Alphatrack problem w/Yosemite - Resolved

[James Steele]

8:24pm Just came back into the studio to check. No drift. Level is -9.2db on AT display and -9.17db on DP's mixer.

[James Steele]

Well, I'm tired today and going to crash out. Don't want to leave my MacPro on all night, but FWIW, still no drive. It hasn't moved at all nearly 2 hours later. Not sure why my system would be different, but it is.

[primeevolutionary]

I just kept playing with the SHIFT key and turning the Motor On and Off and SHIFT + ESC + F4 to Calibrate because I refused to say "die". After a lot of playing around, it seems to be okay again. No more drift.

[James Steele]

I just kept playing with the SHIFT key and turning the Motor On and Off and SHIFT + ESC + F4 to Calibrate because I refused to say "die". After a lot of playing around, it seems to be okay again. No more drift.

Glad to hear it. Very strange issue, but I'm glad it worked. Must be something specific to your AlphaTrack I'm guessing. No such issue here that I could reproduce.

[primeevolutionary]

It reminded me of when you have mice or trackball problems. I air blasted the groove of the fader hoping that might be it. I'm not sure.

I think God may be telling me to move on though. It was working great again and I was enjoying using it at full function, when, all of the sudden, my right track selector button fell into the unit. I'm trying to fish it out a la Operation, the whacky doctor game, but, so far no luck.

I figured I could use Transport to select tracks and use Alphatrack for everything else, but, now I'm having the problem again. It may be the contact on the track selector that's been the problem the whole time.

Darn! The ergonomics of Alphatrack are perfect.

Thanks for testing yours, James.

[James Steele]

Yikes that's a bummer. If my AlphaTrack ever died, I'd probably go try and get another on eBay. Actually I have a backup. When I got mine, I got two of them: one for me and one for a friend who'd helped me out mixing songs for me. Well, he never really took to it the way I did, so he ended up just putting it back in the box and letting it sit for years... pristine. So last time I visited him, I gave him a monitor I wasn't using and he gave me back the Alpha Track... like I said in "showroom" condition. I moved that to my MAIN AlphaTrack (not before swapping the knobs from my old one. I ordered the other style knobs that Frontier made available shortly after initial release.), and put my original AT away as a spare.

[primeevolutionary]

I took it apart and, while, I can't get that button to work, I've at least got it so that it doesn't bother the fader anymore. I quickly devised a workflow using TranzPort and AlphaTrack. I use TranzPort for tracking, but, never thought about it for mixing. It's actually pretty useful. Since you're holding it like a remote control, it's very fast and handy in cruising though your tracks and making smaller fader adjustments.

This works fine, but, I did take James' advice to pick up a backup AlphaTrack from eBay. Interesting that the seller's name is also James...

My problems here withstanding, AlphaTrack is a great controller. It's a shame they stopped supporting it.

Good night!

[James Steele]

My problems here withstanding, AlphaTrack is a great controller. It's a shame they stopped supporting it.

Agreed! Love mine and love that it's still viable in 64-bit DP 8! Since my backup is kind of grungy, I should keep an eye out for another just in case.

[supersonic]

Anyone managed to make it work on the new MacPro under Yosemite? I keep getting kernel panics and while over here the standard approach to a panic attack is to drink vodka I have a feeling my mac pro wouldn't agree here...

[primeevolutionary]

Yes, it's working great under Yosemite (now that I have my track selector problem taken care of).

I'm running DP 8.07 Mac OS 10.10.1

Make sure that you're on MOTU Universal Audio Installer 1.6.4254. 1.6.64208 was causing all kinds of problems for me.

I guess I should also say to make sure that you're using AlphaTrack Manager 1.4.1 and AlphaTrack Control Surface bundle 1.02 installed for 64 bit use.

In AlphaTrack Manager make sure that you have AlphaTrack Native selected.

In DP's Control Surface Setup, be sure that Listen to control surfaces in background is select4ed. Make sure that the Driver is AlphaTrack and the Input and Output Ports are Frontier Designs AlphaTrack.

[supersonic]

I am already set-up this way and it is still causing intermittent kernel panics.

[primeevolutionary]

The only other thing I've noticed on 10.10 and 10.10.1 is that my Memory Used has been staying at a high level. I've always heard that the OS will reallocate itself when necessary and in the past, that's seemed to be true. I have been finding that I am getting processing and playback "clipping" when the Memory Used has >65%. I've had to restart or purge to make it stop "clipping". Though everything I've read seems to state that kernel_task shouldn't be an issue, it seems to be a little out of control in 10.10 and 10.10.1.

[supersonic]

I will keep digging, meanwhile go to faderport.

[primeevolutionary]

Best of luck!