First, a disclaimer: I am not a professional musician or an audio engineer. But I have worked in radio for over 30 years. So, I think that it is not just my incompetence that has made my experience with the M-Audio FireWire 410 audio interface a hair-pulling-out nightmare.

For those not familiar with the FireWire 410, I should explain that its function is to provide a hardware, FireWire-based connection between audio sources (microphones, instruments, etc.) and your computer.

Setting it up is a mind-numbing experience, as I’ve found during hours of configuration hell on both Windows and Mac machines. In fact, even though I’ve had it for over a year, some of my audio software still does not work properly with it.

But the most crappy thing about it can be found in this warning in its manual:

IMPORTANT: It has come to our attention that problems have been reported with several types of IEEE1394 (“FireWire”) devices, including MAudio FireWire devices. These problems occur when using a 6-pin bus-powered connection when plugging and unplugging external FireWire devices, when both the computer and external device are powered on. This is commonly referred to as “hotplugging”. In some cases the FireWire port on the host computer system is rendered permanently inoperable. In other cases the external FireWire device is rendered permanently inoperable. M-Audio does not want users of M-Audio FireWire products to experience such costly problems. Therefore, M-Audio must require that users of M-Audio FireWire devices refrain from hotplugging any M-Audio FireWire device. You must make your FireWire connection while both computer and FireWire device are powered off; then power on.

I have never heard of a FireWire device (or USB device, for that matter) that will render a port “permanently inoperable” just from plugging it in while the computer is already on. Fer cryin’ out loud, that ability to “hot plug” is one of the main selling points of FireWire/USB connections.

So, for its Byzantine set-up and for requiring that one must plug in the M-Audio FireWire 410 only when your computer is powered down, I hereby declare it a crappy piece of software (and hardware).

Original Comments on this Post

42 comments were posted on this article when it was over on my old, original, crappy Blogspot site–the most ever on a Crappy Software article. Here they are in all their annoyed glory. ‘Course, now you can extend this comment thread even further with the comment form at the bottom of this article.

Anonymous Anonymous said…

You are exactlly right! The M-Audio Firewire 410 will go down in history as the most legendary, lemon-flavored PC/Mac audio interface. They have had years now to work out the bugs in the drivers/hardware but they just can’t seem to do it!

12:19 PM
Blogger Randy said…
I agree,and Thankfully I got My 410 Second hand for a lot less than a new one.Why can’t you hot plug it?….Their Crap Drivers.
One thing to note is that you cannot have ANYTHING connected from the 410 to your computer during driver install. This includes not only the firewire but the Audio outs also,and any other plug for that matter. I’ve used it successfully with Amplitube/and Guitar Rig 2. But NOW cannot use it at all because I recently Upgraded my main PC to Vista Ultimate (Figured I’d start figuring MS Vistas Glitches Now,rather than Later) M Audi Only offers a Beta Driver,which even after 3 attempts to install,promptly Gives My Dual Core PC (with 2gbDDR,and A 150gb Raptor for OS/500GB Mirrored RAID)
The Blue Screen of Death.
I’ve only had 2 or 3 Vista Tweaks to fix,Mcafee,Nero,Update Hardware Drivers…And M Audio…Only one Remains..and guess which one that is! BTW M Audio Does Not Respond to Help emails Either. Good Luck!

4:13 PM
Blogger Randy said…
Update.r/t Vista Driver…Worked with Jose From M Audio on Tuesday. Went through the Steps,Delete Driver,Delete any TEMP File. Restart,Download Driver,Installed Driver,Restarted as M Audio and Jose Requested…OS Load Screen,and BOOM before you get to the Desktop…Blue Screen of Death/Crash. He Then Emailed me back saying that the Reason the Driver Caused Vista to Crash was possibly using a MotherBoard Firewire Plug instead of a PCI one.Only Problem is that the M Audio 410 Was not Connected to my PC AT ALL at the Time of the Driver install(Heck it was sitting across the Room!)…guess I’ll Try that too….Must Be Something Else..It COuldn’t be the Driver Could It?….Umm YES it Could!
BTW After Speaking with their “Tech Support” Line..I am a little Concerned about how Savy they are,and where they’re from…Do they Even Know what the Product is/Have Any Experience with it?…Stay Tuned

12:24 AM
Blogger Matt said…
I’ve had one for a bit over a year and found it to be a great product… i found the mixer confusing at first but got it working with CubaseSX, guitar rig, etc the same day i got it.

