I'm running a new MacBook Pro Aluminum with 4GB RAM and previously had issues with the new Symphony Express card into an Apogee Rosetta 200 via Logic Pro 8 (OSX and Logic Pro 8 are fully updated to latest spec, as is the Symphony Card)

Many, many issues including pops, clicks and screen freezes at any latency setting below 512... At 512 it will run for a bit but eventually finds its way to a screen freeze after 30 to 45 minutes.

So to rectify this, I Bought the following (all new):

Magma Expressbox1 with ExpressCard 34 interface
RME HDSPe AES card
Lavry Blue AD (one 2-channel unit)
CraneSong Avocet (DA and monitor controller)

I was optimistic that this would cure the evils the Apogee Mobile Symphony system had wrought...

How wrong I was...

Bought the RME card after reading about success with other MacBook Pro/Magma users (older generation versions - not the Aluminum). Installed it into the Magma and loaded the latest drivers and flash updater (for the card itself) from the RME site. Installed drivers and then tried to do the flash update... The updater started working then indicated "failure" and then displayed the serial number on the card as "XXXXXXX" meaning the card had been corrupted by the process in some way.  The card would not let any audio pass into the mixer software provided by RME, I'm guessing as a result of this failed update...

So, now I have a warranty claim with my RME vendor which will hopefully be settled.

Have I done anything wrong on the installation/update of my RME card?

If not then I have one basic overriding suspicion: The new PowerBook Pro cannot do sound/recording at any level approaching "professional grade"

Has anyone been able to find any AD/DA - Driver - MacBook interface that works with anything approaching reliability?

I'm about to punt on the MacBook Pro and get a Mac Pro tower to see if that works (I'm guessing it should, no?). Portability is not a huge issue for me...

I just think something about the architecture with the new MacBook Pro makes it choke when it see recording software/hardware...

Thoughts comments most appreciated and welcome!

Best,

Mike