Q: Massive problem with audio interface

I thought you had 14 days for a return.

I purchased it back at the beginning of November, apparently in time for some sort of extended return policy just for the holiday season. Took me by suprise too, but they told me I have until the 7th for a full refund.

Ah... I have one on the way with 1TB fusion drive.  I only have USB speakers, so perhaps I will not have an issue.  Sort of regret not going with the SSD.

Bob

Yep, I've got to decide by tomorrow if I'm returning it.  I like it in every way except for this audio issue.  I've spent hours installing and getting everything set up.

But maybe I can just clone it all to an external drive and then clone it back if I get a new iMac?

I'm 90 percent confident that the problem will be resolved but what a drag if it is not and I don't exchange.  It's a bit of an extra p.i.t.a. because I have to do it all by mail/Fedex since I am 4 hours from an Apple Store.

Here's a question.  I understand the 'no questions asked' return period.  But if there is a problem with Apples hardware/software that prevents the machine from being used for it's intended purpose, wouldn't they be obligated to replace it anyway, even after the two week period?

Chris Bedrosian wrote:

 

I purchased it back at the beginning of November, apparently in time for some sort of extended return policy just for the holiday season. Took me by suprise too, but they told me I have until the 7th for a full refund.

Well guys, i sent a mail to Focusrite(I have the Saffire Pro 14), saying that i had problems, and then that I have Fusion Drive.

The answer from Focusrite:

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the email, sorry to hear you are having some issues.

It is very likely that you issues here is being caused by having a fusion drive fitted to your mac. We have seen a number of reports from people using various audio interfaces (from other manufacturers as well) who are reporting audio issues when using the Apple fusion drive. We are currently assisting Apple in investigating the cause of this.

There are a few ways around the problem. The first would be to downgrade OSX from 10.0 to 10.8. The second would be to "split" the ssd part of the disk and then normal hard disk, this is documented online. The third option would be to change the fusion drive for a standard hard disk. Unfortunately this issue is out of our control, as it is a problem with the fusion drive on OSX 10.9 and will need to be fixed by Apple.

So, I think is a good thing that Focusrite and other brands know of this FD problem, so they can make pressure to Apple to fix it.

Keep sending this post to http://www.apple.com/feedback so they can hear us!

Just curious, but isn't there an Optical out on the new iMacs?

Headphone port

• Headphone/optical digital audio output (minijack)

Could that be hooked to the optical in of an audio interface like a MOTU or something?

I suppose that might help with playback, but I don't think there's an optical in (or any kind of audio in) on the new iMacs... And that's a huge problem.

Bob

I've had it.  Bought my 27" iMac with 1TB Fusion drive 2 weeks ago and have not been able to use it with my Focusrite Saffire Pro for more than 90 seconds of "Any" kind of audio playback from any source on the iMac until I restart the Saffire.  I am returning this beautiful machine tomorrow.  But before I do I have responded to Apple's Support survy as follows:

Q.  Is there anything that the Advisor could have done better to resolve the issue during the call?

I'm not sure.  The problem seems to be that Apple doesn't care much about those of us that are trying to use Apple products as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).  Perhaps Michael didn't check with others on the team with specific knowledge of the problems that are widely reported on your discussion forums (since October) or maybe there simply isn't anyone with such knowledge because the company doesn't care about this much smaller market.  Whatever the case, I bought my iMac to process audio and the brand new (beautiful) machine was unable to manage that (one of MANY different vendors and products that have this issue according to the very lively posts to your forum.)  Search your forum for "Massive problem with audio interface" to see the many folks you are disappointing.   I'll be returning my iMac tomorrow for a refund and (reluctantly) start looking at PC options.

I have just got this back from Apogee inregards to the Duet 2 iOS:

In the last few days we've had great success with using our USB devices at sample rates of 96k and above. Lets change the sample rate of the device or create a session at a sample rate of 96k or above and see how your unit reacts.

Hi Wattsy69 and all others...

I just tested to change my Motu Track 16 interface from 44100 Hz to 96 kHz and it was an improvement.

But, it does not fix the problem. When I used it on 44,1 kHz my interface stopped woking after 10-15 seconds after I started to play sound through the interface. When changing to 96 kHz it keep on working - But with glitches and pops.

One interesting observation that kind of confirms the relation to the FD is when I was scanning documents the sound output was completely muted during the scan. Another this is to open the activity monitor and look at the disk activity. When there is activity on the disk you will have clicks, pops and dropouts.

I really think Apple should take their responsibility and at least confirm that they are working on a solution. Oh, just now my iPhone 5S restarted without any reason - Is Apple losing it? The quality clearly has dropped the last year.

//L

My USB interface previously ran stable for years on a late 2008 iMac with Snow Leopard.

I'm now also having massive audio problems with Motu Ultralite Mk 3 Hybrid connected on USB after purchasing a new late 2013 iMac. External audio is basically unusable for both input and output.

Setup:

Late 2013 Apple iMac. 3TB with Fusion drive. Mavericks 10.9.1. 3.5GHz Intel I7. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4096 MB GPU

Motu Ultralite Mk 3 Hybrid. Latest Motu drivers 1.6 59200. Latest Motu firmware v 1.06

Connected via USB cable

Playback from iTunes produces bangs and pops every few seconds/ minutes.

Logic is also unstable, but that is almost certainly unrelated.

Output quality improves marginally at higher bit rates (96KHz 24 bit), but it is still unacceptable with long drop outs.

Case opened with Motu, who claim this is a known problem with Apple core audio with cards from multiple vendors. Motu say they are waiting on Apple for a fix.

I'm waiting for a firewire 800/400 cable to arrive in the post to see if that helps at all.

Very disappointed in Apple's QA for such a major bug to still be around after a 10.9.1 release.

This was not a cheap machine (maxed out cpu/ disk/ gpu/ ram/ everything).

Ok dudes,

the problem I had with the noisey, distortiony sound starting after a few seconds in garageband while trying to record audio, was solved ( so far so good ) by re-installing Mavericks by booting from the recovery drive (restart and hold down "command and R"

Fixed alot of other little bugs i was having too.

Hope this might help some of you at least!

I'm new to Mac's and guess I don't understand.  Isn't recovery drive for reinstalling the system?

tom burns1 wrote:

 

Ok dudes,

the problem I had with the noisey, distortiony sound starting after a few seconds in garageband while trying to record audio, was solved ( so far so good ) by re-installing Mavericks by booting from the recovery drive (restart and hold down "command and R"

Fixed alot of other little bugs i was having too.

Hope this might help some of you at least!

Logic 10.0.6 Update just came out today... and the only thing it said it was going to fix was:

"Fixes an issue that caused the audio input to be unavailable with some third party audio interfaces"

What a let down... It did not fix mine. Still waiting on 10.9.2 to be released. In case people didn't see earlier, Beta fixed a lot of USB and Firewire interfaces for people.

Is there no way for apple to provide the 10.9.2 update early to all those affected? 10.9.1 has broken my audio interface and is killing my business, having to record on an older laptop as a backup.

I would at least expect some kind of bug fix patch to be availabe! I see class action lawsuits coming on.