Do you have any issues with audio on the Mac Mini?

[dspdoc]

I hear you. I've been using Macs for audio since the early 90's and never thought I'd be using a PC even part time. It's almost painful writing that. I'll have to do some more research and considering before pulling the trigger. Are you running a UA TB3 interface with the Mini?

B

Yes I have been using a UA Apollo x8 with two OCTO Satellites. The fact that neither UA or Avid ‘officially’ support Mojave yet is very suspect to me personally. We are 4 months into the OS with still no official support. This tells me that devs are struggling with some things in Mojave and/or the T2 chip. I have been working with UA engineers for a very long time on the ‘known’ issue that the T2 chip causes Bridge OS kernel panics when using UA equipment. Apparently the T2 chip likes to easily freak out. This has been going on since the release of the iMac Pro. This combined with the issues that Mojave causes in Pro Tools with CPU spiking and -9173 and -6101 errors has gotten really ugly. All this has me very concerned about Apple’s focus on pro audio/video people.

I also run PT, Logic and Cubase 10. Speaking of which, where the heck was Logic 10.5 at NAMM?

 

[boomspot]

Yes I have been using a UA Apollo x8 with two OCTO Core Satellites. The fact that neither UA or Avid ‘officially’ support Mojave yet is very suspect to me personally. We are 4 months into the OS with still no official support. This tells me that devs are struggling with some things in Mojave and/or the T2 chip. I have been working with UA engineers for a very long time on the ‘known’ issue that the T2 chip causes Bridge OS kernel panics when using UA equipment. Apparently the T2 chip likes to easily freak out. This has been going on since the release of the iMac Pro. This combined with the issues that Mojave causes in Pro Tools with CPU spiking and -9173 and -6101 errors has gotten really ugly. All this has me very concerned about Apple’s focus on pro audio/video people.

I also run PT, Logic and Cubase 10. Speaking of which, where the heck was Logic 10.5 at NAMM?

Yeah, the unsupported status by UA after many months is concerning. Apparently, the T2 chip can be disabled worst case scenario? Not ideal but potentially a work around until things are sorted out. Good luck!

Post #11 here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/audio-interface-issues-with-2018-macbook-pro.2159141/

 

[dspdoc]

Yeah, the unsupported status by UA after many months is concerning. Apparently, the T2 chip can be disabled worst case scenario? Not ideal but potentially a work around until things are sorted out. Good luck!

Post #11 here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/audio-interface-issues-with-2018-macbook-pro.2159141/

Yes I’ve read that. Unfortunately there’s no way to disable the T2 chip. All that does is disable some boot security settings.

 

[AlekT]

Can this actually be fixed with a firmware update or is there a hardware issue not just with the T2 chip but USB 2.0 here? Has Apple ever actually acknowledged this issue and said they are working on fixing it?

I'm not an audio professional, just have Schiit USB gear, and I'm not paying for a TB3 interface to maybe fix something that absolutely shouldn't be an ongoing problem like this. Been waiting for a fix thinking it was a software bug, but I'm now considering demanding a refund from Apple and building a hackintosh or using Windows with a VM for Mac stuff. If I wasn't already tied to the Apple ecosystem and didn't vastly prefer unix and Mac OS to Windows, I wouldn't have waited this long.

 

[dspdoc]

Can this actually be fixed with a firmware update or is there a hardware issue not just with the T2 chip but USB 2.0 here? Has Apple ever actually acknowledged this issue and said they are working on fixing it?

I'm not an audio professional, just have Schiit USB gear, and I'm not paying for a TB3 interface to maybe fix something that absolutely shouldn't be an ongoing problem like this. Been waiting for a fix thinking it was a software bug, but I'm now considering demanding a refund from Apple and building a hackintosh or using Windows with a VM for Mac stuff. If I wasn't already tied to the Apple ecosystem and didn't vastly prefer unix and Mac OS to Windows, I wouldn't have waited this long.

All great questions and concerns. Since many issues popped up with the release of the iMP and the T2 chip machines I really don’t know. You’d think Apple would be all over this by now, but all they seem to really care about is their phone and tablets.

 

[dspdoc]

Is anyone else here running an eGPU while having these audio glitches?

 

[dspdoc]

This seems fitting to share here: https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/ho...g-results?mc_cid=2fd31dc36c&mc_eid=93297cc501

 

[F-Train]

This seems fitting to share here: https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/ho...g-results?mc_cid=2fd31dc36c&mc_eid=93297cc501

It certainly is fitting. Here’s what the article actually says:

A more reasonable answer [than Mac price increases] may be the lack of Apple offering what many regard as ‘pro’ machines for the Pro Tools user. Pro Tools users are one of the only user groups who use PCIe cards, which require more conventional chassis to use. As Avid haven’t really made significant progress in offering their pro hardware in ways that utilises more up-to-date protocols such as USB-C and Thunderbolt for HDX users, Pro Tools users are stuck between a rock (Avid) and a hard place (Apple).

Early responses to the new Mac Mini are showing positive feedback from pro users and so it will be interesting to see the results of this poll next year. By this time next year there may be a new Mac Pro and greater adoption of Mac Mini, only time will tell.
​

The first paragraph is a bit odd. Its gist is that the problem is that Avid, a really badly managed company whose future has been in doubt for some time, isn’t keeping up with hardware developments, and that Avid users are stuck with protocols that are past their due date. Sorry, but if this is causing Avid users to go with machines that don’t have USB-C or Thunderbolt 3, as the article suggests, that is not something that Apple should be worrying about. I empathise with Avid’s captured user base, but my own view is that the sooner Avid is put out of its misery, the better.

