USB audio dropouts on Big Sur

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Level 1

18 points

USB audio dropouts on Big Sur

Since I installed Big Sur, I'm having major problems with audio dropouts and glitching via my (very expensive and proven) RME Babyface pro. Changing USB ports and and cables has no effect. I even bought a CalDigit T3+ Thunderbolt dock to see if connecting via this would alleviate the problems. Reading around about this, it does seem to be uncannily similar to the "Timing Daemon" T2 dropout problem first reported in 2018. Apple took a very long time to fix this, which is concerning to anyone like me that uses their Mac for professional audio work and zoom teaching, if this has really reared its head again.

I'm not alone with this issue: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/audio-dropouts-on-big-sur.2271849/

Mac mini, macOS 11.1

Posted on Dec 17, 2020 1:11 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

JB_UC

Level 1

4 points

Feb 22, 2021 6:48 AM in response to trianglehead

Same problem with a Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen. The thing is, the dropouts and glitches apear only on my 7,1 Mac Pro (3,3 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon W) after updating to Big Sur (11.2.1 (20D75)) not on my 6,1 Mac Pro which i also updated to the same OS.

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Answer 2

howiem

Level 1

8 points

Feb 25, 2021 1:10 AM in response to JB_UC

I've been getting these dropouts too (FocusRite 2i:4). Wanted to analyse them so I started up Audio Hijack so I could record what was happening, and the dropouts stopped... but (smacks head)... I have Audio Hijack installed on my system. Whether or not the app itself is running, the fact is I have Audio Hijack installed, along with its kernel extension. So there's a chance that could be causing the problem, at least for me.

So: out of interest (and grasping at straws), do you have Audio Hijack installed on your machine?

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Answer 3

JB_UC

Level 1

4 points

Feb 25, 2021 3:08 AM in response to howiem

Sorry, I don't have Audio Hijack installed. We usually make our recordings within Premiere Pro.

On my machine (7,1 Mac Pro) the dropouts start as soon as I select the Scarlett Solo as my Audio-Output in the Sound-System-Preferences and "stress" the CPU with opening another program, or just draging the browser-window around.

As a quick workaround for our recordings I plugged the Scarlett to my Android-Phone which immidiatelly recognized it without any driver and worked just fine - no problems :-/

Trying to reach Apple Support today. I'll let you know if they have any solution to this.

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Answer 4

Jan 13, 2021 10:02 AM in response to trianglehead

Same Issue since updated to 11.1

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USB audio dropouts on Big Sur

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