Firewire i1394 and Skylake H170/Z170 incompatibilities

I have an old M-Audio projectmix IO audio interface - it's a nice unit with 8 inputs, 6 outputs, motorized faders and a firewire interface that's rock solid.

After upgrading my computer to a Skylake H170 chipset i7 6700 and expecting to have a screamingly fast digital audio workstation (DAW) I was extremely disappointed to discover my project mix was basically unusable - the audio was constantly crackling.

I had a cheap VIA firewire card, so I upgraded to to a new, quite expensive firewire card with a TI chipset, which are generally recommended for music apps.

But no joy, it still crackled. It turns out that TI no longer recommend the XIO2200A chip used in these cards for new applications.

After some google fu I found this thread confirming firewire issues with certain chipsets.


Anyway it turns out you need the TI chipset XIO2213B, or VIA 6315 or  LSI FW643.

I picked up a card with VIA 6315 chipset on ebay for $15 AUD shipped from china and it works perfectly with the lowest buffer size of 64 which means low latency audio.

Happy days!