• From: Sydney Australia
  • Registered: 2007-06-09
  • Posts: 189

Topic: Major FFUC Sickness

Since new the FFUC has performed well except for one major bug. Every time there was any DVD drive activity the computer lost connection with the interface.

Vital stats: MacBook Pro mid 2008. Snow Leopard with all updates applied. Logic Pro 9.0.2, latest FFUC driver and firmware.

Audio present at FFUC inputs still passed to outputs as it should but any audio coming from the computer would not reach the FFUC outputs at all. As a professional Logic Pro 9 user this issue came up most often when trying to bounce anything in Logic. All I need do was invoke the actual bounce command and this set off a small movement in the DVD drive (?) and the FFUC was lost. Quickest workaround was to unplug/ plug the FFUC USB cable and the communication came back - until today.

Audio was working well this morning. Then later in the day after the computer had been sleeping for a while nothing I could do would resume communication. Best I could get was a few seconds of crackle when trying to play back an audio file before sound stopped completely.

I tried everything I could think of. Deleting and reinstalling the latest FFUC driver and preferences, computer restarts and then finally I thought I would flash the FFUC to see if that would help. I ran the flash tool successfully and as per instructions I power cycled the FFUC for a few seconds.

When I turned it back on the only light that came on was the green input signal light on channel 3. It's now dead.

I'm not used to this sort of thing from RME products. I've been a very happy user for the past 6 years. The FFUC is barely 2 months old.

Anyway it's off to the repair shop now and I hope that ALL the issues I'm having will go away:-(

__________________________
Paul Najar
Jaminajar Music Production
www.jaminajar.com

paulnajar's Website

2 Reply by oblique strategies (edited by oblique strategies 2010-04-08 23:06:12)

  • Registered: 2007-06-10
  • Posts: 105

Re: Major FFUC Sickness

I'm having a similar problem with the optical drive which I posted here:
http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7840

Almost every time I insert a CD into the optical drive the FFUC stops outputting audio. No audio can be heard from any application. TotalMix shows no signals. It occurs with both audio & data CDs.

To restore sound I have to:
1. Turn FFUC off/on.

But since this doesn?t always work, I sometimes have to:

2. Re-start computer.


When importing CDs I have to constantly un-plug the USB cable when inserting CDs. But sometimes this doesn?t work & I have to either turn off/on the FFUC, or restart the computer.

NOTE:
When the FFUC is not outputting audio I can select it in Audio/MIDI preferences, but after I close the preference window there is still no sound. Re-opening the Audio/MIDI preferences show that the FFUC has been de-selected again.

All of this is really interrupting my workflow. Plus this will prevent me from importing audio from the optical drive while performing ?something that does occasionally happen.

I've been a long time Multiface I user. Started with the PCMCIA card & moved on to the expresscard. I recently got a Fireface UC, & am exploring its strengths & weaknesses.


Gear:
MacBook Pro 4,1 (15-inch Early 2008) non-uni-body
OS X: 10.5.8
4 GB RAM

FFUC:
Latest drivers:
Mac 1.30
Flash 102


Daniel emailed me to say that they'd never heard of this optical drive problem before I brought it to his attention. Well, now they've heard about it from two FFUC users. And you experienced it on December 3, 2009, months before I got mine.

3 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 24,823

Re: Major FFUC Sickness

Paul, did you try to reset the unit (push knob during power on, as mentioned in the manual)?

But maybe that unit was simply defective from the start and also caused the other effects...

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • From: Sydney Australia
  • Registered: 2007-06-09
  • Posts: 189

Re: Major FFUC Sickness

Hi Matthias.

I never did try to reset the FFUC as you asked. Also I generally never turn off the FFUC even though I disconnect it from the USB port of the mac often.

I now have a replacement FFUC from the local distributor and the same problem exists exactly. It's interesting that oblique strategies has the same issue with the same Mac model.

I have also recently completely rebuilt a clean OS X.6.3 with minimal add ons and sadly the problem still happens here as well.

I do have a workaround now though which allows me to keep working.

When I first boot Logic I simply select the bounce function but don't actually go through with it. This is enough to make the CD drive jump and cause the fault.

Then I unplug the FFUC USB cable from the mac and wait for Logic to pop up the message that it can't find the selected interface.

I click through this and plug in the FFUC USB cable and Logic sees it and asks if I want to use FFUC and I say yes.

Once I go through these steps I can bounce in Logic and not have the problem until next time I reboot the mac or quit/ re launch Logic. And the problem comes back again.

Kind regards

PN

__________________________
Paul Najar
Jaminajar Music Production
www.jaminajar.com

paulnajar's Website

  • From: Sydney Australia
  • Registered: 2007-06-09
  • Posts: 189

Re: Major FFUC Sickness

As I posted in http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7475

The 1.3/ 1.02 package has done the trick - well almost. I can bounce in Logic and not loose communication with the FFUC.

The "almost" part refers to if say I have iTunes playing in the background and in Logic I select the Bounce command. The CD drives makes a noise for a second and playing audio stops - but then it resumes. You can do the same thing by having iTunes playing and open Disk Utility since it spins the CD drive for a second just like selecting Bounce in Logic does - but this is a big improvement.

Thanks.

__________________________
Paul Najar
Jaminajar Music Production
www.jaminajar.com

paulnajar's Website