Swissonic Easy Firewire (aka. Phonic Firefly 202) dissection
Recently I found myself looking for a new external sound card for my laptop which had worst integrated sound chip I had ever listened. Searching for alternatives I stumbled across "Swissonic Easy Firewire" at Thomann. It did support 24 bit / 96 kHz and ASIO, had balanced line inputs and outputs, headphone out with volume control and choice between external or bus power. Transformer was included. Nothing extraordinary except price: EUR 29. So I got curious, I mean, device of that price just don't have those features - at least if properly implemented.
So I ordered one and tried to found some infeormation about this device. Not much was found especially what comes to sound quality. It seems something happened Swissonic and Thomann bought all their remaining stock and is dumping these devices practically for free. I mean there are no support, not even Windows Vista drivers available so there sould not be much future for these devices. However, this Swissonic device seemed to be 1:1 clone of Phonic Firefly 202 which DO have Windows Vista and Windows 7 drivers by Phonic. But more on that later.
First Impressions
It did not took long until my package arrived from Thomann. Package was sturdy brown cardboard package with specifications printed on it. Clearly it was not designed to attract gamers - my first impression was that hey, this device seems to be for professionals. Package did contain device itself, firewire cable, linear 12 VDC 750 mA transformer, manual and driver CD, everything packaged neatly together. Device itself... well, it was big and ugly. Yes, ugly, but practical. Let me summarize what you do found from the device: On the top there is big dial for head-out volume. On the back you can find two 1/4" TRS connectors for balanced line-out, 6 pin firewire connector for data and power and DC plug for external power (in case your other end cannot supply power over firewire or you want some extra fidelity). On the front you see power led, 1/4" TSR connector for head-out and two 1/4" TSR connectrs for line-in. And yes, enclosure really IS made out of metal, only volume dial is plastic.
Inside
So of course I had to crack this device open. I mean, device of this build quality but so low price, it must have cheapest components available inside, right? I opened the deivce and I WAS surprised. First of all, it actually was packed full of stuff instead of one cheap all-in-one IC with poor PSU and no op-amps. No, there are bunch of IC's, lot's of caps, coils, op-amps, regulators etc. What surprised me more, was that at least my device had been manually modified. As you can see from the picture, there is manually added voltage regulator near of rear connectors. I don't know what to think... Clearly there has been some kind of design error which has slipped into production versions, but instead of throwing faulty PCB's away they have valued their products enough to actually repair them manually - something almost unheard nowadays.
I'll take these manual fixes as good sign - device I bought was so important for manufacturer that they actually repaired them. But what exactly are components on the board? The PCB is powered through Firewire or external PSU. Power is regulated to 12 VDC. Data from Firewire bus does go into LSI L-FW802B, which is low power PHY IEEE 1394A-2000 transceiver/arbiter device. Data is then sent into bridgeCo DM1100E chip, which is ARM926-based "Media Networking Processor". It does support I2S and S/PDIF interfaces, MIDI in/out, 12 I/O channels and sample rates 44.1 kHz - 192 kHz (though only small partion of features are in use in this device). Sadly I found no datasheets, so exact specifications are unknown for me. Then there is MX29LV320CBTC-70G, 32-bit 32M flash chip for the CPU.
Line-outputs are taken directly from DM1100E, no op-amps there. Inputs are routed through CS5430, which is 101 dB, 192 kHz stereo ADC. Not bad for EUR 29 device, huh? Head-out goes through NJM4556AL opeartional amplifier, which according to specifications is able to drive +-70mA into 150 ohm loads (giving +-10.5V output voltage). Other specifiaction, though, are not so impressive nor inferior.
Drivers
Swissonic never did release drivers for Windows 7 but device seems to be compatible with Phonic Firefly 202 drivers. Just grab latest drivers from Phonic (Phonic_HB_FF_1394.zip) and do a small .ini file tweak to make Windows accept "wrong" drivers. Extract drivers archive and you should find two .ini files inside: phonic_1394.inf and phonic_avs.inf. These are drivers for those two unknown devices in device manager.
Edit both of files and find list of supported devices inside,
looking something like this:
%S_DeviceDesc1%=_Install1, 1394\Phonic&FireFly_202
...
and
%S_DeviceDesc1%=_avs,phonic___1394_ENUM\Phonic&FireFly_202&__AVS
...
Lines above tells that devices identifying themself Phonic&FireFly_202
and Phonic&Firefly_202&__AVS are compatible. Just change those lines
(all of them, there are separate blocks for x86 and x64 architectures)
to look like this:
%S_DeviceDesc1%=_Install1, 1394\Phonic&EasyFw
and
%S_DeviceDesc1%=_avs,phonic___1394_ENUM\Phonic&EasyFw&AVS
Install drivers and everything should now work! I found, however, that without modifying settings drivers may sometimes cease to work or saound may go completely distorted. Tweaking buffer depth etc. made everythign work prperly. Settings I used were: 8000 uS Stream buffer depth, 40.0ms WDM sound buffer depth. However you mileage may vary.