I also hot plug mine all the time, i dont care if it breaks the port, firewire cards are cheap…. but it never has had a problem.

8:31 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I have the FW410 on a Mac and can confirm that whilst the hardware is ‘ok’ the drivers are the most bug riddled pieces of crap probably ever known to man, hell, they’ve only had like 5 years to sort the sorry thing out! Support is a joke too, constantly told to “reinstall drivers” LOL. How about you learn to write them first you monkeys! it now resides as the worlds biggest pro tools dongle. Nice one M-Audio,-you totally suck.

8:28 AM
Anonymous elevated said…
I’m glad to have found a place to leave a comment about the Firewire 410. This thing has caused me problems for years now, and I thought it was just me!!!

Here’s a cute feature nobody else mentioned: The device crashes entirely if a plug in a completely seperate firewire device to my computer! This is a computer with multiple firewire ports. I’m not even talking about the COMPLETELY WORTHLESS extra firewire port that’s built into the 410.

2:48 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I have used the 410 in my studio for a year and a half now and it worked fine. Until 3 days ago when some sound bursts started coming out of the speakers. After that it was a nightmare consisting in the card constantly disconnecting itself from the computer while on. I changed the cable and the same happened. I borrowed another 410 from a friend and it worked ok with the same computer and same cable. One of the two FW connectors in my card doesn’t work at all, and the other has this behavior of working fine and after a while disconnecting itself. Offcourse I upgraded the drivers and the firmware, but it’s still not working. I have never hotplugged my device since I bought it, so I don’t have a f**king clue of what has happened. The worst thing is that the guarantee is over and nobody seems to be able to fix it. Off course I contacted M-Audio and they didn’t answer. I am using Pro Tools M-Powered so I’m stuck with shitty M-Audio until I have enough money to buy Pro Tools HD or something really pro. I hate M-Audio.

3:40 PM
Blogger Jeremy Butler said…
Judging from all the comments (almost all negative) on this one post, I could start an entire blog JUST about the craposity of the M-Audio Firewire 410!

4:12 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I have to agree with all of these comments. What a total piece of junk this thing is. I had it working for 3 months with all kinds of software weirdness on the Mac, but was able to get it to work in spite of many headaches. Then the thing just suddenly died on me.. driver reinstalls didn’t help, and tried it on another system, same thing.

Now I’m running an Alesis MultiMix 8 which has hardware knobs instead of M-Audio’s lame software utility, and in a way I’m kind of glad this thing crapped out otherwise I’d hav e never realized what I was missing.

10:56 AM
Blogger Rob said…
My FireWire 410 crashes on a OS X 10.4 machine when it goes to sleep and on my 10.5 machine when I plug in another FireWire device – in this case a FireWire 800 drive.

I think the problem may be due to the fact that the thing takes its power from the FireWire port so anything that upsets that power supply makes it crap out. That explains why they want you to plug it when the computer is off./

If that’s the case the drivers can’t do much.

11:51 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I’ve been working as a professional recording engineer for 8 years and a computer tech for about 12, and I’ve found the M-Audio FW410 to be nothing but rock solid. The hardware is what it is, and the software/drivers are fine. I have never had a problem on any systems I’ve used it on. All I can say is read the manual as far as install goes…it’s not the inferface’s fault if you can’t follow install directions, or if you fry your hardware by not using the “remove hardware safely” option in the taskbar.

8:49 PM
Anonymous Mike said…
M-AUDIO is the most crappy company I ever bought from. One I first bought my Firewire solo there was advertised on the box that I will get Logic for free. I never received that. After too much insisting the told me to contact the company behind logic, a kind of F* you!

Now, I am trying to make the crappy firewire solo to work on my mac. Without any driver, just using Apple’s drivers, the crappy fw solo works sometimes, sometimes not.

I have download their new crappy driver. Now, I connect my firewire solo and it says that the firmware is being updated and will just take 2 minuts… well, 20 minutes has passed and I am still not able to use the crappy FWSolo.

Their support is crap. Their drivers are a pure piece of stinking dump and their products sometimes work sometimes don’t.

12:34 PM
Blogger Kundan said…
I bought the Firewire 410 a week back.First thing: It doesnt work with the built in firewire port of the laptop.I tried it on both my laptops.I calledup the support and after hours together someone comes online and says that it would work only with a PCMCAI card and that too only with the Texas Instrument model. This is an absolute torture. I am fine to feel the pain of losing 15% while i return this now but i dont want to go through any more of this torture. I have used M-AUDIO Nova,M-AUDIO Ozone…and never faced any problem but Firewire 410 sucks big time.

