HDSP series driver for Mac OS x86 released! (03/2007)

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/download/drivers.htm

i tested this driver
sound is totally distorted, no pci device in system profiler
no chance to adjust the output with faders
with a little more development this driver will work

Hi there,

I installed this driver today. I can't get any audio output through it. I'm impressed you could even get some audio output through it.

To reply to your statements: Totalmix is included in this driver package.

Some questions for you people: have you flashed the card with new firmware? What cards are you using? Thanx

yes all flashing done befor installing the driver

Hi, I have the HDSP PCI rev 1.9 with the latest firmware.

I can't get any audio output through it...

totalmix is included

hm, well, I'm still in process of updating to 10.4.8 (still on development release), so you'll have to wait some time for my results. I hope there'll be something.

btw. I have 9632...

Hi again,

I installed the latest semthex kernel. Now I get audio output from the Multiface. But as said before by elRey audio is totally distorted.

Strange... I'm still downloading, so nothing from me yet. Have you tried maybe to disable internal audio card? Is clicking same on every latency? What program are u using?

hope maybe even tommorow I will install new version, so through testing from my side (and little hacking if needed) is guaranteed...

Can some of you please recomend me good AGP card that have QE and CI? I need it just for uninterupted audio editing and operation, nothing else...

Thanks

Hi, any card with GF6600 and above I believe should do it.

Until Recently there were problems with cards holding 512MB RAM. I don't know what happened to that front so my suggestion would be a GF6600 with 128MB RAM or a 7600GS with 256MB RAM if you need more power for other tasks (ie gaming in windows).

I do my testing of HDSP drivers using Ableton Live 5.2 UB.

Using the newest firmware for my rme hammerfall hdsp 9632 audio card on OSX 10.4.8 with the Semthex nd-2_3 kernel, I can get audio out but it is very distorted as everyone has mentioned.

probably you have a problem with FSB speed, try to find your correct FSB and add that to the kernel when booting, ask semethex for that command.

No luck. I think it's the driver.

Hi Guys,

first sorry for my english.
I am Austrian.

I testet it on 10.4.6 because i have a Intel Centrino (Only SSE2) and so QE won´t work on my GMA900 on 10.4.8.
Total Mixer is working on my Interface of Digiscratch, but i get no Audio Input or Output.

Hope that there will be a fix in next time, because after a hour working on OSX i want to kick my XP.

Thanks a lot CC, I will look for something like that...

I have similar problems with 9632, audio output is distorted. But, i think that recording from analog and digital inputs is working fine. Recorded waves looks like they should. What are yours and others findings on this matter?

Guys, I'm thinking, this driver was released initialy for PowerPC in 2005, so any newer HDSP Firmware should not be 100% compatible with it.

I mean, this old driver could not be aware of changes in recent hardware design of the RME HDSP. I believe we should test this driver with older firmware and with kernels as close to the original Apple kernel as possible (DaemonES 8.8.1 kernel).

I've tried the attached firmware with DaemonES kernel but had no luck: distorted audio.

I'll try testing the recorded waveforms asap.

Info for the attached firmware:

Interesting idea, will try..rme guys says that new firmware is 100% compatible with old one...but who knows...
if you are downgrading firmware, make sure to first install driver (2.94.3 for windows) and after that downgrade firmware

edit: tested with firmare 1.52 for 9632 and the situation is same, unfortunatelly... fully distorted playback sound
maybe we can try changing iopcifamily.kext because hdsp kext reports unsatisfied dependancy...

Hi, new versions of this driver should hit the web in a couple of weeks due to the release of the HDSPe series of cards...

I believe this driver is problematic 100% and has never been tested by RME themselves...

We should wait a little bit longer...

(On the contrary with people having firewire/usb cards) I think we might be luckier in the future.

Well, it is certainly worth to wait some time for working version. I've tried changing IOPCIFamily.kext, but it's all the same, cracks and glitches all over. Working version of hdsp driver will give us even wider OS and audio program choices in the future...

