Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music (one of my favorite music-making blogs, by the by) has a post rounding up a lot of the issues OS 10.5.2 seems to be having with various drivers for audio interfaces, including those manufactured by Digidesign (aka the Pro Tools folks) and its subsidiary M-Audio. This is a pretty big problem, as Digidesign and M-Audio are two of the most popular manufacturers of prosumer/professional audio interfaces. Peter's post links to apologies and explanations from the manufacturers as well.
According to Dave Lebolt, general manager at Digidesign, the 10.5.2 upgrade may have actually broken fixes that appeared in 10.5.1. And Kirn goes as far to say that he "certainly can't recommend Leopard in its current state," at least for making music, which is why I haven't upgraded from TIger myself.
Does this affect you if you're not a music geek? Probably not. But when your psycho microhouse-obsessed beatmaking roommate starts swearing and kicking his MacBook and ProTools rig around in the middle of the night, at least you'll know what the fuss is all about.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
5-21-2008 @ 3:08PM
joey said...
I'm a hobbiest with reason and a pro keys 88 and havent notice any issues. Then again thats all Im running besides garageband.
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5-21-2008 @ 3:16PM
nathan Johnson said...
I waited inline for Leopard. Installed it right away. Didn't think about it maybe messing up the drivers I had installed for my M-Audio Firewire 410. The band I'm in set up for practice one night and couldn't figure out why nothing was playing from the audio outs....we searched forever for bad cables...audio card issues...etc. Finally decided that it was probably the driver so we went to download it and noticed it wasn't leopard ready. So worse part....I did a clean install to tiger (forgetting to backup most of my files :( which sucked) then I installed the tiger drivers for the M-Audio unit and it worked. I checked everyday for M-Audio to update the drivers. It took them about 3 or 4 months I'd say for them to finally put out the new drivers! So I was with Tiger for quite sometime. I even sent M-Audio emails and stuff complaining and they'd just respond with the same answer and it was just some dumb generated response like "Due to the nature of newer and newer operating systems our drivers and products might not work...blah blah blah." It was rediculous. They finally fixed the drivers and I've been using leopard with our M-Audio product ever since and it has worked great!
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5-21-2008 @ 3:46PM
Zimmie said...
The 410 requires a driver? I thought it was class-compliant and would work with Apple's included FireWire audio driver. Wow. That makes me glad I got my FA-66 instead. One of my friends haven't had any problems with his MOTU UltraLite (though the software to program the mixer from the computer wasn't compatible for a while) and another tells me his PreSonus FireBox works well, too.
Is this just a Digidesign/M-Audio issue, or does it actually affect more interfaces? If it's just them, isn't this an indication of a problem on their end rather than with 10.5.2?
5-22-2008 @ 10:09AM
Linus said...
The latest 410 drivers have serious issues even using 10.4.
5-21-2008 @ 3:19PM
Lee Pedinoff said...
This must be why Numark's DJiO USB audio interface also died with 10.5.2. It's extremely frustrating that a fix is still not yet available from either Numark or Apple.
Apparently, however, the bug also appeared in 10.4.11, so Tiger users have also felt the bite.
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5-22-2008 @ 3:25AM
effzehn said...
Check this thread:
http://forums.numark.com/showthread.php?t=1656
Numark's information policy was quite staggering. I sold that box.
5-21-2008 @ 3:19PM
Patrick Hogan said...
I Use Mark of the Unicorn Hardware and software with my studio. I have no issues with 10.5.2
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5-21-2008 @ 3:20PM
paul said...
Let's be honest. 10.5 has caused mega-problems for almost everyone.
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5-21-2008 @ 6:06PM
David Chartier said...
Be careful with absolutes. They're often wrong. The Leopard launch, on the whole, went over really well. Lots of developers and manufacturers are *always* behind new software, no matter what. Look at Adobe and Microsoft—two companies at the top of the development resources scale—and they weren't ready for Leopard or even the Intel switch.
Often times when problems like this appear, it's a vocal minority that can sound like a majority when they start stomping their feet. Don't be mislead. Music production is certainly a niche but important part of the industry, but it—even when combined with other segments that had issues with the brand new OS—are still a very small portion of overall Mac users.
5-21-2008 @ 6:46PM
Darren said...
Hardly. Leopard has been rock solid for me. It's been a little smoother than the Tiger upgrade, which took until 10.4.3 before reaching a similar level of rock-solidness.
5-22-2008 @ 7:11AM
kag said...
There does seem to be a few problems with Leopard, for example the switcher Tansaki ( http://tansaki.blogspot.com/2008/04/visiting-mac-store.html ) publishes 7 easy steps to crash a Mac's window server.
The entire blog, themed around a switch to the Mac, is well worth a read.
According to his latest entry he was finally able to install Tiger on his new MBP, and is now much happier with the stability.
5-21-2008 @ 3:24PM
Scott said...
I've only had leopard for about a month and I've received about 5 kernel panics. Usually for me it's when I insert a dvd. It panics on Commercial DVD's, burnt data dvd's. It's fine once it reboots, but the panics drive me nuts.
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5-21-2008 @ 6:25PM
Victor Agreda Jr said...
Scott, you might want to check out your hardware. If a kernel panic is triggered often enough by one thing, and that thing happens to be hardware, there could be something wrong with that hardware. Of course, it could also be a corrupt driver for that hardware, or some stupid plist file that has gone sour. Ain't tech awesome?
5-21-2008 @ 10:39PM
Scott said...
Well that's how I know it's the OS. It's a brand new MacBook. Brand Spankin' new and it panicked on my second day of owning it, the first time I put a DVD into it. Maybe it was the movie. Terminator 3. :/
5-22-2008 @ 12:18PM
Darren said...
Scott,
Hardware failures are most likely to occur either right out of the factory, or after the extended warranty period. If you computer is brand new and you get a kernel panic when inserting a DVD (or kernel panic in general), it's most certainly a hardware problem. Take it to your local Apple dealer and get it fixed for free.
5-21-2008 @ 3:33PM
john said...
What's really awesome about this problem is that new Macs can't run Tiger. So if you buy a bitchin' new 8-core tower like I just did, the only way you can run Pro Tools in a supported configuration is to Boot Camp into Windows XP. Thanks, Apple and DigiDesign!!!
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5-21-2008 @ 5:32PM
Christopher Grant said...
Just solved this with a friend's new iMac -- get a copy of Tiger that came with the Aluminum iMacs by hook or by crook. You'll be able to install that on newer Macs and have all of the hardware detected, drivers and all.
5-22-2008 @ 12:34AM
adam bowen said...
Nope. Digi doesn't support pro tools or m powered in boot camp.... how many tracks have you recorded simulaneously ?
5-22-2008 @ 10:09AM
Linus said...
Well, that is POO tools fault. Not Apples.
Why get a brand new Mac Pro to use a r**arded system that is beaten by all other major DAWs?
5-21-2008 @ 3:33PM
perrin said...
Seriously folks, this happened all the time in 10.4 with Digidesign's software as well. I switched from PT to Logic and have been totally happy with it. Done with ProTools forever.
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