Hello,

I have no emails from this address of yours in my inbox. Where (and from where) did you send these mails?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Are you using Sierra or High Sierra? If going back to Sierra solves the problems, then I'm fine with waiting for the HS update.

Is there a possibility for an opinion from you regarding current MBP and operating system?

At Sierra I got issues and I got the tip of Matthias to try High Sierra, didn't help anything and looked like it got even worse

With windows probably like a charm. I suspect OSX of behaving dodgy...

Thanks for reply! Sounds like hell It's really a shame that someone dropped the ball on one of the most popular computers and interfaces around, regardless if it's Apple or RME.
After all I decided to pass on new Macs, also decided to switch to dedicated multitrack recorder (Cymatic uTrack24) and not use RME UFX for live gigs anymore.
Cheers!

@childrenof9:
> I was in my studio with a producer and singer Im working with and they have the same issue with different RME interfaces (Babyface, UFX, UCX) and OSX sierra / OSX high sierra.

That's a too vague and unclear statement. To our knowledge Apple has finally fixed their USB problems (at least the ones you describe) with High Sierra 10.13.x. How many of those that you know having problems use 10.13?

We can reproduce degraded performance with 10.12., but no longer with 10.13, which is a must-do upgrade for anyone having one of the newer Macs, but also recommended for anyone else.

Also our support feedback (similar to this forum) lacks proof that there are tons of Apple users out there with problems like you describe them. You seem to be an exception to the rule, and unfortunately it looks like we can not change the performance of your Macs from our side.

@Alex1:
> Clicks and pops when scrolling in Studio One etc.

It seems you need to do a Windows-style breakdown of active devices and drivers to find out what is interrupting USB audio when doing graphics stuff on that machine. The need to disable WiFi and Bluetooth (just an example) is nothing new in the Apple world. I agree this is disappointing, but there is nothing we can do to improve USB operation when it gets disturbed on hardware level.

What are the main issues with Sierra that make High Sierra a must-do upgrade? I've heard conflicting reports about High Sierra so I'm very confused!

Ableton Live always had issues on Macbooks in low CPU load situations. That is because of OS X aggressive, but rather imperfect power-saving functions. So in order to first rule out that long known culprit, please try running the software "Systemload" at around 10-20% load while using Live.

https://www.bresink.com/osx/SystemLoad.html

Hi amtiskaw, in your video its sounds exactly as the problem I and the people im working with are having. Did you use migration assistant for configuring your macbook?

When you're having these issues, your inbuiltsoundcard works fine?

Built in soundcard generally works fine.

High Sierra was installed and upgraded via App Store.

Will conduct some further experiments and report back. Perhaps yesterdays 10.11.4 will help.

It's slightly confounding in that the updates to High Sierra and Ableton 10 (from 9) and use of the UC all happened at the same time.

That Mac had worked quite happily with a Babyface Pro and Ableton 9 for a year. No 'low load' issues.

Thank you for the suggestions an input so far

Thanks for the suggestion. I did that and managed to resolve the scrolling-skipping issues. However, with the RME UCX connected and NO other usb devices on the system, the audio glitches are still just as frequent.

I switched over to the audio interface in a Native Instruments Maschine mk3 and everything works perfectly, even with 2 5k monitors, multiple usb devices, etc.

I switched to internal sound. Everything works perfectly.

I switched to a usb audio device built in to my external monitor. Everything works perfectly.

Switch back to the RME UCX -> total failure again.

I'm very happy to help you track down the bug, but I simply can't accept that this is not solvable by anyone but Apple.

If you're willing to accept this is an RME issue and work to resolve it, please let me (and I guess the rest of us?) know asap since otherwise I expect we'll all be shopping for new hardware.

So what you're saying is that with the Class compliant driver it works but apparently not with the RME driver from mine and 3 (!!) people's perspective I work with.

If one of you guys are in Berlin, let me show it straight to you directly!

Yeah agree, what RME is saying it does work with class compliant mode but not with RME's driver itself. So then the issue can also be in that driver.

What annoys me a lot is the 'not our problem' attitude. Easy to blame apple, they can be right but then at least give ideas / active help towards solving this. A fact is, RME does NOT work usable with my (high) sierra macbook and I have 3 other people who also have these issues besides the people in this thread. This is just not an isolated issue anymore.

Hello,

This isn't so much an issue of "accepting" theoretical possibilities, but of knowing what is and can be an RME issue and what isn't. There is more to this than just "blaming Apple". It would help if you could accept facts.

That's not correct. This is neither a general Mac issue nor specifically an RME problem...

Allow me to rephrase this: We can not fix that we have determined to be an external issue, even if it were to render a certain kind of computer hardware unusable with out interfaces. Please mind that no audio interface can compensate for performance issues of a computer.

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

I think its more the point that both products need to comply to certain standards.
In this case RME can't fix something, so its Apples responsibility.

