GB and MOTU 828

Everything else that feeds audio through the MOTU works fine...quicktime, itunes, ableton, reason, audacity. Everything.

And yes...after this happens the track is still record enabled. The meters register that sound is being output from GB but the MOTU is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

I have the latest MOTU driver. I reinstalled it today. It could be the driver but until MOTU comes out with a new one I'm stuck if it is the driver.

Both input and output are set to MOTU 828.

Another piece of information I just found out. If the sound stops (as it always does) and I turn the MOTU off and then on it will start working again until I click somewhere else in GB. Then it stops once more. Very frustrating.

My saga gets weirder now.

I have wanted to replace my MOTU 828 for a while anyway so today I went out and bought a PreSonus Firebox. It doesn't have it's own driver. It uses Core Audio.

I plugged it in and tested it with itunes, quicktime etc. It worked perfectly.

I tested it with GarageBand '08. It works perfectly.

Then the acid test. I opened GB '09 and pretty much the same thing happens as my MOTU 828. Sometimes if I even move my mouse the sound output through the Firebox stops. Sometimes it just stutters. If the stuttering happens I then get severe latency...which was not evident before the stuttering or with GB '08.

Here's where it gets even weirder. I then set the input and output of GB '09 to "built-in" and used my iMac's built in audio input and output. Everything works perfectly. No latency. No stutters. No sound cutting out.

That's two different firewire boxes with the same problems and one doesn't even use a driver.

I'm stumped.

I would love some help here.

Thanks!

One step closer to a possible cause of the problem.

When the sound stops going through the Firebox if I open the "Audio Midi Setup" utility and switch the format from 44.100 to anything else the Firebox seems to reset itself and sound comes out again.

The Presonus manual suggests doing this if the Firebox loses sync with the computer. However, the blue "sync light" on the Presonus is supposed to turn red when sync is lost. It doesn't turn red when I lose sound from GarageBand. But the same "fix" that Presonus suggests for losing sync also works for restoring sound from GB.

I have no idea what this all means, how to fix the problem or determine what might be causing it. All I know right now is that the problem seems to be very much with GB since no other application causes this to happen.

Once again...if anyone has any thoughts I'm all ears.

One last observation about this problem.

I tried working in GB last night without going anywhere near the new "Guitar Amp Simulator" section and I had no problems at all. GB worked fine through my Firebox.

Obviously the new Guitar Amp simulator section has something to do with my problem. This is a shame since that was the main reason I wanted to have GB '09.

I'm still looking for help on this problem if anyone has any ideas. I do see a new post where someone seems to be having the same or similar problems and talks about downloading a new firewire sdk.

I called Presonus too. But I don't think it's just a Presonus problem. Like I've mentioned I had the exact same problem with a MOTU 828. And it definitely only happens when I try to use the new Guitar Amp simulator section of GarageBand.

Maybe if Presonus gets enough calls they can get Apple to issue a fix.

I sure hope someone else who has this problem will be able to find a fix or workaround.

I saw that thread. I downloaded the current firewire driver from the developer site. It's sdk 26. It made no difference. Same problem.

I've been keeping an eye on that thread to see if the poster finds sdk 24 and whether that works for him or not.

I have the exact same Mac as you except 4 GB of RAM and the GeForce 7300 video card. I hate to think it's the computer because that's not something I'm going to change just for GB. Hopefully Apple will recognize the issue and release a patch.

I did a similar experiment and set up a different user account. Logged into that and opened GB.
Same problems.

Thank you for trying a completely new system install. That was my next thought. Now I won't bother.