According to:

http://messe.harmony-central.com/Musikmess.../New-PCI-E.html

the HDSPe series will be available at the end of March (now). The time is very close...

The previous version of the driver was tested only with the PCI-e cards and not the PCI ones. No wonder it sounds terrible...

PS. I Tried swapping IOPCIFamily.kext myself too, same results...

Then, we will enjoy new driver almost in no time...

Many thanks for the valuable information. I shall give it a try.
Thanks again for your time!

Some of you mentioned flashing the firmware. Does the new firmware tie the card to OSX and make it unusable for other OS'es? Is there any 'danger'?- except for the flashing go pear-shaped and brick the card...

no, there is no real danger if you are using Windows, it will work even with older (MME) drivers. But if you use linux, I can't recommend using new firmware, because there are still no Alsa drivers with new HDSP series functions and channel layout...

Good you mentioned it. Cheers mate! I'm on Mandriva so I better hold off experimenting then...

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=75

According to the thread above:

The new RME HDSPe series cards (for the PCI-Express bus) perform 64 bit Core-Audio calculations in hardware. This functionality is missing from the PCI version and thus there is incompatibility between the HDSPe driver and the HDSP PCI series. The result is noise in the output stage.

so, we're stuck with ourself then let's make our own

I know this isn't a real solution, but IF your motherboard has on-board SPDIF out, you can route that to the Multiface SPDIF input and select it as an output for the software you're using. The OSX 16c drivers work and you can set the card to lock to incoming SPDIF.

Totalmix in OSX controls the Multiface just fine (including MIDI control) but as the tinkerers here know, anything you try to route in or out of the PCI card sounds like it's going through a Big Muff (which of course could be your style ) On my system, the latency is not fantastic, but it's very playable (feels like 12-15 ms). And I'm still getting the benefits of the Multiface routing and DA conversion.

My motherboard doesn't have a SPDIF in, otherwise I'd try routing the Multiface SPDIF out to the motherboard SPDIF input. That should work as well.

As for "doing our own"... good luck with that. Without knowing as much as RME does about how their low-level code works... but you never know

Hi Limini,

That's excactly what I am doing these days.

But I've also made an order for a MOTU Traveler. The MOTU 828 mkII FW, which I've already tested works smoothly, I believe the same will happen with the Traveler.

I find no reason why RME would release Macintel Drivers for HDSP when they are not usable...

... especially considering their PCIe card isn't in distrubution yet. Maybe there's something we're not getting...

From the RME Newsgroup. This sounds like good news but I am still skeptical about it.

Any news on this? I tried this yesterday with the lastest drivers and got distorted sound as most others have.

It's still to early, maybe in a month or two...

FYI, the HDSP PCIe card has obviously been released a few days ago. (Hidden) announcement:
http://rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=322

proof:
http://www.thomann.de/gb/rme_hdsp_pcie.htm

Strangely enough they haven't announced anything on their home page so far. Also, the Intel Mac driver in their downloads section now mentions to be compatible with the PCIe card only, whereas the old website listed the PCI card as well when they released the driver (actually 3 months before the PCIe card became available). Weird.

However, I'm seriously thinking about selling my FF400 which I'm using now as a substitute and get a PCIe card for my good old multiface.

that's what the RME peoples say:

the new RME HDSP PCIe Cards support the Apple CoreAudio floating point format in hardware. that's why they moved off from the driver the related routines for converting to this format. this results in a distorted sound.

regards

Not any more!

Yes, they patched out the floating-point conversion code when they ported the PPC driver to MacIntel.
So I just fuçking patched it straight back in again :-)
I've got 7 years and $5000 of RME gear and this is the first issue I've ever had with them, but I'm not laying
out another $1000 for 3 PCIe cards if they are going to play stupid cunts with their customers.


P.S. Please comment on your experience with this - especially in multichannel setups. I can optimize the conversion routines for SSE3 'n' stuff to tweak the performance etc. This release is just familiarizing myself with hacking Mach-O wrappers :-)

Whow you rock!! I'll give this a shot this weekend when I'm back home. Can't wait to try this out. Whoohaaa!!

