Focusrite Saffire LE

I’ve owned one of these Saffire LE firewire interfaces for a few years now and it’s very useful as a backup to my RME interfaces especially when I need to record and transfer audio at another location as it’s small, light and portable. It’s a very good sounding interface and  it even is reported to work under Linux which I’ve tried but unfortunately not with Audacity as this that doesn’t use the Jack server.

I’ve had an ongoing issue with the SPDIF inputs though. Under Windows XP and MacOS X it refuses to record more than a few mninutes if locked to another digital unit such as DAT machine and the Saffire software reports the firewire interface has lost it’s connection. This has rendered all SPDIF transfers impossible to do correctly.

The support at Focusrite is very good, you can actually speak to someone! We tried using an external power supply unit (PSU), different firewire cables, checking the type of firewire interface in the Windows machine and upgrading the firmware under MacOS X but all to no avail. This is a repeatable issue under several different computers and OS’s.