The firmware update was for anyone experiencing speaker issues on your MBP. It didn't address the battery manger bug causing a low latency coreaudio stream to overload.

I have had success in disabling the .kext file for the battery manager by renaming it to .xkext and rebooting. The OS doesn't load it.

From researching this, the battery manager merely reports the battery status to the OS, it doesn't affect charging or power distribution on the MBP. Those are handled by an embedded controller that works independent of the OS at the hardware level. This is why you can still charge your MBP with it powered off. Thermal management is handled by another system. The battery temperature sensors are still active after the hack.

I lost my energy saving features and battery status after booting up, so this is not a hack to do running on battery. You would have no warning if the battery was out of charge. I just make sure I am connected to the AC Adapter. The battery still charges in the background, just no readout of its state.

Without the battery manager running, I no longer get the coreaudio overload bug every 60 seconds when running a low latency active live track in Logic.

I posted in depth on this VI control thread about cpu spikes on Macs.

One thing I just was reading is that FireWire might actually be a better format in this article. Since you have the original ufx, you could try Apple adapter hell, and go, thunderbolt3 to thunderbolt2 adapter and thunderbolt2 to FireWire adapter. See if that helps. The battery hack will definitely improve things too. I also setup a separate admin user I login to that has a bunch of things turned off. Like iCloud, Notifications, BlueTooth, Siri, etc through System Preferences. I then run the battery hack and use that user to minimize background system processes. Anything that runs on the system bus or part of the IOKit framework can potentially interrupt your low latency audio. If you get a lot of dropouts keep the console open in the background and have your clock open and note the time and check what happened around it. You should see an error that says CoreAudio IOWorkLoop Skipping Cycle Due to Overload. That’s basically the CoreAudio buffer timing out waiting for another single thread process to finish. The battery manager is the worst, but other things can cause issues too.

The MBP battery hack is pretty simple. You will basically trick OSX into thinking you are running a desktop Mac.

First make sure you are plugged into the AC Adapter. You also need to disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) to have access to change the system files. Restart the MBP and hold Command+R before the Apple Logo appears, and boot into Recovery Mode. At the menu bar, select Utilities>Terminal and type this command and hit Return:

csrutil disable

Restart your MBP and login

Open Finder and go to System/Library/Extensions/AppleSmartBatteryManager.kext

Right Click>Rename

Change .kext to .xkext and enter your password

Open Terminal and type this command and hit Return:

sudo kextcache -system-caches

Enter your password

This will flush the driver caches. It takes ~15-20 seconds. You will get a new Terminal prompt when it completes.

Once complete, Reboot your MBP

When you log back in you will no longer have a battery readout. You can verify the hack by opening Terminal and typing this command and hit Return:

pmset -g batt

This typically tells you the state of the battery charge. It should read "AC Power" if the hack worked.

To undo the hack, simply rename the .xkext extension back to .kext, run the kextcache -system-caches terminal command again, and reboot.

***Don't forget to turn SIP back on once you verify the hack, through booting back into Recovery Mode Utilities> Terminal: csrutil enable and Reboot***

So the downsides of the hack is you get no battery status in OSX, so I don't recommend running it while you are on battery power only. You also lose your energy saving features.

The upside is the battery driver doesn't cause the coreaudio dropout in this mode. The battery power state is maintained by an embedded controller in its hardware, so OSX doesn't actually control the charging or power distribution. This is the reason you can charge your MBP with it powered off. Also the thermal management is not affected by this, and the battery temp sensors are still active. I bought a simple usb-c power meter that I connect to my MBP port and plug the power adapter cable into it, giving a readout of the voltage and current. Everything looked normal with ~ 2x more current when the hack was active vs without. Voltage remained constant between both setups.

This is obviously a hack messing around with system files, so do this at your own risk. There is potential here for corrupting the OS or instability. For my system, I've run this setup for several days with no issues. I'm on a 2018 MBP i9 32GB 1TB SSD with a RME BFP.

There are a few other services I've noticed that can cause some coreaudio related issues, and might help desktop users too. These are the watchdog events and apsd (Apple Push Service Daemon). I'm still experimenting with turning those off. I'll report back if I can remove them without any issues.

Just before hacking a new MacBook Pro with all the software i need clean installed...
Is it a way for RME to develop a driver to avoid the problems with battery manager and the glitches or it's not possible cause of the hardware of the UFX?

Hello, I‘m new here.

I just wanted to report that I‘ve also been experiencing some really heavy, but very sporadic/occasional glitching while performing  using Ableton Live 10. Under light load, only using Live for Looping/Mixing/Keyscapeplaying, after having done fine for 30 minutes, all audio on all outputs will suddenly scramble really hard, distorting&buzzing like a broken printer for 1 second, then the sound will resolve to normal again after some buffersize-too-small-esque crackling (0.5secs). The issue appears absolutely voluntarily. After having had those issues 2-3 times in an hour and then being unable to trigger the glitch again during a 6 hour session, I‘m really clueless, especially as I didn‘t have those issues with my old MBP 2013.

Now using:

MBP i9 2.9 2018, High Sierra (2nd Supplemental Update for MBP18)
RME UCX (via direct USB-B-C cable), 3.09
Ableton Live 10 Suite
Installed Plugins: Keyscape, Soundtoys, NI Komplete 11, Waves Tune Real Time, u-he Diva, and some small things.
Used Plugins in this session: Keyscape, Soundtoys Little Plate, Live‘s External Instrument.

I‘m really hoping for a solution to this issue, as I really don‘t wanna ditch RME for it‘s stability (normally), but also can‘t use this setup for pro-level-live situation, which it was intended for...

