Dp4 And Usb Audio Failures, Caveat emptor Options

[Levon River]

I'm starting this new topic to collect and summarize data from a thread in another forum, and to alert people to serious issues concerning Digital Performer 4.0 and USB audio.

It has been ascertained beyond any doubt that DP4 does not work with a number of USB audio interfaces for recording audio, and--in the case of one interface--even for playing back audio. Anyone who has any factual information at all on this issue is urged to post it here.

The USB audio problems have surfaced with Event Technology's EZBus (in OS 10.2.5), and with Griffin Technology's iMic (in OS 10.2.3, 10.2.4, and 10.2.5).

The only USB audio interface known to have been successfully tested with DP4 for audio recording and playback so far is the Tascam US-224, under OS 10.2. (This might be the case with the Tascam US-428 as well, but that is extrapolated assumption, as no one here has yet reported on a real-world test with it.) There are no reports so far on the performance of the US-224 in an operating system later than 10.2

There are no known reports of any tests done with any of the Edirol USB audio interfaces. If anyone can do any tests with any of those and report it here, it would be very much appreciated.

One of the manifestations of this problem is that the USB interface appears twice in the "Configure Hardware Driver" window. One, or both, of the instances shows a blank pull-down menu next to "Sample Rate" that may, or may not, allow a selection of "0" (zero). In other cases, that pull-down simply remains blank.

When selecting either, or both, instances of the interface and clicking out of the "Configure Hardware Driver" window, DP4 can exhibit a a variety of behavior. Either there is an error message, or there is no error message, but there also are no selectable audio inputs for the device appearing anywhere in DP4.

Any and all factual reports would be of great value.

Please, in addition to posting here, send e-mail with results of any and all such tests to techsupport@motu.com, plus to the appropriate support personnel at the relevant interface manufacturers. MOTU reports that they are actively working on isolating the problem(s). They have been corresponding daily so far.

[paloche girl]

Until last night, I have used DP3 and an M-Audio's USB Quattro in OS9 on my 1Gh Powerbook. Songs with only a few audio and midi tracks with an effect or two pushed the processor far into the red, but otherwise, I didn't have any trouble.

Last night I loaded DP4 and things seemed fine (playing tracks) until I tried recording audio and discovered a noticible delay in monitoring what was being played. I guess this is latency, but I never experienced anything like this in OS9 with DP3. The load on my processor is negligible in this configuration, which comforts me, but every attempt to address the audio monitoring situation proved useless. The only remedy for the delay was to choose direct monitoring on the Quattro, but then I couldn't hear the accompanying tracks as they played during recording.

I could configure the OS9 driver for the Quattro to select "very low latency" which is what I used, but the OSX version only offers "Low" on that end. Maybe this isn't even a latency problem. I'm completely self-taught and I admit to being able to use the products but without knowing how to speak the industry language very well, so feel free to educate me if I don't seem to get it.

I'd really like to be able to use my same gear in OSX and have it work at least as well as it did in OS9!!!

Thanks for any advice or elucidation.

Lisa