Firewire Audio Problem

[zombiewheel]

Hi Guys and Gals

 

My first post here so greetings and thanks to everyone involved for making such a thing possible.

 

I have a small problem on my hack with a core audio supported firewire card (Presonus Firebox) which goes through a Via chipset Firewire PCI card. My specs are:

GA-G31M-ESL2 mobo

Core 2 Duo E7400

2Gb Crucial DDR2

XFX 7300GT VGA with Natit Dual 2 kext

Lacie Firewire 400 PCI (Via chipset)

iPC 10.5.6 install (clean install - no drivers) with leapardsoup mobo UInstall package installed. (Yep I'm a noob)

Updated to 10.5.7

 

So everything works fine and dandy apart from pro audio apps (Reason and Logic - tried independently, same problem) where I get a skip/glitch every few minutes - or more often if I'm actually recording audio.

 

I haven't installed the mobo sound kexts at all so unless the iPC install has a modified core audio, that should be clean. I did make sure I used Vanilla though so should be ok.

 

I have seen comments around the various forums regarding Texas Instruments chipset fw cards and that those should work but I was wondering if anyone had any further input on this.

 

I've also seen talk of installing older fw kexts but as I'm a noob I would like some clarification on this.

 

Everything works fine under Windows so the hardware itself is sound. Any help would be mega, cheers.

[zombiewheel]

Right, after a lot more digging I've found that downloading the older AppleFWAudio.kext v1.2.2 (here http://rapidshare.com/files/108894413/Appl....kext.zip.html) and installing using "KextHelper" worked a treat. No need to uninstall any previous ones first, it just overwrites it. Not had a glitch since. Logic and Reason working a treat. Haven't tried with 10.5.8 yet but will post on if and when I do. Saved myself another £15 there.

 

Taraa

[Scoobie]

Right, after a lot more digging I've found that downloading the older AppleFWAudio.kext v1.2.2 (here http://rapidshare.com/files/108894413/Appl....kext.zip.html) and installing using "KextHelper" worked a treat. No need to uninstall any previous ones first, it just overwrites it. Not had a glitch since. Logic and Reason working a treat. Haven't tried with 10.5.8 yet but will post on if and when I do. Saved myself another £15 there.

 

Taraa

 

Thanks will give it a whirl and see what happens.

[zombiewheel]

Ok I have an update to this.

 

After installing the above driver, whilst the audio worked perfectly, the midi function of my Firebox stopped working. It wouldn't appear in Logic and was grayed out in the Audio/Midi utility in Leopard itself. No work-around has managed to solve this.

Also no matter what I tried I could not get Firewire working at all in 10.5.8 with my Lacie Via card, even with different drivers so have been stuck on 10.5.7. Different distros couldn't cure it and even with a super clean retail install the problems were better but still evident.

 

So I took some fairly common advice from the various OSX86 forums and bought a "Belkin Firewire 3-Port PCI" 400 card, which uses the Texas Instruments chipset. I was a little hesitant about it at first as no-one had verified this as a solution and there was no marking on the chip detailing it as such but on installation and into XP it verified itself as a TI chip.

 

So back into my retail 10.5.8 build and lo and behold blue light on the Firebox indicated a connection and the Firewire device was there in ATM. Woohoo! Into Audio/Midi Utility - all ok there, not grayed out anymore. Tests with Reason have so far gone hunky dory and will be testing in Logic in the next few days but I expect this to be ok as Reason was experiencing the exact same problems as Logic anyway.

 

So yeah just wanted to confirm the advice I'd seen on these forums to anyone who was in 2 minds whether to bite the bullet and buy a different or additional card.

 

Definitely do it. It will save you a massive ball-ache which for the sake of £20 ($33) is definitely worthwhile.

 

Assume no more problems unless I post back in the next 2-3 days.