User Manual

16
User's Guide Fireface UC © RME
9. Operation and Usage
9.1 Playback
In the audio application being used, Fireface must be selected as output device. This can often
be found in the Options, Preferences or Settings menus as Playback Device, Audio Devices,
Audio etc.
We recommend switching all system sounds off (via >Control Panel /Sound<). Also Fireface
should not be the Preferred Device for playback, as this could cause loss of synchronization
and unwanted noises. If you feel you cannot do without system sounds, you should consider
using the on-board sound device or buying a cheap Blaster clone and select this as Preferred
Device in >Control Panel /Multimedia /Audio< or >Control Panel /Sound /Playback<.
The screenshot shows a typical configuration dialog. After selecting a device, audio data is sent
to an analog or digital (ADAT / SPDIF) port, depending on which has been selected as playback
device.
Increasing the number and/or size of audio buffers may prevent the audio signal from breaking
up, but also increases latency i.e. output is delayed. For synchronized playback of audio and
MIDI (or similar), be sure to activate the checkbox ‘Get position from audio driver’.
Note on Windows Vista/7
:
Since Vista the audio application can no longer control the sample rate under WDM. Instead the
user has to work himself through numerous settings, and to set the sample rate to the same
value per stereo device.
Therefore the driver of the Fireface UC includes a workaround: the sample rate can be set glob-
ally for all WDM devices within the Settings dialog, see chapter 8.1.