Which Firewire controller should I use?
Which firewire controllers work well and which don’t work?
Some of Ricoh chipsets are reported not to work well, some seem to work fine.
NEC chipset has been tested by a developer and is reported to work fine, but since Presonus advises against them, there must be a reason to avoid them.
So far, in order of preference (best to worst) according to developers: Texas Instruments, VIA, NEC, O2 Micro (all are OHCI controllers)
NB: OHCI firewire cards are natively supported by Windows, no driver install necessary
According to Presonus :
USB/firewire and s400/s800 combo cards are not compatible. Symptoms are
usually no audio recording/playback but device will install and sync,
erratic audio performance and rarely will not allow the device to
install or sync. We recommend a firewire card that ONLY has s400
firewire connections and preferably with a Texas Instruments or VIA
chipset.
Firewire cards with NEC chipsets are not compatible. Symptoms are
similar or the same as combo cards.