MAudio Audiophile - An ongoing saga

I'm not sure how long I've had this piece of kit, but damn it's been a nightmare. It's literally a matter of luck whether it works and I've always spent just long enough for me to hit a lucky setting or switch that seems to touch it's sweet spot.

I'm documenting what I've done incase anyone else out there is Googling away while pulling their hair out.

Device: MAudio Firewire Audiophile

Issue: Random periods of distortion and crackling during any activity using sound.

OS: Windows 7 32-bit SP1

IEEE1394 controller driver: 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy).

I've also disabled the two other USB ports on the same PCI connection as the Firewire port (apparently a dedicated PCI connection is preferred?).

• Go to device manager > view > resources by connection


• Expand Interrupt Request


• Find your IEEE1394 driver (mine is "Texas Instruments 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller") and make note of the code to the left of the label "0x0000017 (23)" (or whatever yours is).


• Right-click on any other connections using the same PCI code and disable them (obviously if you have anything plugged into those ports they won't work any more!)

It's worth mentioning that everything worked absolutely fine for about a year until I decided to do a fresh install of Windows 7 the other week.

So here are my trial and errors:

Set up 1 - FAIL

Driver: Windows 7 32-bit SP1 (5.10.0.5058)
Sample rate: 44100
ASIO Buffer size: 1024
Sync source: internal
Disable ASIO direct monitoring: TRUE
A/B switch function: Direct monitoring

Set up 2 - FAIL

Driver: Windows 7 BETA driver (5.10.0.5060)
Sample rate: 44100
ASIO Buffer size: 256
Sync source: internal
Disable ASIO direct monitoring: FALSE
A/B switch function: Headphone

Set up 3 - FAIL

Driver: Windows 7 BETA driver (5.10.0.5060)
Sample rate: 44100
ASIO Buffer size: 4096
Sync source: internal
Disable ASIO direct monitoring: FALSE
A/B switch function: Headphone

Set up 4 - WIN

I think I have the winning set up once again! The key was to use the legacy firewire driver instead of the Texas Instruments driver:



Driver: Windows 7 BETA driver (5.10.0.5060)
Sample rate: 44100
ASIO Buffer size: 256
Sync source: internal
Disable ASIO direct monitoring: FALSE
A/B switch function: Headphone