Hi.

I have been using a FF800 for several years now, and am generally very happy with most aspects of its performance. However, the latest driver revision for OS X appears to have introduced an issue which I would like to bring to your attention, as I guess that my hardware combo is not one which you are able to test in-house.

I am using a 27" i7 iMac with fully updated OS (10.7.3) and My FF800 is on the latest firmware revision. Obviously connected via the single FW800 port.

I use MIDI I/O between the FF800 and my Fractal Axe FX Standard to transfer data (primarily when using Fractal's patch editor software), and with the RME driver version 2.93, I suffer no communications problems over the MIDI interface at all.

However, when keeping all else the same and only updating the RME driver to the latest revision, the communication via MIDI to the Fractal unit fails 100% of the time. The Host light on the FF unit also stays illuminated with this latest driver version.

I can then revert to version 2.93 and the communication works fine again without the need to tweak any settings. It just snaps back to life. The host LED also extinguishes as expected.

So, it seems fair to assume, given that nothing else is being changed, that the controlling factor here is the RME driver. Is there something that you have knowingly changed which could be responsible for this?

Placing a firewire HDD in line before the FF800 unit does not change the result, nor does using a different firewire cable, and the same behaviour can be observed on my old Macbook Pro laptop which has always been fine with a direct connection to the FF800.

I realise that for now, I can simply stick with the older driver version, but that is hardly an acceptable long term solution, so I would like to know whether you plan to fix this apparent issue, and if there is anything that I can offer to do to help you out.

Once again, it is only the RME driver revision which is being changed.

Thanks in advance for your considered response.

Met freundlichen Gruessen

Tony