• Registered: 2009-08-04
  • Posts: 21

Topic: Missing Mixer

Hello!

This is really strange, and rather embarrassing.  My Total Mix window has disappeared, abruptly.  I've had no problem for years with this system .  (Mac Pro, Boot Camp, Windows 7/64-bit, Pyramix, HDSPe AES card).  I run four monitors (2 cards) in this big Mac system, so I don't think the mixer could be hiding somewhere.  ;>)  I always keep it over on the right, top/right on monitor #4.

I tried the T and X commands, hoping that at least X would bring up the matrix view, but, nothing.

So I then updated the driver to 3.29 (since I was two versions behind), and also the firmware from 7 to 8, thinking maybe something had gotten corrupted.

Still, nothing, even with the 3.29 version of the mixer.  The other window (Hammerfall DSP Settings) works just fine, and has never disappeared.

Is there another trick, other than T and X, to try to make the mixer reappear?  It still seems to be working, because my output assignments, at least, still seem to be happening, even after the driver update--thank goodness.

Thank you for any help!  "You never know how much you need something until it's gone."

"Dr. Fred"

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,565

Re: Missing Mixer

Is the TM symbol still in the systray? Can you exit it there and restart? Is the totalmix.exe still visible in the Process manager as running task?

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2009-08-04
  • Posts: 21

Re: Missing Mixer

Sorry, I'm more of a Mac guy, so I don't know from "systray" or "process manager."  It does seem to me that I need to get TM to reset to its initial state, where it starts from monitor #1, the boot monitor.  That is, to not "remember" where it was located last, which it usually does very well.  In other words, it always remembers the precise location, and on which monitor I put it when I either close it or restart the computer.  Right now, it's remembering some bogus location.  When it first disappeared, I had not restarted, I had merely hidden Pyramix for a while, and when I got Pyramix back up on the monitors, I noticed TM was gone from its usual location.

But, you're correct in that I need to be able to exit TM before I can do what I just suggested--get it to start from an initialized state.  Since I can't see it, I cannot exit it.  All I know is that when I click on the two places I do know of to attempt to start it (either its real location, inside the hdsp329 folder in my downloads folder, or in its mixer shortcut on the taskbar), nothing happens.  To me this implies that it might be starting when the OS starts up, but it is hiding somewhere, off the grid of the four monitors.  Either that, or it doesn't start at all, even when I try to launch the application (even as admin).  One time last night I got a second mixer icon to appear briefly in the taskbar with all my clicking (called "....1") hinting that it had been started twice!

Of course, when I reboot the Mac as a Mac, it's happily there, since it isn't confused in that OS.

So, although I've been using Macs for hard disk editing since 1987, if you could help me become a bit more of a PC detective, I'd appreciate it.  Where do I find "process manager" and "systray?"

"Dr. Fred"

  • Registered: 2007-06-18
  • Posts: 96

Re: Missing Mixer

It happens for me sometimes on a Mac Pro. I choose TotalMix by Option+Tab, and Cmd+Q to close TotalMix. Then I restart the Totalmix app.

  • Registered: 2009-08-04
  • Posts: 21

Re: Missing Mixer

MC, here's a quick PS to my previous message:

Although I said that TM runs fine when I reboot my Xeon Mac Pro as Mac (and that's still true), I just tried the *other* PC OS on it--Vista Ultimate--and TM is hiding on that one as well!  You see, when Boot Camp gives me the "Windows" choice, it then goes to the PC bootloader, which gives me two more choices--W7/64 Ultimate or Vista/32.  I don't use Vista any more (Pyramix, until the release of 7.1 last January, wouldn't run in any version of W7, so I had to use Vista, hence the double-OS choice).  This double-boot option was obviously not set up by me, but has been working fine since mid-2009, which is when I bought the Mac Pro, and the RME card.

Anyway, I haven't used Vista in several months, for anything, but I just tried it this morning, and just as is the case in W7, the mixer is missing.  Since it also had driver 3085 there, I just upgraded to 329, but to no avail.

I find this fascinating.  How could TM disappear in both OSs?  Curious!  I fear we're going to have to drill down pretty deep to find the cause.  Maybe the two fancy NVIDIA cards are misbehaving? Everything else seems fine.

"Dr. Fred"

  • Registered: 2009-08-04
  • Posts: 21

Re: Missing Mixer

Jean-Michel,

I just saw your reply.  Are you using your Mac Pro in PC mode or Mac mode?  I have both types of keyboards connected, so I can duplicate your commands--but I don't quite understand how either of them might "bring TM back."  How do you use option + tab to open TM?  Thanks!

"Dr. Fred"

7 Reply by Jean-Michel (edited by Jean-Michel 2012-09-02 17:17:53)

  • Registered: 2007-06-18
  • Posts: 96

Re: Missing Mixer

I'm not sure I have inderstood your issue. But what happens sometimes on a Mac Pro (no bootcamp, no Windows) I use is that the TM window disappear. But TM is still opened. So I highlight TM by the Mac shortcut Option+Tab with make the OS toogle to the running apps. When TM is highlighted, I close it using the Cmd+Q shortcut.
Then I can relaunch TM and the window appear.

You can use Alt+Tab and Alt+F4 in Windows.

Please excuse my english.

