MacBook Pro :: Multiple Audio-outs Via USB Or Firewire?
Jan 31, 2012
I'm looking for a hardware solution for my mid-2010 MBP w/ 2-4 audio outputs via USB or Firewire. On the software side, I want to have multiple media players open and playing simultaniously, but each output separately. I was told m-audio makes devices that allow this, but I am curious which may be the cheapest with this capability - or alternate manufacturers.
I am running iTunes 11.2.2, which I assume is the most recent download.
During playback of songs in iTunes I get momentary audio drop outs or interruptions of songs. They happen once every 45 seconds or so but it varies, and they are not consistent from playback to playback (they happen at different times in the song when the song is played multiple times).
The volume controls aren't working well. I'm using a M-Audio Firewire Audiophile external sound device. There seems to be a headphone level control on the left which sort of works (its continuous so you never know where you are in its range) and a "Level Controller" on the right which doesn't do anything to the sound yet it controls the sound bar in Sys Prefs/Sound. I downloaded the 10.4.11 driver from M-Audio.
I've been having a lot of problems with heat in relation to my firewire audio interface on my MacBook.Initially I thought it was my external monitor that was the main problem. Well, it does add some heat. The temperature raises about 5-6 degrees celcius and the fan speeds up to 2400rpm when idling. This I can live with.However, when connecting my firewire audio interface the heat and fan speed becomes unacceptable. The heat raises about 10 degrees, and the fan speeds up to about 5500rpm. After about half an hour of regular use, like browsing, the temperature goes up even more (as expected) and the fan starts blowing at full speed. And this by just browsing the web.
With the new Mac Mini models, you can have audio out via HDMI or the line out. I am thinking to hook the mini up to an LCD TV/monitor via HDMI (sound on the monitor) and also to my other TV/sound system via the mini DP and audio out.
I assume when the mini turns on it'll activate both displays (if they are turned on), and from what I understand you can have two displays running. I'd only want one at a time so I'd have the other display switched off. But can the mini output audio to either both, or whichever system I am using? I've read a lot of posts but can't find a definite answer. I only want audio (and video for that matter, but can turn off other screen) to one TV at a time, but do I have to go into the OS audio settings each time I want to swap between the two?
I'm also thinking of using Plex and keeping it open at all times, just sleeping the mini when not in use. Can the mini only output to one source, requiring manual switching to the other (i.e. going from HDMI to audio out)?
There's a thread in the macbook pro forum about this (that I bumped) but I didn't realize it was the wrong forum so I'll post here too.Whenever I plug Firewire audio interface into my macbook , even with no programs running and the computer essentially at idle, the CPU temperature quickly rises several degrees and then the fan quickly ramps up to maximum. Nothing appears to be placing the CPU under load at this time (measuring temps and fans with iStat nano). Of course, if I do put the CPU under load, the temps get very hot, 80C
I'm wondering if I somehow have a bad firewire chip in my MBP. It hasn't been able to work with firewire audio interfaces.
- I tried a Metric Halo ULN 2 which loses sync with it's audio. It will be fine for a few minutes with itunes but then becomes distorted and ringy as if it's lost it's audio sync. - Random kernel panics while using Logic 9, Garageband 11 with an Apogee Duet - all software fully updated. One time it froze while not doing anything - logic was simply open and sitting there. Using iTunes through the Duet seems fine. - Pops and crackles using Presonus Firestudio.
I've tried wiping my software and reinstalling everything. I'm using a MBP 5,3 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM, Snow Leopard (10.6.5) with the latest updates. I'm going to try an Apogee One which is USB, but I'd really like to use a firewire interface. If there's something wrong with my firewire port, I'd like it taken care of. My machine is under applecare 3 year warranty. I don't think this is an easy thing to prove though.
That just makes me laugh, no body owning a 13" Apple laptop can have it all ehh. I am now glad that i bought my unibody before the upgrade because I don't want to go out and spend $150+ on an audio device just to record a few tunes from my guitar. Wow, I do love the new MBP, but can't apple just give it all to the 13" customers?
The new 13" MacBook Pro unveiled at WWDC makes room for its new SD card slot and FireWire 800 port in part by giving up a digital audio input port. Instead, the new model uses the same integrated mic and headphone port as the iPhone.Most MacBook users are unlikely to ever employ the combination digital and analog audio input port, which has appeared on all Mac notebooks for years. Podcasters are likely to use a USB mic like the Blue Snowball instead.However, lots of users are likely to want to use their iPhone or iPod touch combination headset/mic with their MacBook for video conferencing, and recent notebooks have added the additional pin required to support recording audio in addition to stereo headphone analog outputs and digital audio output.
Today I connected my Mackie Onyx Satellite Firewire audio interface to my 2.4 Ghz 13" Macbook Pro for the first time. After it had been running for a while, I looked at iStat Pro, and it reported a CPU temperature of 67C, which is about 15 to 25 degrees hotter than this machine usually idles. Now I've looked around a little bit and found that it's a known issue and associated with the Agere Firewire chipsets. Is there any solution for this? Does it make a difference if you use a daisy chain setup with an external hard drive in between the computer and the audio interface, or a repeater cable, or anything of that nature?
did anyone ever got a chance to work with Saffire LE on XP using bootcamp? I searched all over the place, found some patches and solutions, but nothing works Just ridiculous.
