Massive problem with audio interface

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.

It would be great, but Apple hasn't said ANYTHING, I don't know why we are paying like idiots for a machine to work with audio while we are losing money because it's useless...

OK PEOPLE LISTEN UP . I KNOW I AM NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO REPORT THIS BUT I JUST WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING CLEAR . i have a late 2013 haswell 27'' imac with YUP YOU GUESSED IT .. a fusion drive . the external audio problem is 100000000% with the fusion drive . however apple is definitely aware of this problem. Also the fix with splitting the fusion drive works perfect. First off for anybody new to the apple community or new to fusion drives let me explain so that you can fix this issue without having to return your fusion drive device . the fusion drive is not 1 drive . it is 2 drives , 1 mechanical hard drive 7200 rpm (which is a **** good, large, quiet and pretty speedy hard drive to begin with ) unless you have the 21.5 inch imac than it is a slower model 5400 rpm which is what a notebook would run on . but im not 100% sure if the fusion drive in the 21.5 is 5400 rpm i just know the 21.5" can only use the 5400 rpm if you just get a serial ata hard drive so i would assume it would be the same with the 21.5 fusion but i could be wrong ( maybe do some research and check it out) anyway so for the 27" model you have both a 1tb 7200 rpm serial ata hard drive and also a 128gb ssd flash storage which apple fuses together with coding. now if you have this audio issues and are considering getting a replacement from apple and just getting a normal ata hard drive please do not waste your time. i will explain why and its simple. you can split your fusion drive (google how to split fusion drive and its one of the first results just know some dont tell you that you have to do so in the terminal by shutting down and when you power back on press command + R once you hear the start up sound and hold it. using the normal terminal while actually running os x wont work since os x is running at the same time as the terminal) so anyway .. if you split your fusion drive your mac will no longer recognize the 2 hard drives ( ssd and serial ata) as one, it will recognize each one individually and can be used however you like. the beauty of this is if you are like me and need to get some music done asap and you dont have the time or simply just dont want to wait for an update to fix theis issue you can split the fusion drive into the original 2 separate drives that they truly are, install a fresh copy or your time machine backup onto you 1tb hard drive and everything works exactly like it should. i just did it and tested audio and it works perfect. so ask yourself why return your fusion drive for a normal hard drive when you already have the exact same normal hard drive in you mac already PLUS you have the 128gb ssd in there too which you wont have with an exchange. ALSO once apple finally does fix this issue with an update which i was told they were definitely working on YOU CAN UNDO SPLITTING THE FUSION DRIVE AND GO RIGHT BACK TO HAVING YOUR FUSION DRIVE AGAIN AND ALL ITS GLORY. btw the 7200 rpm hd is not slow at all and you wont realize that big of a difference. YES the fusion drive is faster but im sure you have a few extra seconds for your mac to boot and transfer files but once again NOT SLOW AT ALL! NOW one more thing. if you were going to exchange the fusion for an ssd by itself you should do so but just know the 256gb ssd costs the same as the 1tb fusion so you are losing alot of space and apps typically are not able to be downloaded on an external hd, files are, music can be, but from my knowledge not apps so you can lose space quickly. but if you have the spare $$$ to upgrade to a 512gb ssd or even better a 1tb ssd than theres no reason to think about it you should 100% definitely do that. anyway like i said ... tested and confirmed that this method worked perfectly and once apple fixes the fusio drive problem i will be binding the 2 drive right back to a fusion drive again. hope this helped good luck .

I totally agree with this guy! And that's why I didn't ask for a refund. Working fine on splitted drives. SSD for system / apps and other stuff on hdd. It's really working good without any problems. But it's obviously temprorary solution until Apple fixes this bug. And you know it could takes more time than you expected. Maybe fix will not be delivered with 10.9.2 or even 10.9.3... but you already have working computer and you know the way how to work now in this case. Yes, its not good to make something yourself after paying big amount of money but its worth it anyway and it takes not so much time for you first of all.

Can't disagree more, this is not a fusion drive issue but a core audio issue, they both cause crackles/noise.

As you claim yourself you can cure the fusion drive issue with splitting.

The other issue is core audio actually being broken in 10.9.1

I've found that clicks during recording happen with any audio device including recording with internal sound cards, recording with usb sound cards, recording with internal apps like melodyne or vocalign and i've even had soundflower cause some issues.

I refer not to unusable noise but to intermittent crackles which sound exactly like buffer underuns you usually get with low latency settings. Instead these happen at all buffer settings and almost all conditions.

Fusion drive is a seperate issue this is potentially something apple broke in 10.9.0-10.9.1 but maybe before as i only got a few weeks of 10.9.0 before auto updates happened.

JonnyK

YOU ARE MY HERO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU are a %$#@&)*# GENIUS !!!! SO SIMPLE!

I owe you a beer

That I can't help you with . This is not my experience at all . I listened to my vocals very clearly in aCapella and they sounded great . My interface is a tascam us-600 . I know not the greatest but this thing has done me very well so far.. Anyway the updated driver for mavericks for it provides and suggests to use the bit accurate not the core audio driver and like I said it works great. If something changes down the road and I start to hear anything out of the ordinary I will definitely report back . Are all your drivers updated for mavericks with your interfaces? I'm not saying that we should enjoy that we have to do all this just to get a solution but for myself and many others this solution works. But by all means if it's not working for you than get in touch with apple and rip them a new one until they make good on your problem . I will be recording all day on Monday so that will be the ultimate test for me and I will report back for sure but like I said so far so great on my end. And if it. Is a core problem it is still also a fusion problem . This was already confirmed by a lot of people and numerous people at apple to me personally. But anyway good luck I hope your problem gets solved, nobody should have to deal with this mess

Just to add myself to the list of woes...

I Googled to these pages as I am also just experiencing clicks and drop outs when trying to record audio. It starts fine then quickly degenerates into crackles, buzzing and other distortions, then when those clear I end up with a massive 1 second latency.

My Set Up:

• 21 inch late 2013 iMac Intel Core i5, 16 GB memory, 1TB Fusion Drive
• OS x 10.9.1 (Mavericks)
• Propellerhead Balance USB 2 audio interface
• Garageband 10
• Logic Pro 9

Hope a fix comes soon as I don't really want to change my system, though I could live with booting from a clone or recording my guitar by plugging into my iPhone and using Garageband on that. Not ideal...

You can also install mavericks on an external hd and just boot from there although I haven't done so myself I do know you can . I don't know how much it will slow things down , might not I don't know. But that is a solution for not wanting to split the fusion . Then u will have two copies of Mav to choose from . To do so when turning on your Mac once you hear that first boot sound hold command and r . From there you can install a new copy of Mav on external hd. It's safe an can't hurt to try but u will lose anything you have on that hd so back it up

Thanks Ant, I already have a cloned external drive thanks to SuperDuper! so I'll give that a go...

Reply back and let us know how it works and how the performance is also what speed is the ex hd . Good luck brother

I don't have issue that you described after un-fusing. Focusrite Scarlett is now working in Class-compliant mode.