Ok, unfortunately, my journey is still not over yet ... after buying this 5m USB extension ...
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B007B6 … 8&th=1
... and this USB 3 cable ...
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07F6R … 8&th=1
it looked good on first sight, but in the end I experienced dropouts again.
How I could get rid of those was only by using exclusively the Madiface XT on my thunderbolt 4 Hub (which I bought for a lot of money to accommodate three SATA SSDs in USB enclosures and other USB devices ). The Mac Studio USB A ports don't work properly with the RME interface!
I have two questions to hopefully end this madness:
1) Do you have any recommendation for a Thunderbolt 4 to USB 3 Adaptor or Hub that I could get for just the Madiface XT? It is actually a waste of bandwidth to use a full thunderbolt port for just a USB 3 interface, but I can spare one port! But I have no clue what adaptor/hub to use that will hopefully not induce more problems with the audio interface? And I was hoping I would not have to buy a pretty expensive hub that is actually built for more than one port ... the alternative would be to get a PCIe expansion chassis to house the Sonnet USB 3 card that previously worked so well with the Madiface XT on my Hackintosh (I see the irony, yes!). But that also seems quite wasteful to me ...
2) Is there any way to troubleshoot quicker? My problem is, it sometimes takes multiple days until some dropouts come back. And I need to be able to quickly test whether a certain configuration induces problems. I don't know for a fact, but shouldn't a massive load on the interface (e.g. a DAW project playing back audio on all (or many) channels make any instability of the USB connection apparent immediately? It would be good to know any way of deciding within a short timeframe wether a certain setup does work or doesn't ...