Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Fun and success on your tour! :-)

52 (edited by titirom 2009-11-14 11:46:06)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

hi,
After some testing with the advices of Timur, things seems to going better on bootcamp/xp:
With a 128 buffer, i have now only rare small clicks/pops with or without errors (counter 0/4) after 20 minutes test.
Not perfect but better than snow l?o (the error counter is very useful on windows drivers).
I think to open a new post for separate the sleep/hot-plug distortion problem and the distortion/dropout/clicks/pops problem.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

one information more :
I have tried to plug my fireface in a usb external supply hub and it's the same story: sometimes, I powered on the fireface when i am in osx desktop, and the permanent distortion is come.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Yes, using an USB hub or switch has no impact on the problem for me neither (first I suspected the hub to be the culprit).

55 (edited by titirom 2009-12-18 16:31:03)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Something new today:
I was on logic, work on 96000 Hz and suddenly after a cut with scissor the big permanent distortion was come.
So i changed the frequency to 176400 Hz (my clicks/pops preferred frequency:http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6826) and the permanent distortion disappear (but not the clicks and pops).
Coming back to 96000 Hz and the problem was solved.
I thinking now about a loss synchro problem, is it possible ?
Well I'm waiting now for Timur macbook report but i really beginning to think at a fireface hardware problem.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

When I experienced the distortion problem it always also affected the NI Kore 1 when I checked while other non-audio USB interfaces where not affected. My suspicion is that only the isochronous mode of OS X USB driver gets shot down, no idea by what though.

I haven't been using OS X for some weeks now and the new laptop came with Snow Leopard. I'm not impressed by the build quality of the new unit, but Apple exchange support does not answer at the moment.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

I am having this problem, too.  I have a 15" Unibody MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz with 4 MB RAM that I bought in late March or early April.  It is running OSX 10.5.8.  After it wakes up from sleep, audio from the Fireface is terribly distorted.  My Virus TI never did this when I was using it as a USB soundcard.  Rebooting the Mac apparently fixes it, but I am concerned that I may start experiencing this dropout problem.  Also, I do not use any form of Windows on this computer.

58 (edited by titirom 2009-12-24 17:15:18)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

hi GrooveNinja,
I presume you have the last firmware and driver (fw 91 and driver 1.19) ?

And like said Blindflug: Happy Christmas to everybody

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

hello,
The bug of the day:
I was on 176400 Hz work (full of clicks and pops) for some testing about thirty minutes and suddenly the permanent distortion was come.:roll

60 (edited by inetics 2010-01-23 21:41:57)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hello All,

I have definitely the same problems (very distorted, sounds like bit-crush, sound-playing) with fireface UC. The salesman at the music shop i bought my fireface UC told me, there could be some problems with MacBook pro (late 2008) with fireface firewire so i decided to buy the UC version.
Reproducible after some times working with mac and stay not connected to USB fireface interface without rebooting and maybe some systems sleeps i always have to reboot my macbook to get undistorted audio signals. For me this looks like a problem with the very tuned USB driver(?).
Clean Reboot always fixes the issue (but i really don't like this way)

My Setup is:
MacBook pro 15'' (late 2008 - UniCase with removable Battery) - MacOs 10.6.2, 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM
Cubase 5.1 (but all other applications like VLC or quicktime have the same behavior, so it's not a problem of Cubase)
Fireface UC with latest drivers/firmware

Is there an upcoming driver fix for this issue?

If i can help with tests, don't hesitate to ask -I am very familiar with programming and testing IT-related equipment.
There is another problem with DigiCheck, but this is off-topic for this...

So far ,
Greets inetics

// MBP 15" late 2008, 4GB, SLeo 10.6.4 , FFUC FW v111, Driver v1.40//

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

I'm finally back from a long tour and holiday. I didn't end up bringing my FFUC and instead found a second hand ff400 that did the job very nicely.

