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XPS 15 9560, external audio interface through TB16 Dock
Hi to all.
Changed my MacBookPro for a 15" XPS 9560. My external audio interface is a Focusrite Saphire 56 with fire wire. After searching many forums, I found using a couple of Apple aptators Thunderbolt 3 >Thunderbolt 2 > Fire 800 I managed to get my audio interface working.
Problem 1. It works when connecting to my XPS TB3 (USB-C) port. If I connect to my TB16 dock it does not work. I upgraded the firmware for both my dock and my XPS. I thought might be to do with using apple cables, so I spent $400 and buying a USB audio interface. Installed and connects to my XPS it works fine. If I connect to the USB in my Dock it does not work.
With both the Thunder bolt and the USB I get the sound when I plug in but it does not connect. Its like the Thunderbolt between the XPS and the Dock does not support Audio.
Any ideas? Does anyone successfully have an external sound card on the Dell thunderbolt docking station?
Equipment:
Dell XPS 15" 9560. 1tb, 32gb, Win 10 64bit.
Dell TB16 Dock,
Focusrite Saffire 56pro Firewire audio interface.
Focusrite Saffire io 20 Gen2 USB audio interface.
All drivers and firmware are updated.
Many thanks in advance.
jphughan
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September 21st, 2018 12:00
It wouldn't matter to the Thunderbolt connection between the XPS and dock that you're carrying audio, because the audio isn't even audio at that point; it's just a USB data stream that is itself being carried as PCIe traffic thanks to a PCIe-to-USB bridge chip inside the dock. Thunderbolt only natively carries DisplayPort and PCIe, so everything inside or attached to the dock other than displays is either running native PCIe or running USB and then crossing over that bridge chip. When you say that upon plugging in your audio interface you hear the new hardware sound but that "it does not connect", what does that mean, exactly? And just to eliminate an obvious possibility, have you gone to Control Panel > Sound and made sure that your external audio interface is selected as the default playback and/or recording device when it's connected, assuming that's what you want to have happen?
Lastly, you mentioned updating the firmware on the dock and XPS and then said "all drivers and firmware are updated". Does that latter statement include the Thunderbolt software/driver and the firmware update for the Thunderbolt 3 controller chip inside your system? The latter is a separate update from the system BIOS/firmware. The last culprit would be the ASMedia PCIe USB host controller driver, which is for that bridge chip I mentioned earlier.
I'm 95% certain I've read posts here about people successfully using an external audio interface through a TB16, but I admittedly haven't searched to dig them up.
jphughan
4 Operator
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14K Posts
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September 21st, 2018 13:00
One further thought in addition to the above: Do you happen to have Citrix Receiver installed on your system? There was a known issue a while ago about Citrix Receiver causing all sorts of issues related to USB devices connected to the dock because of a conflict with the ASMedia driver, and the fix was to update to a newer version of Citrix Receiver that can freely be downloaded directly from Citrix. There's a Dell KB article about it somewhere. If you don't have Citrix Receiver, I'm wondering if there might be either something else installed on your system or something about the audio interface itself that causes a problem when the data needs to cross over that ASMedia bridge chip. Do other USB devices connected to the dock work properly? If not, it's probably the former. If so, it's probably the latter.
Mclagett
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January 23rd, 2019 05:00