Can I attach multiple hard drives to my iMac chained by Firewire or do I need a separate port? I now have multiple Western Digital drives and find that sometimes they don't connect to the iMac so I'm wondering if I need a separate port or if my iMac FW port is faulty.
I just got a 21.5 in. iMac and it's not recognizing my firewire audio interface. I have a 400 to 800 cable from the interface to the iMac and it's simply not picking it up.
I have, since a couple of years ago, used a nice little gadget called Kanex XD. It is simply an HDMI to Mini Display port, which allows me to play Xbox 360 on my iMac 27 ". It has always been clear as a bell!
When I decided to buy the thing, I was not sure if it would work with my current sound system. But it did! I run all the audio from my mac through a firewire audio interface called Focusrite LS 56 (from the audio interface I have Yamaha HS80M, info for geeks like me).
The audio has functioned really well through my Focusrite. But when I updated to the latest OSX (10.7.4), the audio from my Xbox only plays through my internal speakers. Otherwise, the sound works as usual. It's only when I play my Xbox through my Kanex XD, the audio goes through the internal speakers.
I guess it's something that happened in the new update that makes it impossible to play the sound from my Xbox through my audio interface. I contacted the Kanex XD support. They said that there's nothing they can do and that it probably have something to do with the update.
I successfully installed XP via Bootcamp and my XP audio software Sampitude. I did also install the MOTU traveler using newest drivers. However, it does not comply perfectly. I was installed alright, but when using it, it doesn't work properly. MME seems to work, but doesn't. ASIO doesn't work at all. Basically it crashes the program, but if you just unplug it, everything works fine again, using the internal audio.
I am using an Apogee Duet with a late 09 Mac Mini, and have suffered through crappy graphics/general performance for some time. I really kinda shrugged this off until getting quite tired of it and did some searching around. After looking around I have discovered that I am not the only one who experiences this problem, and it has been pegged to core audio drivers. Which is odd.Disabling core audio through plists does indeed alleviate the issue it seems. Unplugging the Duet also alleviates this issue. When it is plugged in I see higher temperatures, slower overall performance and very choppy graphics performance, especially in expose and spaces. However this also affects the standard graphics in OSX.
Yesterday I took delivery of the following kit- http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/produc...firewire-.html
As you can see, it comes with the FCA202 Audio interface - http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/produc...io-fca202.html
I opted for the FireWire package as it has the most better quality mics. I got it all hooked up, but for some reason, my Mac is not recognising my new sound device at all. I was looking under the Sound part of the Control Panel, but nothing new would register. I checked the FireWire part of the Device Manager (appologies I forget the actual name of the application). The Firewire device was listed as "Unknown", if I was to remove the device and refresh, it would show nothing. So i've got the feeling that its been seen, just not recognised correctly.
I tried a few things to try and help my situation.
1) Disconnecting any other attached device 2) Rebooting several times 3) Leaving system off and unplugged for 10-15 mins 4) Updating all software 5) Resetting my xxxx (I forget the term, but it involved rebooting holding CMD, Option, R and P) - can someone confirm how I know if this was actually reset? 6) Going into Activity Manager and confirming the Audio driver is loaded
From what I've read, Firewire config issues can be common with Macs. I am running an 18 month olf iMac 20" with 4 gig ram. I've not used my FireWire port for a while, about 6 months ago I used a FW external HD which didn't have any problems with. Alas I don't have any other FW devices to plug in and test the port. The final thing I'm going for is to leave the system unplugged for 10 hours, which will be ready to check after work.
One thing I was thinking about though - would getting a powered FW hub be of use at all?
I just recently upgraded my Macbook Pro 2012 from 4gb ram to 8gb ram from crucial. And I was wondering what is this "page ins and page outs" and i saw it's already above a gigabyte on both pages, the swap used is very big, it's 2.35 gb, and my VM size is 304 GB!!! Should I worry about these numbers on my mac why are they too big? and what are some ways to reduce this "page outs & swap used." (Btw, there's only 20% left of my 500gb hard drive and I always use big apps like Logic Pro X and 9.1.8 and I always play dots 2 here on my mac.)
My MBP listed in my signature is having keyboard drop-outs fairly regularly even after a reinstall of OS X so my best guess is it needs replaced. Anyways, back in the fall I had a friend of mine (who is an Apple certified tech) install a 500GB 7200rpm drive in my system. Now, if I send my system to Apple, will they complain that the drive is in there and not replace the keyboard/topcase if they see that a new non-apple marked hdd has been installed? Would it be best too see if this friend will take out the 500gb drive and re-install the original 200gb drive?
I hope I'm not double posting. Have any of the other new iMac owners experienced weird frequencies coming from external speakers that are connected to their iMacs?
