Topic: How I fixed my UFX III M1 Max stutters / dropouts / glitches
After dealing with dropouts for nearly two months, I decided to do a clean install of Sonoma, and restore all of my data from a time machine backup. Part of my reason for doing a clean install of Sonoma is hearing how some M1 users seemingly had no issues with dropouts. I also noticed the "Macintosh HD-Data" portion of my drive in Disk Utility would not complete a first aid scan without reporting errors (even when booted into recovery mode). Once I saw this, I thought it might be possible that the dropouts were correlated (although this seemed like a long shot).
I'm happy to report that the dropouts seem to have been greatly reduced after the clean install. I do get occasional quick stutters when opening two audio programs, or switching between displays, etc... but none of these are intrusive at all. Before I used to get stutters at least once every 15-30 minutes just listening to audio, or making music.
I am left happy that my amazing UFX III interface is working now, but feeling disappointed that after several attempts at contacting customer support over nearly two months I didn't get a single reply. RME is widely renowned for their customer support, but that was not my experience here. I spent countless hours troubleshooting on my own, and also was in contact with Synthax who kindly helped give me some ideas of things to try. I am writing this to hopefully help someone who is struggling with this issue with dropouts - no guarantees, but it worked for me.
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My Original Issue (Now Solved)
Issue:
-I am having dropouts, stutters, glitches using my UFX III
-I noticed these dropouts after installing Mac OS Sonoma
Specs:
-2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max
-Firmware v20
-Driver 4.09
Things I've tried:
-Restarted my laptop
-Disabled Mac from entering sleep mode
-Unplugged all other USB devices, plugging in only the UFX III with the USB C cable included in the box directly into my MacBook pro - dropouts, glitches, stutters still occur.
-Tried a second USB C cable - plugged directly in to my laptop, with no other usb devices connected - still dropouts.
When these dropouts/stutters occur, I am simply only running Spotify / YouTube, with no cpu intensive programs running alongside.