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Hi,
Here's the problem. I'm running DP 7.02 on a late 2009 MBP with an RME FF400 and an external G-Technologies drive daisy chained through FW. Recently I noticed audio drop outs, crazy digital distortion and sometime echoing when playing audio through the interface inputs (this does not always happen, a little hard to reproduce, but it there alright). After sending my FF400 for repair, they said they haven't found a problem. The digital nature of the noise leads me to conclude that the only options left are either the firewire data transfer or CPU spikes. My MBP has Rev 7 of the Lucent chipset so I think this is not the regular mbp firewire problem. I seem to recall that when this first started I got the CPU overload warnings, and then turned them off. How can I have CPU spikes with only one stereo channel being monitored in an otherwise empty project?

Any advice how to troubleshoot this?

I had similar nasty noises when using an Apogee Duet for the first time.
Turned out to be the Firewire cable. Try a different one if you can ?

I thought that digital cables either work or they don't. My problem only happens on a single input, so I doubt that's the problem.

Thanks.

Way back when, in an operating system far away, I had the same problem with my Apogee Rosetta. At the time, I suspected it was a FW issue and downloaded the new (at that time) FW drivers from the Apple Developer's site. That solved the problem. When Leopard came out the problem disappeared, and I assumed it was fixed. I don't know for certain that it was a FW issue, but I do know that I haven't seen the problem at all since installing Leopard. This leads me to believe that it wasn't a hardware problem, but it doesn't mean that it's not in your case. If this is indeed FW related, I guess it could be something as simple as an intermittent problem with a cable. Worth a try, yes? Don't know if this helped at all but any info is good info.

Phil