For example: I have a set of studio monitors that are hooked up to my iMac using a firewire audio interface. Whenever I'm copying data I get an extremely high-pitched frequency coming from my speakers that sounds like my hard drive spinning. Also, whenever I'm scrolling or moving the magic mouse I get a loud buzzing coming from the speakers (especially when scrolling). None of this stuff happened with my previous 20" iMac C2D. I have experienced this issue with all three of the 27" iMacs that I have gone through thus far (due to the yellow tint issue). Does this sound like something I'm just going to have to live with. All of these high pitched frequencies are driving me batty!
I have some movies on which I'd like to put multiple audio tracks. Here's what I'm doing. First, I add the second audio track in Subler and save. Returning to iTunes, I'm not given the option to switch in iTunes or QuickTime 10. So I go back to Subler and turn one track off, saving again. Now I'm given the option to switch. But the audio doesn't work. The standard track works fine. Switching to the other one makes a popping sound and then pure silence. Switching back works fine. This also happens in QuickTime 10.
So I tried to enable/disable via QuickTime 7 Pro. Turning a track off forces me to resave the file, but not like Subler, oh, no. QuickTime 7 Pro forces me to reencode the whole thing as an MOV, which takes forever and is pointless. I've done this without having to save before. What's going on? How do I add a second, selectable audio track that works on things in iTunes without QuickTime 7 Pro forcing me to save MP4s as MOVs and [insert any audio filetype with zero video whatsoever here] as MOVs as well?!
I have several speakers (Logitech) which I had hooked up to my PC with three cables, black, pink, green...the Mac Mini only has one plus for Audio...what do I do to get sound out of these speakers all at once?
I want to record a Quicktime movie using iSight as the video input, external audio (guitar) via a Focusrite Saffire LE (1874) audio interface and internal audio (a backing track) from either iTunes, Logic 9 or MainStage 2 (I don't care which), so I can record myself playing and then send the video to another guitarist via Dropbox or similar.
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.7), Lexicon Alpha, M-Audio Keystation 49e, Beyer Dynamic M300 mic
I currently have my second MBP that I got from Macmall and both in a matter of two weeks have had similar issues. The first I managed to get returned and replaced, that is a seperate and complicated story in and of itself. This particular issue started with a boot up sequence that was taking about 5-6 mins. After going through the drill with Applecare thought I could restore using Time Machine. That's when I found out that the FW400 port no longer worked to power my Oyen Digital 250G FW drive. Any thoughts as to what might be the problem? This is my second MBP and Oyen Digital FW drive. I had them both replaced!
If I have a video track with multiple alternate audio tracks (say different languages), can a user select the audio track of his choice and play in Quick time?
When I sync one audio file with one video file the video file is always placed in the primary storyline and the audio file is always placed under it. And the new syncronised clip is named afte the video file.
when I sync multiple audio files to one video file. It seems to be random what file endsup in the primary storyline of the new compound clip, most of the time is seems to be one of the audio files. This is troublesom as the syncing acuracy is then limited to the frame as the smallest incrament of adgustment. Also, it menas I have to manualy change the names of my now syncronised clips as the names are not consistant making sorting dificult. (This all results in a lot of time spent fixing this behavoir and realy dampens the advantages of the sync feature.)
the video should not be the primary track in a new syncrosnised compound clip and I can't find any link between my behavoir and the resulting choise of which tile is the primary sortyline track.
I have found that by plugging in my Apogee Duet firewire audio interface and ONLY WHEN AppleFWAudio was loaded there was a 10c CPU raise that was making my MBP (late 2008) hot!I wanted to monitor the power that was required for Duet to run and to see if the temperature rise was due to that, so:With Apogee drivers uninstalled (just to be sure its not their drivers related, which is notMBP on battery power with System Profiler opened (to monitor the mA required by the computer from System Profiler -> Power)
Ive been having some issues with my monitors going black during working, it happens on the mac side but more often on through bootcamp running windows 7.
It also has been getting a frozen start up screen at the apple logo. All the times it does start up i do hear the start up chime. I have tried to reset pram and smc but that does not seem to solve the problem, Ive also run a check using techtool pro v6 and it has come up with no issues.
Ive recently upgraded my graphics card to the nvidia quadro 4000, ive read the issues with card in the past but since the lion release its become better supported i thought not sure if thats the problem or something with the mac pro itself, i have updates the cards drivers for both windows and mac. Im currently running 3 OS, OSX 10.6.8, Lion and windows 7 (bootcamp)
OK, I'm running OS 10.7.4. After downloading the latest version of FireFox (12.0), I started experience extremely frequent timeouts in loading pages.
So, I launched Safari. Same thing happened. Reloading the pages doesn't seem to work in either browser.
Checked with the ISP. Download and upload speeds were within acceptabe ranges.
The only common denominator seems to be the OS. The other major thing is that streaming video will start, but after about half a minute, it hangs and will not reload. I also have the latest Flash Player.
Also running Sophos Free Antivirus, recently downloaded. It's also pretty slow launching Finder. All around I get lots of beach balls. I know it's enticing to blame something other than Lion, but Lion seems to be the only common denominator.