TC Electronics Firewire Audio Crackles and Drops Out!

[malfunct]

Hi there,

 

I'm trying to use my TC Electronics Desktop Konnekt 6.

 

My system is GA-X58A-EXTREME Intel i920.

 

I'm attaching it to the onboard FW.

 

The drivers work all right, and I can play music in iTunes, but when I launch Live! the audio quickly crackles and drops out. Basically unusable, even if I set the buffers very large and make unreasonably long latencies.

 

I did try disabling HPET from BIOS. It didn't have any use. What to do? My other external card, the M-Audio FW Audiophile used to work better on the same system, did anyone have luck using the TC FW audio interfaces? Any known solutions? I've found some related threads about using PCI Firewire cards and disabling HPET kext, but I couldn't spot anything conclusive.

 

Best,

 

 

Malfunct

[Noam AA]

Hi there,

 

I'm trying to use my TC Electronics Desktop Konnekt 6.

 

My system is GA-X58A-EXTREME Intel i920.

 

I'm attaching it to the onboard FW.

 

The drivers work all right, and I can play music in iTunes, but when I launch Live! the audio quickly crackles and drops out. Basically unusable, even if I set the buffers very large and make unreasonably long latencies.

 

I did try disabling HPET from BIOS. It didn't have any use. What to do? My other external card, the M-Audio FW Audiophile used to work better on the same system, did anyone have luck using the TC FW audio interfaces? Any known solutions? I've found some related threads about using PCI Firewire cards and disabling HPET kext, but I couldn't spot anything conclusive.

 

Best,

 

 

Malfunct

 

actually my friend have the same card and have the same issues, i found the problem very quickly, but can't find a proper solution for this, only some workarounds.

ok so i start by saying, something with either the built-in sample rate clock of the konnekt, or there is something must be done in hackintosh to make it work properly.

it seems that the clock change itself, whenever some application that request something from the core audio, the clock will change,

i've seen it on WAVES GTR (for guitar amps. when starting the app i quickly get "sample rate has been changed"

also on RED ALRET for mac, and some other applications.

 

there are two workaround for that, where each one have pros and cons.

first one and most stable is to use soundflower, as the "core audio" device, and to route TC to it.

your sample rate will stop changing, and you will have no problems.

the downside is that i still cant figure how to route the inputs to soundflower, so when i use it, i get no inputs.

 

the second, which work on some application, and some not. is to just open Audio & Midi Setup, under utilities and to change the sample rate whenever some application change it.

i can say that sometime it will work, and sometimes it bricks the audio from the app, until app restart.

and sometime, just leave the clock the way it is, and it will still output 44,100Khz

 

 

VERY VERY strange clock behavior!

if you change the clock manually it will do nothing.

 

i have RME 9632 on my hack, with drivers way way back from 2008-9(something like that) and still ROCK SOLID, so i can't figure it out

 

what i also can say about TC, as i myself a customer, of POWERCORE (which they just ceased), and all i can say about that ride, is TC can't make stable drivers, ATT ALL!, they have very good hardware but not enough good programers.

 

if you have anything to suggest please do

[malfunct]

actually my friend have the same card and have the same issues, i found the problem very quickly, but can't find a proper solution for this, only some workarounds.

ok so i start by saying, something with either the built-in sample rate clock of the konnekt, or there is something must be done in hackintosh to make it work properly.

it seems that the clock change itself, whenever some application that request something from the core audio, the clock will change,

i've seen it on WAVES GTR (for guitar amps. when starting the app i quickly get "sample rate has been changed"

also on RED ALRET for mac, and some other applications.

 

there are two workaround for that, where each one have pros and cons.

first one and most stable is to use soundflower, as the "core audio" device, and to route TC to it.

your sample rate will stop changing, and you will have no problems.

the downside is that i still cant figure how to route the inputs to soundflower, so when i use it, i get no inputs.

 

the second, which work on some application, and some not. is to just open Audio & Midi Setup, under utilities and to change the sample rate whenever some application change it.

i can say that sometime it will work, and sometimes it bricks the audio from the app, until app restart.

and sometime, just leave the clock the way it is, and it will still output 44,100Khz

 

 

VERY VERY strange clock behavior!

if you change the clock manually it will do nothing.