Cheers

Not every dev profiles his code and thinks about the big picture and near realtime demand of recording. Biggest killer of "quality" from our perspective will be project plans and priorities and product managers thinking more about reinventing GUI and icons which is of course extremely important...

Bummer, although it's good to know I'm not the only one, as the other glitches described here appear to be more of a regularly recurring nature.

I really don't know where to start looking first, if the error lies on Apple's, RME's or even my own side of things, if it has something to do with a weird USB-B to C conversion or some other weird thing. I've yet been unable/unwilling to test it with my old Focusrite 18i20 1st Gen, and I don't currently have the possibility to test a USB-C/3.1/Thunderbolt-Native interface...

A big problem seems to be that the problem doesn't appear when I "want" it to and recreation seems impossible. And when working I can't have all kinds of monitoring running waiting for a glitch to appear...

If you are comfortable with renaming a system file, try my battery hack above. It's just turning off OSX SIP, rebooting, renaming the AppleSmartBatteryManager.kext to .xkext, running a Terminal command to flush the driver cache, and rebooting. It's advisable to run the hack while always plugged into the AC Adapter, since you can't see the charge status. I also have Ableton 10 and without the hack I get a lot of dropouts, with the hack it is smooth sailing, at least on my RME BFP. Without the hack running one Omnisphere 2.5 patch would get constant glitches. With the hack I had 7 running without issues, and probably had plenty more overhead to add tracks.

Hi Ewtwolf,

I'll try the hack and report my experience with Live 10 and the Fireface UFX tomorrow.

Thanks a lot for your great advices here!

Check my post #65 on the simple version of the hack. I reformatted so the terminal commands are clear. My post #54 explains things in more detail.

The hack is not working for me... It's still glitching...

I saw your earlier logs you posted. But try and grab the second before and after too without searching anything. Just copy all the messages. The overload thing is something on your system bus taking cpu priority from the coreaudio data stream. Do you have any monitoring software running, like a fan controller? Those cause issues. I also find iCloud to be a pain, and check your network devices and make sure there is no BlueTooth PAN installed or Thunderbolt bridge. Turn off Siri too.

Did you verify the battery hack went through? You can also do Apple menu, About this Mac and System Report, then click Power on the left column. It should just say AC Power if the you booted without the battery manager.

FWIW, I did a test run with Ableton 10 today on MBP, and it was solid. No drop outs and running a bunch of heavy cpu Omnisphere 2 patches at 64 sample buffer size. I have my RME BFP directly plugged into the apple usb-c adapter, left side closer one to me.

Yes, it was with Safari...

And yes, the two updates are installed.

Is this a case of waiting to see if anything gets done to resolve it then?

Says who?

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop … mp;t=65227

Yes but with just the DAW opened it's making glitches too...

Windows 10 Pro on Bootcamp runs better for audio. At least for my setup with the BFP. You need to do the usual performance tweaks in windows, but otherwise I can run the same Ableton setup I was testing in OSX without any of the dropouts at the same 64 sample buffer. Not an elegant solution, but it works. My fix until Apple gets their OSX audio stuff sorted out.

Yep, MC you seem to be right, (un)fortunately other manufacturers hw is not problem free either. Did not have time to test disabling battery manager after all, i just had a somewhat glitch free session using apple usb-c - usb adapter instead of satechi hub. I did not get to work on the project i had the problems with before, i'll definitely test the battery manager hack next time i have have glitching that happens all the time.

Just to be clear i have exactly same kind of glitching duke_kennington described, i guess these massive glitches happen regardless of cpu load, safari audio, vlc, itunes, etc... In addition to those there's also smaller glitches, the heavier the cpu load (still something that i guess should be manageable) the more frequently the glitches occur. These sound like sample clip in a wave file with no crossfade in the beginning. Still weird that 5 years older computer did not have these, same os, almost same everything (time machine). BTW ableton was just updated to 10.0.3, according to notes there's something improved regarding the graphics rendering (less cpu & gpu usage).

Somehow all this brings back memories from times when soundblaster was sharing IRQ with SCSI controller or something. At that time rme multiface fixed all the problems for 10 years and after that switching to mac fixed the remaining ones. Anyway thanks so far and good luck for everyone. I'll report back about the battery manager hack or using firewire when i have time to test more!

Problems are back...

I'm in contact with an Apple Engineer from the Support Team.

I've given my console logs and the links from the Rme forum and from the Motu forum.

He'll come back asap with news from the development team about the problem. I'll report here.

Old rule of thumb: the more customer complain the higher the prio / attendance.

Would not hurt if he posts his Apple case number that your issues can be linked to his case.

Advantage for Apple and you, that there are more customers available to check / validate any upcoming hotfix from Apple, so that Apple can be more confident to include this hotfix into the next official release upgrade.

K.

So how do you actually log everything? In the console? How?

Cheers

You should have showed them the link to UAD forum where also UAD user are having problems.

It's at minimum already 2 different 3rd party vendors.

BTW My wife told me that iPhone doesn't charge anymore the batteries. For security reasons they screwed it up. Now you need to login to iPhone 1st before you can charge it !!!

What brilliant company with such a 1st class support. If the devices at least would be cheaper / adequate to such poor service ...

I just hope that the developpment team from RME is talking with the Apple engineers and don’t abandon the problem...

Apple simply gives bad service here. The problem is on their side. Also Motu user have issues.

What really wonders me is that one guy gets support for this issue, but not you. Isn't it strange ?!

Is one of the bigger Apple shops near you? Maybe you should talk to them face to face.

Thanks for the video, I'tried before to disable batterymanager but the glitches stayed... Is your system ok after those settings? No glitches anymore?