem as e-mail - not enough
resources). So by writing about your support problems here, you're not
doing anything to get better support from Echo, but you may be steering
some potential customers away from Echo. This may or may not be a good
thing - there are arguments on both sides. But it probably makes you
feel better.

Support gets worse and worse the more people get into the technology.
Unless you pay for a support call, the only support you get for Windows
is when you go to their web site, look for and update, and install it
(or set your computer up for automatic updates). I actually once went
the pay-support route with Microsoft and it was some of the best
product support I've ever received. The person I spoke with listened to
my problem, made sure he understood it, asked me a few questions, and
said he'd call back within an hour - which he did. Unfortunately, this
problem had no solution in Windows, and since they couldn't solve my
problem (it turned out to be a problem with the application) they
deleted the charge for the support call. But you can't do that with
Echo - at least not if you can't get them on the phone.

If you e-mail Dell (as I have on several occasions) with a problem,
they'll e-mail you back a bunch of usually irrelevant links to their
support section. They have never solved a problem for me, and I have
always worked around those problems.

There's just too much for us all to be experts on, there are a few
experts out there, most charge a lot of money, and some get the
problems solved. But only Microsoft has a guarantee that they'll fix it
or you don't pay.g