Topic: FF802 + Monterey 12.6.2 + firewire + sleep = crackly audio

Hi all,

First time poster but RME user of over 15 years.  I usually have great results with my RME gear and don't get too stumped, but I've got a new issue which is weird that I haven't seen any resolutions to:

Recently upgraded my well loved Mac Pro 5,1 to OS Monterey using Open Core Legacy Patcher and for the most part everything has been going great.  Recently however, since the upgrade once my Mac goes to sleep and then I come back to wake it up, audio is very crackly on any sample rate that is not 32K or 64K (I haven't tried 96K or 128K) no matter what application I'm using.  44.1and 48K are crackly and nothing short of rebooting the machine seems to correct it.  I let it run at 64K for a while.  The audio was good and then degraded after ~10 minutes.  Once I reboot the machine all is well and as long as I don't let it go to sleep it seems that all is working well.  It's not the end of the world but is a PIA.

I run my FF802 via the Firewire interface.  I did try running it on USB and found that this problem went away.  I also recently upgraded my FF802 firmware as it was fairly out of date but that didn't resolve the issue. 

This firewire crackly issue never occurred on 10.14 Mojave after going to sleep with same software which is what I recently upgraded from.

I suppose I could switch over to USB interface.  Question though - if I do that is the FF802 USB 1,2,or 3?  Would I be losing significant bandwidth plugging into one of the native USB1 ports?

Would prefer to keep running via firewire if at all possible, if anyone knows of a solution.

Re: FF802 + Monterey 12.6.2 + firewire + sleep = crackly audio

Hi and welcome!

shaneotis720 wrote:

I suppose I could switch over to USB interface.  Question though - if I do that is the FF802 USB 1,2,or 3?  Would I be losing significant bandwidth plugging into one of the native USB1 ports?

The interface has an USB 2.0 port. USB 1.1 doesn’t work.
What driver versions (both USB and FireWire) do you have installed? For Monterey you need other versions than for Mojave.

Greetings

FF 400 - Babyface pro - Digiface USB - ADI-2 (original)
Mac mini M1 - Macbook pro - iPad Air2

Re: FF802 + Monterey 12.6.2 + firewire + sleep = crackly audio

Thanks for your reply!  Yeah, I should have included the driver versions.. I am using the latest non-beta drivers firewire version 3.41 which I believe should work solid for macos 12.6.2.  Thank you for the USB info.

Re: FF802 + Monterey 12.6.2 + firewire + sleep = crackly audio

shaneotis720 wrote:

Thanks for your reply!  Yeah, I should have included the driver versions.. I am using the latest non-beta drivers firewire version 3.41 which I believe should work solid for macos 12.6.2.  Thank you for the USB info.

Normally yes, but let’s be honest, you run 'Monterey' on an unsupported Mac…

FF 400 - Babyface pro - Digiface USB - ADI-2 (original)
Mac mini M1 - Macbook pro - iPad Air2