JM

  • Registered: 2009-08-04
  • Posts: 21

Re: Missing Mixer

Hello Jean-Michel (and MC),

Problem solved.  My Pyramix guru from Toronto, Frank Lockwood, just explained to me about the "process manager" (I didn't know that's what you call that area which appears when you click on the tiny triangle near at the bottom right of my monitor #1) and, lo and behold, clicking on the icon of the mixer in the box which pops up when you click on the triangle got it to reappear!  I don't understand why, but it reappeared, and appears to be reset--i.e., it's not where it used to be on monitor #4, but back in the upper left-hand corner of monitor #1.  And typing "X" just brought up the matrix window.

So, it's fixed.  And this Mac guy has learned the difference between my shortcuts in the PC's "taskbar" and those revealed by the "process manager" tiny triangle, located over to the right of the taskbar.

Sorry for my ignorance!

"Dr. Fred"

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Missing Mixer

That part is called "Notification Area" and you can configure it to never hide any tray-icons underneath the triangle via the Task-Bar's properties. wink

  • Registered: 2012-04-17
  • Posts: 18

Re: Missing Mixer

MC wrote:

Is the TM symbol still in the systray? Can you exit it there and restart? Is the totalmix.exe still visible in the Process manager as running task?

Hi there. Little bit late but sometimes I have that problem, too. From one moment to another the icon diesappears and I can't open the mixer. It's not in the systray anymore but the exe in the Process Manager is still running. Any solution for that? Because of changing from the monitors to the headphones I need to restart to get the icon back to the systray. ed:

cheers

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,766

Re: Missing Mixer

Please check the systray settings for hiding icons... Windows does that...

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • Registered: 2012-04-17
  • Posts: 18

Re: Missing Mixer

RME Support wrote:

Please check the systray settings for hiding icons... Windows does that...

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Already tried that 1 week ago. Doesn't helped.

cheers

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,766

Re: Missing Mixer

Please be more specific - what exactly did you do?


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • Registered: 2012-04-17
  • Posts: 18

Re: Missing Mixer

RME Support wrote:

Please be more specific - what exactly did you do?


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Well, I wanted to change the systray option for the "Mixer" to "not hide" but that was already setted up. Is there anything else I can edit or change? I don't think so.

regards
Christian

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,766

Re: Missing Mixer

When the icon disappears, is it among the hidden icons?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • Registered: 2012-04-17
  • Posts: 18

Re: Missing Mixer

RME Support wrote:

When the icon disappears, is it among the hidden icons?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

No, it's still marked as "not hide". That what you ment?

  • Registered: 2012-04-17
  • Posts: 18

Re: Missing Mixer

Hi again.

I push the thread a bit. Is there any solution available for it? Because I always need to restart the system when it happens.

cheers
Christian

18 Reply by fl

  • fl
  • S/Mux specialist
  • Offline
  • From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Registered: 2007-11-12
  • Posts: 266

Re: Missing Mixer

bongonuts wrote:

I always need to restart the system when it happens.

That's been my experience, although the icons only seem to disappear when I boot up my system with the Fireface disconnected or turned off. It would seem to be linked to some sort of Firewire disruption, but it's hard to be specific.

Frank Lockwood
https://LockwoodARS.com
Fireface 800, Firmware 2.77
Drivers: Win10, 3.125; Mac, 3.36

fl's Website

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Missing Mixer

I have seen the Firewire (FF 400) specific Totalmix icon disappear out of the blue in the past, but that also stopped the corresponding .exe process. And it does not happen anymore after I did a clean Windows installation on a new bootcamped Macbook Pro. Never happened with the USB specific Totalmix, and usually only happened once (and not anymore when TM was restarted). What you can do to restart it - instead of restarting Windows - is to simply start the exe file from: C:\Windows\system32\firefacemix.exe

  • Registered: 2012-10-02
  • Posts: 1

Re: Missing Mixer

i went nuts till i right clicked on the mixer icon in the windows tray toolbar below DUH!!!!!!! it gives you choice's..not like voting!

  • Registered: 2009-08-04
  • Posts: 21

Re: Missing Mixer

Hello, everyone!

Well, here I am again, and with the same problem!  After a little crash this morning (in which two of my four monitors just went black, but a restart fixed "almost" everything, I notice that my TotalMix mixer (which, before the crash, was running over on Monitor #4, one of the two which went black), as well as the hdsp32 housekeeping application, have disappeared--just like before.  I was running 329, so I upgraded to 331, but they're still missing.  I'm still running Windows 7, with all the latest Microsoft updates, and it's still running quite stably on a Xeon Mac Pro--except for this latest weirdness.

When I open the new 331 TotalMixer, directly from where the extraction process put it (Downloads folder), it does show up down in the bottom taskbar's process manager section--which I guess shows that it's open somewhere, but it doesn't appear on any of my four monitors.  And, even worse, the hdsp32 application will not open, no matter how many times I click on it. (In other words, unlike TotalMix, it doesn't even show up in the bottom taskbar in the process manager section.)

I suspect that the crash perhaps made them open up somewhere off the real estate of the four monitors.  Is there a key command which, when invoked during startup of the TotalMix application, will reset TotalMix's location to be back on Monitor #1, left-hand top corner, which is where it usually would be unless I get it to remember being over on Monitor #4?

Sorry to be such a bother!

"Dr. Fred"