This whole thing is a moving target. It seems that in latest Sonoma updates Apple improved the DK performance a lot. We are currently trying to verify this. It would explain why the number of complaints on DK performance issues have nearly completely vanished.

M3 Pro + UFX+ / TB connection , 196 Khz at 2 ms, and no problems. Unbelievable, no interference, nothing, only WAV recordings after more than 1 minute are delayed in FL Studio. But that's only during recording, not otherwise.
Under Windows and USB, I don't even need to start with 192 Khz o)))

The FUT can't work without the hardware connected to the computer, same for the Fireface Settings, Totalmix starts in "Disconnected-mode".
You have to connect the unit to the computer to find out if the driver is working.
For your computer I recommend the DK 410 driver.

Soon to be new UFX III owner (will be delivered in a few days) with Mac Studio M2Ultra and Apollo X8. I plan to use the UFX as the audio device and use the Apollo as an external FX/mic pre via ADAT. Eventide H9000R will be eventually connected via MADI once I get my hands on the MADI expansion card from Eventide.

I'm running Sonoma 14.4.1 currently and plan to start with the latest DriverKit driver with the UFX connected directly to one of the Mac Studio's TB/USB4 ports. I will also try one of the USB3 ports on my Caldigit Element TB4 hub just for another data point.

Hopefully I don't run into the issues several here have had.

So got the new UFX III connected and seems to be trouble free on M2Ultra w 14.4.1 and the driver kit driver. Compared the headphone output with my Sennheiser HD650 and it is MUCH better than the Apollo X8 headphone out - the X8 sounds thick & opaque in comparison. Comparing the monitor outs is difficult since the RME is XLR and the Apollo is TRS.

Very happy!

UPDATE:  Spoke too soon, having occasional (every couple minutes of playing a piano in Cubase) clicks and pops with no CPU/ASIO overload indicated. Switched to the kernel extension driver, 3.31 and seems to be running perfectly after several minutes of playback in Cubase.

Looks like the driverkit driver still needs some work.

Mac OS 14.4.1, M2Ultra Mac Studio, USB3 using provided USB-C cable plugged into one of the rear TB/USB4 ports on the Mac Studio.

I don’t exactly understand: did the two units ever work on your new MacBook?

Thank you for posting this. It pains me to read yet another report of DK driver not working as expected. This Apple/RME standoff is so unproductive. Best we can hope for is macOS 15 fixes something in the DK architecture, cuz RME seems to be happy with just a video that steers us towards installing FW drivers (edit: I mean Kext drivers).

I have 14.5 and there were also problems.
I added the DAW apps to "Input monitoring" and from then on it worked. Midi no longer worked for me.  Yesterday, when I was working with the DAW, the OS reported my iPhone as a micro in the DAW. o)))
I don't know if it was WLan or Bluetooth, it came all by itself, Apple seems to be making big changes.

https://rme-audio.de/driverkit-vs-kernel-extension.html

I'll ignore this 99.99% suggestion and am not even going to spend time defending what I wrote. You and I both know it's true, and so do the engineers who wrote the code that reports buffer errors on a clean macOS on a current Apple product. It's not a "moving target", it's a very clear stationary target: the DK client needs low latency high throughput access with realtime/isochronous priority. The current user space arrangement isn't that. If FW was still an option, I'd go as far as to say USB isn't that either.

The differences between dk and kexts have been discussed multiple times in this forum, in the apple developer forums and described by apple itself in several documents and developer guides.

What is your constructive addition here, gmarinov? What are your new insights that could help someone?

It seems that some users are more interested in venting their frustrations than in describing problems in detail. Instead of trying to get a real solution.

There are issues with several apps that do not work with the DK driver, but do with the KE driver. Plus there are apps that in general have issues with 'soundcards' that have more than 8 channels....

To tackle this we gave DK driver 4.12 a new option: Channel Limit.

