M-audio/jaguar Bug, jag - 1 step forward, 2 steps backward Options

[BoomBoom]

i thought i would post this in case anyone else is experiencing the same woeful state of affairs.
this is from an email i sent m-audio about problems with my brand new midiman audiophile 2496 card:

computer: Apple
model: G4 533 MP
chipset:
cpu type: PPC
cpu speed: 533 x 2
ram: 1.5 Ghz
gfx card: Radeon 8500 Mac edition
os: Mac OS 10.2.1 server
service:

Midiman products used: Audiophile 2496
When did it start? soon after installation
Services or Updgrades? no
The Problem:from time to time, the sound starts to deteriorate and rapidly gets worse. as soon as i stop the audio (in this case iTunes 3.0.1) and restart, its ok.

The reply i got today:

"We are working with Apple to pinpoint exactly what the issue is with the degradation of audio in Jaguar. This is apparently a problem several audio vendors are experiencing. Once we can get to the bottom, we will post a fix on our site. In the meantime, I would strongly recommend using OS 10.1.5 or OS 9.2 until there is a fix."

hmmmm....uninstall jag. great...

[rickenbacker]

Interesting. I'm using an Edirol UA-700 at the moment with a beta driver. Works fine for the most part, but there is distortion (unwanted!) sometimes.

In the driver's ReadMe file, it says anyone who previously upgraded from 10.1.3 to 10.1.5 using the Apple Combo update can expect this distortion. Well, I did upgrade and I'm getting distortion. Marvellous. I thought upgrading to Jaguar would solve it - now I'm not so sure. Neither were Edirol support. I was really hoping OS X had finally settled down.

[gdoubleyou]

I have a Delta 410, been running under Jaguar no problems so far.

Haven't used iTunes much though. Is the problem itunes specific?

[JustEloy]

You shouldn't do a update to Jaguar, but a clean install......
You have the option to do a clean instaal, but import your users with their folders and prefs..... This is called "Install & Archive"

Greetingz Eloy

[BoomBoom]

I have a Delta 410, been running under Jaguar no problems so far.

Haven't used iTunes much though. Is the problem itunes specific?

Unfortunately, it's not iTunes specific. The same thing happens with any audio application (not that there are SO many of them in X).

What seems to trigger it off is when the cpu is taxed - it will always happen, for example, when i have the sound app in the background playing, and i start scrolling windows.

I hate to think that 1Ghz processor power isn't enough to use my soundcard.

[BusError]

As a device driver writer myself, I can confirm that there are "issues" with the IOkit audio driver stuff.
There is a very complicated mechanism that attempts to have the lowest latency possible, however the thing very regularly trips on it's own tail (literaly) and fails miserably.
Oh, that clever thing is also horrendously memory hungry too, just in case.

So the audio slutering happily like that is something I know quite well, and I've researched for days how to erradicate it completely without much sucess.

[danml69]

I was thinking about an M-audio USB audio box to use with OS 10.2. Is this problem just with PCI audio cards??

[BusError]

USB sound should be safe, it's very little data after all. I've been using an EZbus in 2*48kHz@24 for a few months now and it works fine.

The issue witht he M-Audio (and my own devices) are that they are considerably more powerful - they have many more concurent channels - and apaprelty OSX is quite good with the timing as long as he does'nt have to carry the grocery store bags.

I frankly questionned the whole lower level of CoreAudio to some apple engineers recently, and the answer I got was "yeah but look, USB sound works quite well" however they advertise "Hundreds of sound channels via firewire" without even having TESTED anything like that. They test with two stupid channels over USB and declare that 'scalable'

[gdoubleyou]

Do you have the Jaguar specific drivers ver.1.1 released in september?

How does the card behave if you boot from OS9?

If you have the same problem under OS9, could be a hardware problem on the card.

[Levon River]

So the audio slutering happily like that is something I know quite well, and I've researched for days how to erradicate it completely without much sucess. ...USB sound should be safe, it's very little data after all. I've been using an EZbus in 2*48kHz@24 for a few months now and it works fine

So, buserror: Piecing together these quotes from you (while dodging the Topic Police) and squinting between the lines, from where I sit it don't look so good for the EZ8--or for *any* >2-channel audio interface. Izzat right?