Windows and firewire audio interfaces

Thanks much Richard -- I'll follow up on this a little. MOTU doesn't have any devices in the price range I was looking at, so I ended up going to a friendly dealer where they let me pull all the boxes off the shelf and install things until something worked. Ended up being pretty quick, the short of it is, Focusrite Saffire didn't work, a cheap little thing from Tascam did:

http://www.audiomidi.com/FireOne---Firewire-Interface-P9061.aspx

(as a very brief review, it's quality is... eh... pretty far behind all of my previous devices, an 828mkII, a presonus firebox, and a mackie onyx 400f, but at least it works)

So yes, this confirmed for me that it is in fact an issue with manufacturer's device drivers, and not some inherent problem in the system. In light of this I have a small suggestion for other people going through this: There's a company called CEntrance that makes a substitute driver for firewire devices, the Ideal Driver:
http://www.centrance.com/products/id/
(you need to check the compatibility chart to make sure your device is supported)
I desperately wanted to try this to see if it would work, and I had some contact with a nice fellow there, but after explaining the issue, twice I asked point blank if I'd get a refund if it didn't work and he just didn't reply. Don't know what the deal was, but it left me minorly irked so I didn't take the US$40 plunge to find out. If someone else does, I'd be curious to know if this resolves the issue.

In addition to Richard's comments about disabling wireless, there's one other thing I've found was necessary: Turning off KbdMgr. This is a program that enables 'extended keyboard' functions, such as the keys that let you brighten or dim the screen. It doesn't affect basic keyboard support, so it can be safely disabled, and in fact it will cause CPU spikes and audio dropouts, so I think disabling is a must. Do this by pressing the windows Start button, choosing Run..., and entering msconfig.exe. When the System Configuration Utility comes up, click the start tab and uncheck KbdMgr.

thanks,
eric

Also please have some sympathy for the Apple programmers.

This has been an extremely frustrating experience, and it's started me off on the mac platform feeling pretty negatively toward apple. I get that boot camp is a collision of independent companies where no one really has full responsibility, and I don't fault apple for bad drivers (including some REALLY bad drivers, like the broadcom wireless, which I think is dubious to even claim that it works). I have two basic issues with apple: I wish they would have acknowledged the existing problems on the front page of the support, and provided links (making sure everyone knows up front you should try turning off wireless would resolve a number of complaints here). Also, for us laptop users, I have issues with being dependent on apple for drivers (i.e. for the nvidia card). Not knowing if a problem is fixed by a recent driver, and not having access to that driver, is very frustrating. There's the same problem with PC vendors, but at least they have market pressure to keep drivers up to date; Apple has a monopoly on machines that run OS X.

How do you like that Tascam unit?

Now that I've had it a little while, I'm very impressed. What I don't like:
* The largish form factor and ridiculous big knob and buttons that I find worthless.

What I'm ambivalent on:
* The sound quality -- at first I thought it wasn't very good, but I suspect I was being subtly influenced by the fact that I think it's hideously ugly. Now, with it at home and integrated, it sounds pretty good, the output at least is approaching the firebox/828mkII range. Don't know about the preamps, that's hard to say without A/Bing but they are at least decent. Overall I have no complaints at all with the sound quality, certainly not enough for me to pull out another device and really try and compare.

What I like:
* The drivers are multiclient, letting multiple audio apps run simultaneously -- not sure how common that is, half the interfaces I've owned can do that and half can't.
* Fully bus-powered. The firebox has a problem where, on the new MBP, you need to have the power supply plugged in when first starting up; it's nice to not deal with that.
* And then a couple small things that are obvious from the pictures: The knobs are reasonably spaced (the firebox and some motu's are way too close together); dual headphone jacks is nice; independent volume and gain controls on everything is nice (my old 828mkII had a single encoder for both volume and main outs, which drove me nuts).

Overall, for the price you can get them at now (US$135), I think it's a really, really good deal.