Hey guys. Hope all are well.

I have a Focusrite Saffire 26 i/o that I used to use for my home studio setup. Worked fine for the few times I used it.

Now I'm taking it out with my band to provide multitrack backing and click tracks.

When I first hooked up to my MacBook there were no problems at all. Then when we began rehearsals, every output from the saffire was producing serious noise. Definitely not a ground loop problem of any kind as its more noise than hum and no kind of ground lift helps.

When this first happened, I thought perhaps the saffire was taking power from firewire rather than from the mains, so I powered down the laptop and made sure the saffire was on first before powering the macbook back up. This seemed to do the trick! So for every practice, this happened now and then and I was able to sort it. NOW however, this is no longer the case! No matter how I power the laptop and saiffire up, this persistent hiss is there. Now when I power the laptop up, the saffire powers down and then comes back on with the hiss.

The noise is as loud as the signal and is very crackly.

I've got it into my head that the saffire is making this noise when using power from the laptop but I've nothing to base this on. I thought I had it sorted when powering them up in the right order but nothing seems to work anymore.

Of course this means our backing and clicks are unusable at gigs so it's something i need to get sorted out really!

I'm sure i've heard of this problem before but I can't seem to find anything that relates in any searches.

Any help appreciated!

I hope I am not stating the obvious, but I believe you can determine the source of the Saffire Pro 26's power by the colour of the power light. If it is flashing green during power-up, the source is mains. If red, the power is coming from firewire. This does not address your noise concern, but should help you troubleshoot the issue with Focusrite support. My experience with them has been very good during the past couple of years.

SORRY! I thought I'd mentioned that. Yes, the power light is red when the noise is an issue. It seems to just 'assume' I want to bypass the mains as soon as I hook up the laptop.

you could try setting the "use external PSU for extended headroom" option in the control software..... ??

maybe the preferences are corrupt or something???


i've still got a couple of 26's knocking around , but i'm using them as converters feeding my Pro40 and Pro56, i'll have to hook one up and have a look at the software to see where that option is if you have trouble finding it.

fix permissions while you're at it....

Multiple ways of this happening. The Saffire Pro 26 is not the most reliable piece of kit - fine when you've actually got it working, but getting it to play ball in the first place can be a pain. And one problem in particular is that when it's not sure what it should be doing, it has a tendency to blast 0dBFS digital hash on the outputs.

Changing sample rates and/or clock sources can confuse it. This sometimes needs a power cycle. Ditto ASIO buffer sizes.

ADAT inputs is another funny. If you have ADAT inputs connected, make sure the lightpipes are fully pushed home, because light leaking around the edges of a not-properly-seated lightpipe can give you nasty digital hash too.

And there's often a hiss when you first start up anyway, before it figures out what to do with its outputs.

Re starting the Saffire up first, you don't want to do that. If you start it first and it can't see a PC on Firewire, it starts up in standalone mode. You then need to cycle power to get it to talk to the PC. It may be that the reason you're now seeing all this noise with your current sequence of starting is because of whatever it's got stored as its default setup for when it starts in standalone mode.

And sometimes it'll just make noise for no particular reason you can see, in which case again you need to reboot.

try hitting it...

Seriously, kind of. I had a problem with intermittent crazy fuzzing and crackling with the 26 that went away when I turned the first phantom power switch off and on again. Then i realised it would also change or go away if i gave it a moderate strength tap on the top above those buttons. Upgraded to the 56 so never did get round to getting it fixed, although I imagine it would mean sending it back if that is the issue.

Stu