Yes, I'm using the latest drivers. It's a brand new 2012 Macbook Air. It came loaded with Lion and I updated it to Mountain Lion. Since it wouldn't launch the Mixer I erased the drive and did a clean install of Mountain Lion. Still no dice.

I think if it were a USB issue then both the Mixer and Fireface USB settings would not work. But the latter does work.

IMHO this is completely unsatisfactory, unprofessional software from RME.

Furthermore, the UCX provides enough of a USB feed so that I can record in the Macbook Air. But without being able to use the mixer I can't make necessary level adjustments...

Also, btw, the correct level adjustments do not appear to be identical between my Mac Pro and the MBA. Using proper settings from the former for the latter results in a horrible mess, even after having saved settings to the UCX device.

No, switching the USB cable doesn't work.

I'm about to go to work, but later this afternoon will try wiping the MBA and reinstalling Lion, to see if that works.

Not sure I want to get into fiddling with kexts, yet. But just fyi, on my 2009 Macbook Pro, which is running Mountain Lion, Totalmix will load both with firewire and with USB. I just now verified it. So the problem isn't Mountain Lion, per se.

Well, next I'll try sticking a USB 2.0 hub onto the MBA and see if the UCX can connect with Totalmix through that.

Or which kext I would need to replace?

Thanks

Thanks!

The Thunderbolt/Firewire adapter I ordered from Apple arrived this morning (two days from China). But it doesn't fix the connectivity problem. Totalmix still wouldn't open and the connection set up a noisy stutter in my headphones. But!!! For the hell of it I thought I'd try a $12 USB 2.0 hub from Belkin, on the theory that it might negotiate speeds between the MBA 3.0 port and the UCX. And, damn, it does. Everything works perfectly in terms of Totalmix, USB settings, etc. Moreover -- a problem I noted in an earlier post to which there was no response -- now Adobe Audition works with the UCX, just as it's supposed to. (It still doesn't work on my Mac Pro when the UCX is powered on and connected. Audition will load but the playhead won't move, either for recording or editing. When the UCX is powered down Audition again works normally. Not so good, then, for recording!)

This seems like a duct tape fix but until both RME and Apple drivers catch up to the hardware it's probably as good as any.

Again, for reference, this is with Mountain Lion and the lastest RME drivers. A 2012 Macbook Air with the i7 chip, and a 2012 Mac Pro hex-core.

I agree, it is puzzling. The only other Firewire device I have is a FW 800 HDD enclosure. To check whether the adapter works at all I used it to connect the enclosure to my Macbook Air's Thunderbolt port. I could see the drive and navigate within it -- everything seemed normal.

So the possibilities are (a) Apple's laptop audio implementation is faulty, (b) RME's implementation of standard hardware protocols is faulty, or (c) both.

Given that on my 2012 Mac Pro hex core, when the UCX is connected and powered on, I can't use Adobe Audition, but when the UCX is powered off I can use Audition, I'm inclined to suppose that RME has not sufficiently tested the UCX. It works fine in certain circumstances. In others, where it should work, it doesn't.

At the same time it's clear that Apple has done something wrong with its laptop USB 3.0 ports, so perhaps there's also something wrong with its Thunderbolt ports, at least so far as audio is concerned.

Only further research will confirm what is happening.

The fact that the hub trick works doesn't surprise me. It's probably a simple question of speed protocols being negotiated, something, perhaps, that neither Apple nor RME have thoroughly considered. But I could be wrong about that...

I'm OK with having a workaround for the Macbook Air that uses a cheap USB 2.0 hub -- I can now get done what I want done -- but I'm disappointed that such expensive computer and audio hardware can't function like it's supposed to.