Focusrite Saffire (56 and others?) "no hardware connected" on windows 10
Spoiler: At least for my issue I found a solution, see my answer for that.
Recently I got back into recording and wanted to connect my Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 to my Windows 10 machine. AFAIK the liquid and the pro editions are all connected via firewire so I also bought a PCI Express firewire card for my machine.
I grabbed the latest Saffire MixControl which is 3.7 for windows but at the end I kept the older 3.4 version, which should not matter for the issue.
My machine kept detecting the saffire and my DAW and OS told me that it is there but I was not able to record with it and got always generic errors during opening the audio device. Furthermore the saffire mix control kept saying "no hardware connected"
I checked the firewire cable and socket, albeit a bit wobbly they are ok since the PC detects the interface properly.
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Have the same issue here, I upgraded to windows 10 build 1909 and having issues with Saffire pro 40 interface. I downloaded mix control 3.7 and it worked fine for a while. Going to download legacy drivers and hope it resolved my case. I'm using a Texas card as well.
I was having same problem on windows 10 1903 (using TI chipset pcie card with laptop. I was getting cycling through sample rates and defaulting to 192k.
I found that by installing 2006 dated driver (probably from windows 7) that it became stable again and my Liquid Saffire 56 is working well with 2 octopre mkii.
I haven't dared yet to upgrade to version 1909 and have switched off feature updates on windows 10.
Bad news first:
Focusrite discontinued the support for the Saffire 56 from Windows 10 build 1903 due to device incompatibilities in the firewire interface and says "it will not work on versions >= 1903".
That's not a good start for that.
Good news:
Regardless of this fact my audio interface seems to work very stable and reliable on my windows 10 machine now.
My PC had no firewire inputs on the board so I bought a delock PCI firewire card. The brand is not important, important was the fact that Focusrite supports only VIA and Texas Instruments chipsets on the firewire interface.
I was lucky because I had the Texas Instruments chipset and also the card was rated for 400 mbps, just like my saffire needed.
Beside that I could not work with the
Saffire Mix Control nor record anything. The device appeared to be there but only as a non working zombie. I knew from the past that the interface was working on Windows 7 and cannot remember whether it did on 10.
After testing all of those focusrite articles and some threads on various forums I found an issue with microsofts driver selection in the device manager for my firewire card.
Looking at the device manager for the firewire card I noticed something strange:
Seems to work and looking good but then I said "wait, wasn't my firewire chipset's brand Texas Instruments and not VIA?"
Windows insisted it was a generic VIA chipset so I right clicked onto it, went to settings/properties, picked the "driver" tab, selected "Update driver" then selected the "locate driver on my machine", then clicked "pick one from a list" and got basically two different options:
OHCI compliant VIA 1394 Host Controller
OHCI compliant 1394 Host Controller
I selected the non VIA version, installed it and that fixed my problem. The Saffire Mix Control was then able to detect the saffire without any issues and I was able to record instantly.
Firewire is quite old and I guess since windows already provides the drivers for firewire, the PCI card manufacturer relied on windows for matching it's chipset signature to the necessary driver. Either the PCI card manufacturer or microsoft botched things up picking a driver that only "seemed" to work.
If you have the same issue I hope it will help my fellow friends in the firewire hell :)
Small disclaimer: The process of selecting another driver might use a different wording, I recommend searching for a guide on how to do this if you are stuck or not sure. My windows machine uses a non English language so the guide above might be not entirely accurate on the wording you might find on your machine.
I'm currently experimenting with the instructions found here.
By selecting the legacy driver, I can now use settings in the saffire mixcontrol that the Texas Instrument driver from my previous installations (which worked fine before Windows 10 2009, and have stopped working since the current windows 10 version).
How do I install the Firewire 1394 Legacy Driver in Windows 10?
Download the Microsoft Firewire 1394 Legacy Driver Installer
Double-click to run the 1394_OHCI_LegacyDriver.msi file. This will
extract the drivers to: C:Program Files (x86)1394 OHCI Compliant
Host Controller (Legacy)
Open the folder: C:Program Files
(x86)1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (Legacy)X64_driver
Right-click on Legacy1394.inf and choose Install to install the
drivers
Press the Windows Key + R
Type devmgmt.msc
Click OK
In
Device Manager, expand IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controllers
Right-click on
1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller
Click Update Driver Software
Click Browse my computer for driver software
Click Let me pick from
a list of device drivers on my computer
Click 1394 OHCI Compliant
Host Controller (Legacy)
Click Next
(When Windows has finished
installing the driver) click Close
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