Audio playback problems w/ FF800

Question

Hello,
I am having problems with my FF800 which seem like they should not be happening and I'm hoping that you can help me to sort this out. Here's the bottom line -
I'm running an Ableton Live project and Native Instrument's Guitar Rig 2 on my machine. The Live project has 9 stereo tracks, rather large files but there are not a lot of plugins on those tracks, nor do they have a lot of edits, they are just 'playback' tracks.
Here's the issue -
When I run this exact project and Guitar Rig 2 at the same time using my lame, cheap M-Audio Ozone, old USB audio device, everything works fine, I have system resources. Live plays back nicely, Guitar Rig plays back nicely. Both have low enough latency to work in harmony with each other. I can start, stop, files, switch programs, etc. without difficulty. This Ozone is a USB 1 device and it works fine.
When I change audio devices to the FF800, things don't work so fine. When used by themselves, Live or Guitar Rig2 work fine. But when used together in the same way I was running this with the Ozone, it becomes a complete software meltdown on my system. With both programs running, when I press play on Live, my computer comes to a complete screeching halt. I cannot switch applications, I can barely stop playback, I cannot even Force Quit on my system. Basically, I have to power off my system and reboot. In Live, the "Disk Overload" light comes on and stays on, which did not occur with the Ozone. Sound in Live is played back slow, with artifacts in the audio. Signal through Guitar Rig plays back choppy with artifacts.
I tried several troubleshooting techniques. First, I tried raising the buffer in both programs which only helped slightly. I could sometimes get one or the other program to play back ok, not great... better than before but still not right. Even with huge buffers and extremely long latencies. Increasing or decreasing buffer sizes for either program did not work. The Ozone worked great with lower buffers, lower latencies, without disk overload at all, so I know it is not my project bogging down the system. One of the reasons I bought the FF800 after months of research was for its famous low latency and strong drivers compatibility with Macintosh. So therefore, I am completely perplexed as to why a USB 1 device on a $100 piece of crap like an M-Audio Ozone worked great, while the $1500 high end and otherwise wonderful FF800 using Firewire, a substantially larger pipeline than USB, would cause a massive meltdown. The only thing changed between the two tests were the audio card, which is where I was able to nail down the problem.
Here are some other things I tried which did not give me results:
Thinking that perhaps there was a compatibility issue with the FF800 driver and the Ozone driver, I completely uninstalled the Ozone and tried the FF800. Same problem.
Thinking that perhaps Total Mix and the FF800 settings programs were using up valuable resources which may have bogged down my system more than the Ozone which does not use that software, I tried an experiment. I left the FF800 running and powered on my machine while setting the drivers for each program to M-Audio Ozone. That way Total Mix and FF800 audio settings boxes were open and running during a playback experiment. The system did not bog down! This leads me to believe that it is not a system resource issue and also is not a driver compatibility issue since the same problems occurred without the presence of the Ozone driver.
So now I am stumped. Is my firewire port not giving enough power to the FF800? I tried using a different firewire cable that I know to be working and that changed nothing, same problems. Why on earth would the throughput of data work better with a USB1 device, then bog down with the superior or so I thought, Firewire connection? One of the reasons I bought the FF800 in the first place was because I expected it to take some of the load off the CPU with such a fantastic array of options on a very versatile unit. But now a $100 piece of crap by M-Audio is outperforming it. How is this possible?
Sorry for the long email but I needed to explain that I do know how to troubleshoot and I have tried a great many things to get this to work and now I am stumped. Do you have any suggestions for me?
My system specs are listed below:
Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz, 1.25GB, OSX 10.4.8, FF800 driver v.2.60, built in graphics 64MB GeForce FX Go5200, Guitar Rig 2.2.1 v.6, Ableton Live 6.07.
Thank you for any suggestions you may have,
Shane Otis

Answer 1

I get the feeling that Firewire as a data protocol has a much higher demand on CPU than USB1. That seems to make sense, I suppose. I tested a similar setup on a Mac Pro basically to test out the audio hardware and as expected, the MP didn't even break a sweat. I could have probably run about 20 other applications at the same time. That's really the only thing I can come up with because the FF800 worked just fine.
That does seem really silly that an old M-Audio Ozone runs better on my Powerbook which isn't even really that old, it's the last of the PB series than the FF800. There's gotta be a way to squeeze more CPU power out of my PB. I'd probably have to go back to Panther for that though. Hmmmm...