Do you remember how all companies producing firewire audio interfaces (Focusrite, etc .. ALL!) had Firewire issues when Apple brought out its fusion drive ? It was a big mess, until finally Apple fixed the issues on THEIR side and this is only one example.

I believe that RME is so honest to know when they can fix something and when not. I know RME in a way that they do everything for their customers if they can. Certainly much much more than Apple.

So .. what makes you so sure that its RMEs responsibility to fix something ?

Its surely for you a lot easier to make big waves here compared to open a support case at Apple, one customer out of millions. But is this a fair or professional manner ? I believe not.

BTW .. what were your activities so far into the direction to Apple ?

We have this exact machine (16 GB RAM, ATI graphics), and the UCX works without any noticable problem on it. We also tried all 4 USB-C ports (you did not mention which one you use). We usually use a cheap Aukey hub for USB connection, but also tried the original Apple one.

It would be nice if you could also accept the fact that the UCX works on this machine over here. I do not deny that you have performance problems, but obviously as long as we can't reproduce them there is nothing that we could change or fix.

Serious question: Did you ever try a different USB cable? It might be simply broken, causing such kind of effects.

Well that’s very interesting to hear. Are you suggesting that it’s my individual copy of the MacBook Pro (and presumably the copies childrenof9 and his colleagues) which is at fault?

I’m happy to believe you. It would be interesting to try to identify the differences between environments. Maybe we could help solve the problem for many other users.

Glad to be back to troubleshooting: yes I’ve tried about 4 or 5 different cables (just swapping cables and nothing else, in order to isolate the issue). The behaviour is the same in each case.

I’ve tried all 4 usb-c ports.

I’ve tried the system connected to other equipment but also fully isolated with only the UCX connected and hooked up only to my speakers in case it was some sort of electrical fault.

I’ve tried the UCX powered direct from the wall and via a UPS.

USB hubs I’ve used include Apple’s USB-c to usb adaptor, apple’s usb-c to vga adaptor, apple’s usb-c to hdmi adaptor, an aukey hub, and another usb-c to usb-3 adaptor. I’ve also tried adding an extra usb-2 hub between these and the audio card (actually, 2 different hubs). No change.

I’ve also had the corruption occur when playing audio direct from macOS, so I know it’s now DAW-related.

The one thing that does seem to correlate is CPU load above 50%. Have you tested your setup with, for example, a DAW loaded with many plugins? The “helpful” part of this problem is that once you’ve triggered the UCX to go corrupt, all sound through the UCX on the system is corrupt for some time (often until you restart the device or switch audio rates / buffer sizes). So for example you could play the DAW to generate a realistic load, trigger the corruption, quit the DAW and you will still have corrupt sound in the OS.

This is helpful to demonstrate that it’s not the plugins / DAW distorting themselves.

Random troubleshooting question, apropos of nothing: are you using the RME interface as the default system audio output, as well as for your audio applications? Sounds like it -- I wonder if the problem persists if you use the interface exclusively with your DAW.

I'm on an older MBP with real USB ports, so I'm not affected by any of these problems, but I'm following this thread with some interest since I'll need to upgrade hardware eventually...

Maybe there is something related ....

Does your Apple use Intel integrated graphics ? I had issues with such a setup on a Lenovo T540P (Win7, ~4y ago)
On an otherwise IDLE machine simply playing back a FLAC file with MusicBee I only needed to use the
mousewheel to scroll up and down a little with a loaded webpage in Firefox and got audio dropouts.
Stability I got with my UFX only by raising the ASIO buffersize from 48 to 256 or even 512.

Then by occasion I found the possibility to let firefox run over a dedicated nVidia GPU which was additionally deployed on this Laptop. Once I configured to run firefox application via the nVidia GPU the problems were all away and I had absolute stability at lowest ASIO buffersizes of 48 samples.

The issue arose I think, that the GPU inside of the CPU shares the DRAM with the machine.

Just an idea .. dunno whether applicable in your specific case.

Just read this here: https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=26986 .. something weired with Apple .. or Google ... who knows..

We will continue testing after Musikmesse. Thanks for the further details. Several questions from our side:

- how is the UCX clocked and what typical sample rate do you use?
- do you use MIDI, and is this heavy or light MIDI load?
- is Siri activated?
- Do you get drop-outs also with simple playback of music via iTunes? I assume not as that doesn't cause enough CPU load...

- 48k always
- Sometimes, but normally over USB when those devices support it. Has no impact on the audio issue as these are generally disconnected when mixing
- No. Siri drives me nuts :-D
- No, although if I run another process that is cpu-intensive it can trigger the corruption.

Not that this is not just drop-outs. Once the glitch occurs, the sound is completely corrupted until the unit is reset or I change the audio rate to reset it.

You are hijacking a thread that talks about a different problem. Your issue has a known workaround explained here, starting at post 17:

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=24842