So I'm back, installed the new drivers, started up the UC ... and still, it has the same problems. I'm even on a new machine now too. This is very disappointing. The worst part, in my travels, a friend in France has exactly the same problems and he was in the process of trying to return it. Is it known for there to be defective UCs? Is there a known compatibility problem between UC and certain Macs?

62 (edited by Timur 2010-01-24 08:58:29)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Does anyone experiencing the problem *not* have an unibody (NVidia 730i/9400 based) Mac?

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

I'm Curious too. You're speculation of unibody MBPs seems to be correct from my experience. And yes.. my friends was a unibody too.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Also have a look at this thread of mine: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7308

Maybe you can try some of the things I did there (big buffer size, sleep).

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hi guys,
I'm curious to know if we share all the other problem, corneliusw, inetics, can you make some test with 176400 Hz please ?

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Actually I think the issue I reported about in the other thread might very well be connected to this one here. At least the symptoms seemed quite similar in the end except for that the Kore kept working.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hi guys,

Just to let everyone know that I've got a unibody macbook pro as well (15" removable battery, 4Gb ram), and that I'm experiencing the same issues as the people here.
Had the same problem with my Native Instruments Audio-8 DJ soundcard before, and it seems I wasn't the only one. On the NI forum it seemed this was somehow bound to unibody MBP's with 4Gb's of ram, so curious about how much memory everybody here has.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

It seems we have all here 4 GB memory.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Well, it seems like we all have a problem that can be identified to a specific platform.. Any news on this? Are RME engineers at least aware of this issue?

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hello,
For some unknown reason, RME team is mute for us, well what can we do now ? i don't know

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hello together,

I have ordered a PCIexpress-Card34 with USB2.0 to test whether this belongs to the chipset or not. May be this solution wouldn't be nice but acceptabel for me (about EUR 13 extra;) if it's working. I'll tell my experience once it's arrived.
Most often i don't need an extreme low latency driver while playing back some music another acceptable solution would be to switch back to a non optimized USB-protocol (assuming the driver usinga bit proprietary "tuned" one) in order to get the wake-up problem solved. As i know driver engeneering and developing is hard piece to code and maybe RME spent lots of ressources for developing it - "maybe" a standard protocol stack could be developed within less ressources?
Please don't missunderstood me - i am very happy with that interface and love the sound - even the great work that is done by RME.

Cheers,
inetics

// MBP 15" late 2008, 4GB, SLeo 10.6.4 , FFUC FW v111, Driver v1.40//

72 (edited by inetics 2010-03-01 08:27:46)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

So I've tested the USB-plugin-card - the problem still persists. Also tried all different sample frequencies, but no change.
Once the Macbook gone to sleep - heavy distortion occures on FFUC audio outputs. That causes me to reboot to work with and everything is fine. It is a bit opposite of "mobile" working as long as the sleeping function is one of  the main mobile features using a MBP without rebooting for a long time (usually i am rebooting less than once a week).

So I'am sorry telling you no good news..

Cheers

// MBP 15" late 2008, 4GB, SLeo 10.6.4 , FFUC FW v111, Driver v1.40//

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

And still, no news from the RME team.
Starting to think this is pretty sad, I thought RME was known for being customer-oriented... apparently not so..
Time to return my Fireface maybe and go for something that works..

74

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

As far as we can read out of these statements something happens that is not supposed to happen: the USB audio transfer is seriously broken and needs to be reset.

As you can read on our general information USB audio is supposed to (and indeed does) work exemplary in Core Audio. On our machines we were not able to break the stream so that wrong (misaligned) data is transmitted. The special error detection and correction that we implemented in driver and hardware works under Windows only at this time, as it was not needed for the Mac.

Seeing that now some people start to have problems like that we will implement the same technique into the Mac side too. Soon.

BUT: you have to be aware that this might not finally fix it. A drop out that is so big that it screws the transmission will still be there with error correction, the only difference that after the drop out (mute or click) the sound continues.

IMHO that is not the real deal, as you can never be sure about the integrity of your audio data. The ideal solution therefore is to change to a hardware that doesn't show the problem in the first place.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Thanks for your reply!

