I've been having issues (hanging apps, kernel panics and system crashes) with RME400 drivers in Snow Leopard for 5 months. This is well documented with RME in this thread, apple and my local apple dealer Bite Systems (Norwich). My Mac Pro has been to Bite three times in the last 8 weeks to try and resolve the major problems these issues have caused to a 2008 Mac Pro 2.8 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon with 10Gb Ram, (thankfully still under three year warranty!).
The cost to my business during the past 2 months has been in the region of ?1000 in lost earnings. I am a professional musician and will be headlining a festival in Holland in 8 weeks time, but I'm currently three weeks behind starting working on the 2 hour concert set required due to these computer/RME problems. Thus you will understand that I now seek an immediate resolution to the issue.
Last Thursday I got my Mac Pro back with new logic board, new graphics card and a new system hard drive with Snow Leopard installed. Over the weekend I did a completely clean reinstall of my studio applications and because everything was working 100% I decided to give the RME drivers one last try. Please bear in mind this is the 3rd time I have done a complete reinstall!
At first my Mac Pro didn't recognise the RME driver, but eventually after weekend help from apple (thanks Simon) I realised that this was due to the front firewire port on the Mac Pro not working! However, within 3 minutes of connecting the RME via the apple monitor firewire port, I experienced hanging application/kernel panic - call it what you will - that resulted in my having to power down the Mac Pro. Following this, neither of the monitor fire wire ports worked!
Today I removed all traces of the RME drivers, did a PRAM and safe boot, verified permissions and checked drives were okay. I then found my apple monitor firewire ports to be working again, but not the one on the front of the Mac Pro.
I installed drivers for my live desk, an Alesis Multimix16 and connected via the apple monitor firewire port. Everything is working fine and 9 hours later I'm running photo shop, aperture, Logic, itunes and in fact, anything I can try in an attempt to make the computer fall down - it wont - it's working just as it should!
In conclusion, while I would love to use the RME drivers above any other make, I can't, and consequently I have an RME 400 audio driver purchased from Digital Village (Cambridge) 6 months ago that is not fit for purpose and I am therefore seeking a full refund on that purchase from Digital Village, or a credit to purchase another audio driver.
With regards to the firewire port on the front of my mac pro, this needs to be repaired, and I have no way of confirming if it wasn't working when it was returned from Bite, or if connecting the RME driver killed it! Clearly connecting the RME driver to my apple fire wire had a detrimental effect. But, I would like clarification from apple that this will be covered under warranty. I need to keep my computer on site now for the next two months, so the firewire repair can be done after that time.
Finally, I suppose the obvious question has to be, could the RME400 device itself be faulty and somehow be sending power/current or something like that through the Firewire cable? I have even moved the device nearer to the computer and changed fire wire cables. I will be telephoning Martin Warr at RME's UK distributor Synthax on Monday morning to arrange the return of the RME400.
There must be people using RME drivers without these issues, and it would be great to hear from them to compare notes and systems, but there comes a point when the user has to say, "enough's enough".
Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 Quad 32GB Ram
All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.