From the readme:
- New option Channel Limit. Default: Off. Allows the number of Rec/Play channels to be limited to 8, 16 or 32 channels in order to avoid incompatibilities with various apps. Attention: changing the channel count on the fly is not supported by most apps! Quit the audio application before making changes and then restart it.

We successfully tested the effect on Apple's own Facetime and the popular Zoom app (but Zoom just got an update which fixed the multichannel issue with the DK driver - thumbs up!).

While our driver issues a reset when changing the channel count on the fly, our experience is that most apps completely ignore this reset request. They should stop, flush and build new buffers and take over the channel count. With such apps you  notice playback/record will change speed to half or double etc. Stop / Start usually does not help, the audio interface must be restarted which for many apps means either app restart, or change to a different interface (internal speakers...) and back - then everything works again as it should.

Our own DigiCheck NG performs the reset and thus continues to show correct analysis, but misses the changed channel count, for example in the Global Level Meter. We will update it accordingly.

Please try 4.12 and tell us how it worked for you. TotalMix 1.95 is included as well.

Download:
https://www.rme-audio.de/downloads/driv … ac_412.zip

Excellent.

Hello hselters,

Interesting observation! If I recall correctly, I haven't encountered the "5.1 instead of 7.1.4 issue" with Apple Music since installing Sonoma about a year ago. I just found some details on this Apple discussion thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/25 … 9375220022

I have a question: when switching to 32-channel mode or turning it off with the current 4.12 dk driver, do you still only get 5.1 Atmos output? This would maybe be a hint that OS'es before sonoma have this problem in Music?

---

Additionally, I've noticed something peculiar today while playing a stereo track in Apple Music. When switching from 'off' or '32-channel' mode to '8-channel' or '16-channel', Apple Music seems to replicate the stereo playback across all 8 or 16 channels immediately. This of course leads to harmonics and overtones generated by clipping and intermodulation distortion...

I can reproduce this issue while running Sequoia beta, and I'm curious if it affects Sonoma and older macOS versions as well.
I've managed to pinpoint the issue as follows: The track is stereo and must be stored locally. The file format (AIFF, WAV, MP3) and audio properties (sample rate, bit depth, etc.) don't appear to influence the outcome.

Memo at me Remember not to switch the channels "on the fly" as MC described above:

Attention: changing the channel count on the fly is not supported by most apps! Quit the audio application before making changes and then restart it.

Hi
Wrong driver! You need v3.31! 3.223 is for older macOS versions.

ADAT is not comparable to USB or FireWire, it’s simply a digital audio protocol / connection with eight channels (at 44.1 or 48 kHz) over one cable. The host computer cannot recognise the FF800, the interface is in standalone mode, therefore the red host light. You can route eight of the FF800 analog inputs internally to its ADAT out and send them to the FF802 (and the same vice versa for analog outputs over the FF800). Doing that, you could add analog inputs and outputs, but the total channel number of the FF802 stays the same.

Chapter 23 in the FF802 manual  up to version 2 explains what to do to be able to use the ARC in stand-alone mode.

Thanks. So the theory seems to make sense.

——-

Maybe an idea, regarding your 192k issue:

If you are sure nothing else (app, whatever) sets the rate explcitly after reboot, maybe it could be worth to try this:

First Backup these 2 files anywhere (just in case…) These files store the overall macos AMS Audio settings…
/Library/Preferences/Audio/com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist
/Library/Preferences/Audio/com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist

Then, delete them and reboot. Mac should initialise the files by itself after a reboot.

Have to mention: I have no macos older than sonoma atm. So could not verify this by myself.

Hi, I tryed infinite times to make my ff400 works. I’m on a MacBook Pro m1. First tryed on Ventura, no luck. Downgrade to Monterrey, no luck. Tryed on Sonoma and no luck. Tryed all the terminal comands, the RME reset video too. I just need to config the RME to work stand alone for adat expansion

How exactly is the FF400 connected to the Mac?
Beside that: wrong thread, FF400 is not related to USB drivers on macOS 11 and up.