Problems with MOTU 8PRE FW under Mavericks?(Resolved)

[taka]

Hello-

I'm wondering if anyone's experiencing similar problems with MOTU Firewire interfaces under Mavericks. There are few other people talking about this on Apple's discussion board so I don't think I'm the only one..

So in my case, the problem is this:

My setup: Mac mini mid-2011, quad 2GHz i7, 16G RAM, OS 10.9.3, DP 8.06 (64bit), Original MOTU 8Pre connected via Firewire.

1) Any MOTU Audio System later than 57985 (June 2013) completely messes up audio, system wide.
What I get, when I install newer drivers, in my case, is that, I get a nasty high-mid digital ring only from my left speaker, and on my right speaker, I get something resembling the audio I expect to hear, but as if it's played back from an old radio. This is system wide, not only DP, e.g. 'empty trash' sound comes out this way too.

2) When I reverted to the above mentioned 57985 driver, it works most of the time. But I still get occasional glitch on playback and record. When it happens during recording, it gets recorded. Thankfully it hasn't happened while recording on DP yet, but this sort of uncertainty is not ideal... The glitch is system wide too, when I'm listening to something just using QT player, or on a website, the sound glitches occasionally.

3) One participant on Apple's board seemed to be getting a better result by using an even older driver (55333 from Sept. 2012). So at the moment, I've installed this driver and seeing if it solves the issue.

This problem doesn't seem to be a very widespread one, but I think there are more than a few people experiencing this, so please chip in if you've had similar issues, and better still, how you solved it!

Thanks, Taka

[NazRat]

I'm using the same mini with an 828mkII running the latest MOTU UAI drivers on the same OSX and do not have any problems. I think the version of the drivers that you have installed still has the 'uninstall' option. Maybe try running the uninstaller first, deleting the MOTU FW Preferences and then install the most recent version.

[taka]

Hi NazRat, thanks for the suggestion!
Unfortunately, I've tried that already, and it didn't change the situation...

It just dawned on me that *may be* it's because of Soundflower that I have installed on my system... I need it so I can't get rid of it to test at the moment but I will do when I get a chance and post the result here--

[NazRat]

I have Soundflower installed also. Soundflower was turned into a Google Code project a while back and a couple of things have changed. If you haven't already, you can download the current beta here: http://code.google.com/p/soundflower/

Just something else to check out.

[mikehalloran]

Not having the problem.

I also have Soundflower installed but haven't used it for years, having found it to be a major pain and ultimately unnecessary to anything I was doing. Nice to see that there is updated code - hope I never need to use it again.

[Agent of Random]

Sounds similar to this:

http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technotes/8preleftnoise

[taka]

Aaaaahhh I think that WAS it, Agent of Random! No more left channel noise, all sounds great!

Thank you for the pointer, I don't think that page came up when I was Googling for solutions.
Amazing! Thank you!!

UPDATE:: After this, I repaired permissions and restarted the Mac, and the problem came back. So I performed the hardware reset again and it's OK again now. Looks like I still need to keep my eye on the situation.....

[Shooshie]

Could it be due to unintended settings in CueMix FX? That's pretty complex now, and it would be easy for someone to accidentally leave it set in such a way that later use of different channels might access EQ or other effects, or even phase reversal, MS decoding, or any of a number of options.

If someone doesn't understand all the workings of CueMix FX, this would be not only possible but likely, especially if someone had played with the controls, not heard immediate results, and left some effects operational next time audio was played through a particular channel.

Reverting to factory settings would fix it. But then, it's possible that a saved CueMix setting reopened later might restore the problematic settings. I'm not sure where a saved setting might be stored and reopened, but if the problem reappeared later, that's the only explanation I can think of.

These are just ideas off the top of my head; I haven't tested them.

Shooshie

[taka]

Thanks for your thoughts Shooshie--
Cue Mix FX doesn't come with 'FX' in 8Pre, so I don't think it's related to the problems I was having...

The main problem (left channel noise) seems to be 8Pre specific hardware issue that MOTU describes on the linked page in Agent of Random's comment. I've just turned on my system this morning and everything seems to be working OK, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed --

As for the glitch during recording, I have to see if it still happens during sessions. I hope it was also corrected by 8pre factory reset..

Taka

[taka]

I've changed the thread title as this issue seems to be specific to the Original 8Pre FW.

[Shooshie]

I've changed the thread title as this issue seems to be specific to the Original 8Pre FW.

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

Do keep us updated as to the outcome of all this. If it keeps working, would you come back and post about it, possibly putting "Resolved" in the thread title? The important thing is for others to be able to know that this is a real fix, not just smoke-blowing.

Shoosh

[taka]

Yeah I'll give it a couple of weeks and see how it does--
As the problem did return once right after the first hardware reset +restart, I'll be a bit cautious before declaring it Resolved

[taka]

UPDATE:

OK, I've discovered something else. The left channel whine/ring problem returned today. But I think I've discovered a way to fix it other than hardware reset.

In MOTU Audio Setup app, I usually have Optical Out set to 'NONE' (Optical In is set to ADAT to receive my Audient ASP008 ADAT connection).

When I installed the latest MOTU Audio System during this troubleshoot, the optical In/Out settings defaulted to 'ADAT' on both. So yesterday I changed the Out to 'None'.
It worked all OK yesterday but when I started the Mac this morning (I shut it down completely at the end of the day), the whine/ring problem came back.

As the only thing I've changed that I could think of was the Optical Out setting, I reverted it to ADAT again and the whine/ring went away!

So if you use the original 8Pre and experience the same problem, I'd say try this first...

Taka*

[taka]

OK I think I can declare the left-channel whine/ring problem is solved. Since I've seethe Optical Out in MOTU Audio Setup to ADAT (with nothing connected), this particular problem hasn't return. I don't know how many people here still use FW 8Pre, but if you experience this problem, Hardware Rest and/or Optical Out setting will probably fix it

Taka

[burn em]

I can confirm the above ADAT switching thingamabob works. I had 1 channel of phones out and main out doing similar.

Turn both ADAT in and out on and all comes good.

CHEERS!