3:10 PM
Blogger Darrell Berry said…
my (2nd hand) 410 worked very erractically for a few days and now on os x 10.5.4 causes a page fault which brings the OS down with a reboot screen a few minutes after boot (usually) and/or randomly hangs/dies during use. i wouldn’t recommend it for anyone, at least on 10.5.x…

4:13 PM
Anonymous Michael C. said…
I have one too. What a piece of shit.
That guy saying it was “rock solid” is an probably from M-Audio.

10:05 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I started having problems with M-Audio Firewire drivers when I updated to the 1.8 version. I then painfully checked each version going backwards, until I came to 1.7.4 which works fine for me on Leopard/intel and Tiger/ppc G4 with an Ozonic.

11:10 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I have a M-Audio fast Track Ultra. I bought it to replace the M-Audio Firewire 410 that kept crashing (Blue Screen) my PC. the Fast Track Ultra is no better. It crashes my PC. Please note: These crashes point to the device drivers of these audio interfaces. I’ve tried everything. I do have a simple workaround that will calm the issue down but is only a band aid.

12:40 PM
Anonymous petermichaelw said…
Uh, perhaps i am alone here, but I WHAT BLUE SCREEN? THis always makes me laugh. I have never had a blue screen in XP. Never. Since it came out, with real versions, bs versions, 5 different machines (of my own). Never. Can’t just be me.

I have no problems with my firewire 410 on XP and Vista 32bit, and thats over a period of 2 years now, on 3 different machines.

The only disappointment I have is the name 410, when in reality you cannot use 4 inputs at a time. But as it turns out, many use the “inputs available” number instead of the “inputs that can be used simultaneously” as the name.

10:23 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
All of you are right!!! They are crap! Same issues…all the time…

11:34 AM
Anonymous orchardstars said…
i had it working at least to play off off a media player like regular speakers but now its like none of the eight plug ins in the back will allow any kind of sound to come out no matter what i try. crappy. crappy. crappy. ….

7:48 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Well I can only say unlucky for those of you who’s dosent work, Im a music tech student and have been studying music tech since i was about 15, im running a leopard MBP and i havnt had any problems with it other than occasionaly having to switch my laptop on and off for the drivers to realise that it is actually connected.

HOWEVER Iv got one question that you guys might be able to help me with! When i am running logic it says that i have 4 inputs! I know one and two are the XLRs/3/4″ jacks on the front, and by pressing the mic/line button itll switch to the jacks in the back. SO CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHICH CONNECTIONS ARE 3&4?

1:27 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Utterly crap. Only good thing is a good quality sound when recording and playing back. Other than that, it seems designed to make people loose faith in soundcards altogether.BLUE SCREENS EXIST, they are a pain too, someone said he knows how to work around them, how is it? I use Vista 32bit. Thanks

10:33 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Right!!! They are crap! Same issues…all the time… I had been trying to install for around two years now and always crash my computer!!!!!!

2:48 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
the M-Audio Firewire 410 is a consumer item priced to fool you into thinking you have quality.

note the jacks on the rear ARE NOT secured to the case, but are held merely by the solder joints directly onto the circuit board! plugging and unplugging causes stress fatigue on these joints which eventually break – lead has a low fatigue tolerance, and it’s tensile properties are ultra poor. and if you don’t plug and unplug often, the weight of hanging cables can do the job on their own.

M-Audio knowingly built a poor quality rig in order to save on production cost, and to maximise profit, which explains why they can’t be arsed to sort their software out?

on big projects, i’ve had the driver crash and turn my audio to mush, requiring resets.

if you have one of these and your life is perfect, just wait ’till tomorrow when the solder breaks on a contact and you lose a channel…

bye bye M-Audio, you suck.

12:26 PM
Blogger amith said…
I agree with all you guys. This piece from M-Audio is a piece of shit!
It has ruined some precious days of my life
YOU SUCK M-AUDIO!!!!!

11:50 AM
Blogger regis “t.b.” milkshakey said…
yup – i’ve been so frustrated for so many countless hours trying to make my 410 work. i hate it. i cant believe i bought it. funny – i never realized this was happening to everybody who owns one. fuck m audio.