 

i have RME 9632 on my hack, with drivers way way back from 2008-9(something like that) and still ROCK SOLID, so i can't figure it out

 

what i also can say about TC, as i myself a customer, of POWERCORE (which they just ceased), and all i can say about that ride, is TC can't make stable drivers, ATT ALL!, they have very good hardware but not enough good programers.

 

if you have anything to suggest please do

 

 

Thanks for the info. Part of the problem was that I was using Live 8.1 which is too buggy. I was indeed trying to use 96khz, which might be related to the clock setting issue that you mention.

 

Changing the TC preferences doesn't solve anything, you know there are those "safe 1", "safe 2", modes but they didn't help actually.

 

The firewire cards have too much latency anyway. It might be good for laptop performers, but wouldn't it be much better to use a PCI interface with an external I/O box?

 

Anyway, right now I'm using the onboard HD Audio interface on the GA-EX58-EXTREME using Live 8.2 and it works at least, and it does have better latency than Firewire interfaces. The only reason I was using an external sound card was for my vocal recording gear anyway, but I'm still very much troubled that I can't make much use of this interface. I disconnected it now, I'm thinking what I should be doing for the recording. I'll hook it up in Logic and see if the recording goes all right. I remember having crackle issues during recording in logic as well, which is not cool, of course. Maybe I should just sell this interface. It's not worth the hassle if I'm not going to be able to make a proper recording with it. The reason I bought it was the supposedly great 192khz/24-bit recording capability. Now, I'm thinking whether I should buy a MOTU. Too bad those EMU cards don't work on OSX

 

I'm actually going to test the HD Audio recording, who knows, perhaps it isn't noisy and then I can throw away these silly firewire interfaces!!!! You know what, the firewire interface was not without problems on my iMac using my old and trusted M-Audio Firewire Audiophile, I don't think that these problems are hackintosh specific. I had always thought that Firewire was a good thing given that you can theoretically get pretty good latency using Core Audio, but nowadays I'm not so sure. I'm suspicious about the firewire driver in OSX, too, because those programs are supposed to tell you when there is CPU overload, and I know that these issues can happen without any CPU overload which is the strange part.

 

I'll try to post some more info on this thread when I get to the recording session.

 

Cheers,

 

Malfunct

[Noam AA]

Thanks for the info. Part of the problem was that I was using Live 8.1 which is too buggy. I was indeed trying to use 96khz, which might be related to the clock setting issue that you mention.

 

Changing the TC preferences doesn't solve anything, you know there are those "safe 1", "safe 2", modes but they didn't help actually.

 

The firewire cards have too much latency anyway. It might be good for laptop performers, but wouldn't it be much better to use a PCI interface with an external I/O box?

 

Anyway, right now I'm using the onboard HD Audio interface on the GA-EX58-EXTREME using Live 8.2 and it works at least, and it does have better latency than Firewire interfaces. The only reason I was using an external sound card was for my vocal recording gear anyway, but I'm still very much troubled that I can't make much use of this interface. I disconnected it now, I'm thinking what I should be doing for the recording. I'll hook it up in Logic and see if the recording goes all right. I remember having crackle issues during recording in logic as well, which is not cool, of course. Maybe I should just sell this interface. It's not worth the hassle if I'm not going to be able to make a proper recording with it. The reason I bought it was the supposedly great 192khz/24-bit recording capability. Now, I'm thinking whether I should buy a MOTU. Too bad those EMU cards don't work on OSX

 

I'm actually going to test the HD Audio recording, who knows, perhaps it isn't noisy and then I can throw away these silly firewire interfaces!!!! You know what, the firewire interface was not without problems on my iMac using my old and trusted M-Audio Firewire Audiophile, I don't think that these problems are hackintosh specific. I had always thought that Firewire was a good thing given that you can theoretically get pretty good latency using Core Audio, but nowadays I'm not so sure. I'm suspicious about the firewire driver in OSX, too, because those programs are supposed to tell you when there is CPU overload, and I know that these issues can happen without any CPU overload which is the strange part.

 

I'll try to post some more info on this thread when I get to the recording session.

 

Cheers,

 

Malfunct

 

hey man sorry to hear that, actually i myself can't even use hd audio as i hate it. but every one with their own decisions, one thing is, with soundflower you somehow get lower latency then the tc (with TC connected to it), can't figure how it's possible but this card has tones of thing i still can;t understand.

if i willl find a solution for soundflower to route inputs i will tell you, cause right now thats the only thing that i miss with soundflower