I never had dropouts or something like that - it simply was heavily distorted or not (after/before sleep:).
It is hard to believe you never had a problem like this. It happens everytime after first sleep/awake from standby. If it is helpful, i can send you the dirtorted sound after wakeup - it sounds like just cutting upper 8 from 16 bits away and discard them.
BUT: You seriously recommend to buy new audio-hardware? Any suggestions - maybe the FF400 or 800?
The reason i bought the UC was to not having trouble with the firewire chipset with that version  of my MBP as the salesperson told me...

Cheers

// MBP 15" late 2008, 4GB, SLeo 10.6.4 , FFUC FW v111, Driver v1.40//

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Problem with this issue is that it does not happen as reproducable on anyone's Macs as it does on yours. I had this issue ever since I used the UC, but I was not able to pin down what caused it. I *did* suspect some sleep mode connection, but it only happens once in a while here.

And when it happens it often affects the whole USB isochronous audio stream, which means even my NI Kore USB interface is affected (last time I had a case where it was not though). All a bit complicated...

77 (edited by titirom 2010-03-12 11:16:59)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hello everybody,

Inetics,

I think that maybe we share all here the USB isochronous problem's Timur speak about but i think the problem of distortion after wake up is only a part of this problem.
For me that was solved with drivers 1.16 (a long time ago :-))

Have you made a migration on snow l?o ? (if you come from l?opard,i had read that some people had problems with that)
And do you tried to clean up your old drivers before install new ones ? (http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4602)

I'm really curious why we don't share all here this part of the problem in a same way.

And maybe you can try the 176.4 kHz frequency for see if you can suspecting the other problems.(http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6826&p=1)

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hi Titirom,

also thank you for your reply,

yes i am on Snow Leo (migrated from Leo, but bought UC after migration) and had never installed old drivers - so most of the listed files/direcories were not there.
After a cold start and putting computer to sleep and woke it up - it now worked well. After a day of work without any parallels etc. and after that plugging in UC i had same distortion as explained before even with 176khz (what i tried before too). So nothing really news at the moment..
Another thing could be very often i am using VM-software like VM-Ware, Parallels and VirtualBox - may that cause some problems as at least parallels tries to grab control over newly plugged USB devices and may disturb USB communication until next reboot..
Anyway - thank you for your support!

Cheers

// MBP 15" late 2008, 4GB, SLeo 10.6.4 , FFUC FW v111, Driver v1.40//

79

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

It may not only - it definitely does. One of these even replaces the USB drivers so it will not work at all. Just can't remember which one...

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Hi All,
I've come to a new conclusion. Maybe mine is faulty.. as it's now displaying the same problem on every Mac I've used it with. From a new iMac, to a new Mac pro... The distortion problem is happening way too often. I'm booking it in for a repair. This just isn't right. I've read all the posts, but I can't keep trying new things to make this piece of gear work. It's been over 6 months and I've never really been able to use it seriously. If it's not fixed I will be seeking my money back. Meanwhile, my second hand Fireface 400 (that I had to purchase) is flawless.

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Have you ever tested it with a PC? Where did you purchase the unit?


Regards,
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Yes I have. It appeared to be fine on a pc. But I didn't test it for any longer than about 20 mins. It's only displaying this problem on Macs. Multiple. And that's what I need it for and use.

It was purchased in Melbourne. I recieved a call from tech support here today but unfortunately I couldn't take it as I  was in a sesssion. I will take it up with them next week.

As I said, 6 months of problem solving with tech support help from your australian reps and still no luck. I don't want to test it anymore, I just want something that works.

83

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Cross posted in the other thread:

We will relase a new Mac driver next week with completely re-written audio routines and full support for error correction (as under Windows). It comes with an updated firmware for the UC. Please check it out when it is available.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: UC problem on mac after wake up from sleep

Cross posted in the other thread wink :

Thank you for the information.
I'm waiting now this new driver and firmware like the saint graal wink