12:30 AM
Anonymous Naaman said…
i wana join in tooo!
such a bad unit this is!!
i cant believe it!!
and people i know that have it are simply getting used to hit a restart button the pc every hour or so!!
im saving for an RME card now and will NEVER EVER deal with m audio. good ridden , them and theyr false tech support guys… better use asio4all driver till i get anew unit …

4:54 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I am an engineer and own punkrockrecords.com (marty Munsch).
I hate almost all modern technology thats not analog! I’ve been around, check my cred and laugh! But, I have found unless you specifficly have lets say, no less than 1 GB of RAM and a SCSI drive of 7000RPM and or a SATA drive and a raid turnkey setup dedicated to your PC/MAC with no less than DUAL PROCESSOR CORE you are S_O_L…Thats what this stuff is designed for. Not the typical home user. (at least they market it for professional use). I had got the BSOD on a older PC and MAC. I went to a shitty 2007 DELL precission 380/400. it works fine. thats the way its supposed to be.

10:34 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
hey!

I got the solution!!!!!

If you want to get sound back out of your FW 410, it ‘s easy:

JUST SMASH IT WITH THE TOOL OF YOUR CHOICE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT WILL SOUND BETTER THAN EVER.

DO NOT BUY M-Audio

4:11 PM
Blogger Ronny B said…
To call this hardware shit is too kind. NEVER worked. Shit has more uses.

5:17 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Hey,

i bought it used on Ebay for 110€. At first i had some problems but then i connected the Firewire cable to my 2nd 4pin Firewireport. Now it works great since 2 months without problems!Not crackling!No loss of connection!I am using win7 and i downloaded the newest drivers from M-Audio. I heard that most of the problems come from wrong Firewire ports (Texas Instruments Chipset firewire Cards should work).

cYa

2:27 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Hey,

cYa

2:29 PM
Blogger Roger J said…
does anyone know if the FW410 works on firewire800 with a 400 adapter on an imac?

3:36 PM
Blogger luke peril said…
I just lost my logic board because of an error while trying to run a mere 8 tracks of audio in Ableton Live 8. The CPU was at only 56% with the Core audio card, but spiked immediately and crashed the program with the FW 410. Shortly after, total failure of the logic board. $750 repair cost because I didn’t have Applecare. This machine kills creativity. M-Audio deserves a class action suit for this lemon.

12:58 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I think I’ve burned my FW port on Audiophile M audio card. And that is not a first time. I’m kind of pissed off cause first “operation” cost me half price of a “solid rock” piece. Now what?

6:25 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I’m so glad I found this site. I bought the Firewire 410 about 5 years ago, along with a 2006 MacBook Pro. This thing has caused me nothing but grief…when the thing worked, the sound quality was good. WHEN it worked. A lot of times it wouldn’t initialize at startup. Then randomly it would. A few months ago, it finally fried the firewire port on my computer. I’ve had it up to here. I’m considering replacing it with a Roland USB interface. It is an outrage that something like this could cost 300 dollars and suck so horribly. I will not buy M-Audio again, and I will discourage everyone I know from doing so.

10:30 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
So glad I found this page. What a horrible piece of equipment. I’ve been coping with the same problems you are all mentioning for years (bought it new 5 years ago). I am now replacing it because I just can’t take it any more. I will not buy M-Audio ever again.

10:54 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Maybe, just maybe, this is more a mac issue than a PC one. Most of the posts here are from mac users. lol

10:00 PM
Blogger Jeremy Butler said…
Don’t think this is a Mac issue. I had my problems with it while on Windows machines.

6:35 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Mac, PC… I have installed my FW410 on 5 different machines over the years and guess what ? It never worked at first attempt, always running through problems. Definitely the reason why you don’t want to buy M Audio, even if their speakers are OK.

5:58 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
I agree–this thing is a hunk of junk! It never worked on my XP machine, and the playback doesn’t work on my MacBook Pro. Coincidentally, my FW 800 doesn’t work anymore, only in 400 mode. Wonder if this crappy 410 is to blame?

9:18 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said…
Constant problems with this from the start, random popping, restting and crashing for no reason. M-audio have been bought out and the new companies technical help desk could do nothing to help apart from advice me how it should be working theoretically.
A sensitive piece of shit, I’ll be glad to see the back of it.

Category: Audio

M-Audio FireWire 410 — Confusing and Crappy

Original Comments on this Post