USBPre on OSX 10.6.5 Issue

[Adam Black]

Apple released OSX 10.6.5 recently. After seeing several reports of the USBPre no longer working with this patch I did some testing and confirmed the issue. If you are using a USBPre, and it's mission critical, I suggest you avoid this patch for the time being. Be ye warned.


Symptoms:
- USBPre does not show up as an available device with the OS, and thus not with Smaart either.
- Smaart v7 will hang if you attempt to start a preexisting measurement that uses a USBPre.

[fohproductions]

I was looking to upgrade my pre and this Mac OS update may force me now.
With that thought, has there been any testing on the PreSonus Firestudio Mobile and OS 10.6.5?

For that matter, any other pre's that are the size of the USB Pre that are good to go with the new OS?

[Adam Black]

I was looking to upgrade my pre and this Mac OS update may force me now.
With that thought, has there been any testing on the PreSonus Firestudio Mobile and OS 10.6.5?

For that matter, any other pre's that are the size of the USB Pre that are good to go with the new OS?

I've tested both the Firestudio mobile as well as the USBPre 2 on 10.6.5 and both work. Both are compact devices. The USBPre 2 has a very similar form factor to it's predecessor.

[Kip Conner]

I got stuck in Texas over the weekend without the use of my USBPre and went to Guitar Center and bought a MAudio Mobile Pre. It worked out of the box without any issue. No drivers to upload from a disk. Just plug and play.

[Andy Leviss]

You'll find the issues with the MobilePre later. Biggest is the hard-wired filters that M-Audio puts on the input (I can't recall off the top of my head if it was a low-pass or high-pass, but either way, it caused me issues). It also sporadically would cause a coherence trace that was so off-the-wall it would look like a 1" wide ribbon (this one actually happened in class with Jamie out at City Tech in Brooklyn a couple years ago).

The M-Audio stuff is worth exactly what you pay for it, there's a reason it's so much cheaper than the good stuff.

FWIW,
Andy

[Kip Conner]

it's a temporary solution until Sound Devices gets their USBPre 1 drivers worked out. I'm not making any life changing measurements with it, especially not bringing it to any jobs that require serious measurement. There's a separate rig for that stuff, this is for quick measurements. My USBPre stopped working the day before I was to head to Australia and it worked fairly well.

[Jamie]

As this thread has stated, it seems that the USBPre (original version) no longer is working with the newest Mac OS (10.6.5). However, there is an interesting "work-around" that we came up with last Friday when a user called in a pinch.

While the USBPre no longer functions as the audio IO for the computer, the USB buss still powers the pre-amps. This means that you can use the headphone output with the Mix knob turned to "Pre" (full counter-clockwise) to send the USBPre's preamp outputs to the stereo line input of the mac. All you need is a TRS mini to mini cable.

In this configuration, you use the USBPre as a set of USB powered pre-amps (w/ phantom) and the computer's internal line in as the A/D. Just remember to point Smaart at the internal card for your measurement signal source.

This is one of those bandaids that may end up in use for much longer than a 1 gig work around for a lot of USBPre 1 owners. ;-)

Zoinks,
-j

[Brad Galvin]

Jamie,

I attempted to make this work on my setup and for some reason I always get an error message that reads: "Failed to start device. Please make sure the device is connected and that is supports the current sample rate"

When going into the "Devices Options" menu when I select the "CoreAudio: Built-in Input" it does not show the 2 inputs of the computer. I tried this previously and I saw the 2 inputs, and was able to put my personal names on them, but now I can't see them at all.

I see input on the internal line input when I select that in the preferences menu, but beyond that I'm really not sure what is going on. Any help would be appreciate, because carrying two computers is getting painful. This work around, albeit not awesome, is great to have, but I just need to get it sorted out soon. Please let me know if you have experienced any of these errors, and if so what I can do to get it working. Thanks Jamie!

- Brad

[Rasmus Rosenberg]

Hey Brad,
Check your mini-jack connections. The internal sound card on my mac book pro is amazingly sensitive if the mini jack are connected proberly. There is an "auto" switch between headphone out and internal speaker out, as well as switch between internal microfon and line in. That switching thing is driving me nut's at times, if you launch smaart as the connection change (unplug) it fails.

[Adam Black]

Apple released Snow Leopard 10.6.6 today. It apparently fixes whatever 10.6.5 broke for some USB devices. Notably the USBPre is now working with 10.6.6.