Here's a patch for the HDSP MADI cards too :-)

I don't have one of these cards, so I patched it "blind", as it were


Best of luck with it, lemme know how you get on!


Edit: sorry removed this one 'coz it doesn't work. I'll work on it!

0xdeadbeef: really great work!
I have checked the 0.11 patch for the HDSP Madi and AES32.
Hardware Rev. 205 for Madi and latest driver 2.54.
Everything works!
I like your patched version even better than the real thing
I would say, you make a nice patcher for all rme pci devices
ans then we can close this thread.

Woohooo! Yes!

Brilliant, 0xdeadbeef! Many many thanks for this. I used the patch for my Multiface/PCI, and just tried it out with Logic and it works perfectly!

Will advise here if I run into issues. Thanks again!

Thanks man :-)

Here's the working MADI version,then

Hooooo
I thank U Very Very Much
U're killing me

Thanks a lot. I'll pray for U
Regards

SAfnight

Great work 0xdeadbeef

I've haven't enough time these days to work with osx, but today I was pleasantly surprised.
Your patch works out of the box with my Hdsp9632 pci card

Thank you very much for your effort!

0xdeadbeef I noticed in your sig that you have RME cardbus working in osx86, I have a ricoh pci cardbus card in my desktop and a ricoh cardbus device in my ibm x60 notebook ( Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II ) can you please explain to me how you got this to work in osx and what driver you used to get the rme cardbus recognized and talking to your multiface.


Your help is greatly appreciated.

Hi all,

Unfortunately I've got a few minor problems with the driver. Can anyone help out? The driver works great right after applying the patch itself, but as soon as I open terminal and enter the commands mentioned in the installation instructions, the multiface loses contact and indicates a host error (after reboot).

This is not a huge problem at all as the patch even works without going through the additional steps, but anytime I try to set a sample rate higher than 48khz in Ableton Live, I get a kernel panic. Switching between 44.1 and 48khz however works fine. I can set a higher sample rate in AudioMidiSetup and run iTunes, but as soon as I reboot, it reverts to 48khz.

Is everyone else able to use higher sample rates than 48khz?

I was wondering if this is somehow related to the incomplete installation? Why does the stuff I type in Terminal not work? The following part in the installation instructions is still a bit unclear to me:

sudo ./bspatch /System/Library/Extensions/HammerfallDSP.kext/Contents/MacOs/HammerfallDSP \
/System/Library/Extensions/HammerfallDSP.kext/Contents/MacOs/HammerfallDSP ./HDSPPCI.patch

Is there a space between the backslash and the slash? Or should I type
".../HammerfallDSP \/System/..."
??

Looks somehow strange to me. Any suggestions are highly appreciated. I run 10.4.8 Semthex kernel by the way.

Many many thanks to 0xdeadbeef for the hack. Great work!!

Edit: This is a HDSP Multiface + PCI card by the way

Hm, strange, I haven't even tried applying that patch from the command line, but everything works exactly as it should. I've just tried this patch with 10.4.9 tubgirl AMD sse2 kernel, and every samplerate works

Maybe you are using autosync? Try to switch multiface to master clock...

If you still have problems, try to uninstall and then reinstall patch. As far as I see, you typed this command well...

Good luck

Thanks Kejkz. I already tried switching it to master clock, but no difference at all. Reinstalled the driver/patch, repaired permissions etc. I'm almost at my wits' end. I could only think of a conflict between the formerly installed Fireface400 driver. I had to remove the FF400 MIDI driver, otherwise my MIDI setup wouldn't load. Maybe there's an issue with the other audio driver as well.

I'll give this a shot next time I'm at the studio. I may as well put the HDSP into another hackintosh just to see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the help so far.

You shouldn't apply the command-line patch at all... that is for people that run opendarwin, not OSX.

Nice one 0xdeadbeef


I got my Multiface running via the cardbus interface thanks to your patch.


Never thought Id get this going without buying the HDSPe card and never expected to get it working on my laptop . Great news for RME owners.

w00t.