The second paragraph, notwithstanding the first paragraph, says “Early responses to the new Mac mini are showing positive feedback from pro users”.

Not exactly supportive of your constant harping.

​

 

[dspdoc]

It certainly is fitting. Here’s what the article actually says:

A more reasonable answer [than Mac price increases] may be the lack of Apple offering what many regard as ‘pro’ machines for the Pro Tools user. Pro Tools users are one of the only user groups who use PCIe cards, which require more conventional chassis to use. As Avid haven’t really made significant progress in offering their pro hardware in ways that utilises more up-to-date protocols such as USB-C and Thunderbolt for HDX users, Pro Tools users are stuck between a rock (Avid) and a hard place (Apple).

Early responses to the new Mac Mini are showing positive feedback from pro users and so it will be interesting to see the results of this poll next year. By this time next year there may be a new Mac Pro and greater adoption of Mac Mini, only time will tell.
​

The first paragraph is a bit odd. Its gist is that the problem is that Avid, a really badly managed company whose future has been in doubt for some time, isn’t keeping up with hardware developments, and that Avid users are stuck with protocols that are past their due date. Sorry, but if this is causing Avid users to go with machines that don’t have USB-C or Thunderbolt 3, as the article suggests, that is not something that Apple should be worrying about. I empathise with Avid’s captured user base, but my own view is that the sooner Avid is put out of its misery, the better.

The second paragraph, notwithstanding the first paragraph, says “Early responses to the new Mac mini are showing positive feedback from pro users”.

Not exactly supportive of your constant harping.

​

Ha ha! You’re wayyyyy off base. I don’t have the energy or care to tell you all the ways you are wrong. That’s cool though. Tuck Timmy in tonight LMAO! Have a great day.

 

[Duncan68]

Apple's T2 proving troublesome for some professional audio interface users.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/19...e-for-some-professional-audio-interface-users

Apologies if it's already been posted.

 

[F-Train]

Ha ha! You’re wayyyyy off base. I don’t have the energy or care to tell you all the ways you are wrong. That’s cool though. Tuck Timmy in tonight LMAO! Have a great day.

Sorry, but let’s try adult language and analysis.

If you have a disagreement, it’s with the Pro Tools Expert article that you chose to publicise. It speaks for itself, and it doesn’t support what you’ve been saying. There is not a single word in it about T2 or sound problems or kernel attacks, only the statement that so far professional user reaction to the new Mac mini is “positive”.

Or do you have a new complaint that Apple computers don’t cater to what the article itself says is Avid’s out of date hardware? If that’s now the complaint, maybe do some research on how Avid has treated its user base, including on the issue of technological development (or rather lack of it), and on its brushes with bankruptcy.

No forward thinking company should be in the business of catering to Avid, and many people, myself among them, think that Avid has overstayed its welcome. Indeed, Apple is one of the companies that could fix Avid, but so far none of the obvious potential buyers has thought it worth the investment.*

See what @rmdeluca said to you more generally on the subject of hardware a few posts ago, because it’s pretty spot on if one is talking about Avid in particular.

Maybe, when you decided to publicise this article, you failed to read beyond the headline?

* Anyone who wants to know what investors think of Avid can look at its NASDAQ stock price over the years, symbol AVID, or read the many articles on its “management” and financial troubles.

 

[dspdoc]

Sorry, but let’s try adult language and analysis.

If you have a disagreement, it’s with the Pro Tools Expert article that you chose to publicise. It speaks for itself, and it doesn’t support what you’ve been saying. There is not a single word in it about T2 or sound problems or kernel attacks, only the statement that so far professional user reaction to the new Mac mini is “positive”.

Or do you have a new complaint that Apple computers don’t cater to what the article itself says is Avid’s out of date hardware? If that’s now the complaint, maybe do some research on how Avid has treated its user base, including on the issue of technological development (or rather lack of it), and on its brushes with bankruptcy.

No forward thinking company should be in the business of catering to Avid, and many people, myself among them, think that Avid has overstayed its welcome. Indeed, Apple is one of the companies that could fix Avid, but so far none of the obvious potential buyers has thought it worth the investment.*

See what @rmdeluca said more generally on the subject of hardware a few posts ago, because it’s pretty spot on if one is talking about Avid in particular.

Maybe, when you decided to publicise this article, you failed to read beyond the headline?

* Anyone who wants to know what investors think of Avid can look at its NASDAQ stock price over the years, symbol AVID, or read the many articles on its “management” and financial troubles.

You said all I needed to hear when you ended with stock prices and investors. Goodbye.

 

[F-Train]

You said all I needed to hear when you ended with stock prices and investors. Goodbye.

Sorry, but you brought Avid into this discussion, and any Avid user who isn’t brain dead is aware of Avid’s problems, managerial, technological, financial and relational to its user base.

You are also the person who chose to publicise a Pro Tools Expert article about Avid and Apple that not only does not support anything that you keep alleging, over and over and over, about not one, not two, but three different lines of Apple computers, but that says expressly that the reaction to date of sound professionals to the Mac mini is “positive”.

If you want to be taken seriously, let me suggest that talking like a 13 year old having a tantrum (post 109) and ignoring substantive comment by attacking a footnote that makes it easier for readers to do their own research (post 112) is not the way to do it.

 

[AlekT]

Really? Is there anything random people on forums won't argue about?

For what it's worth, I updated to 10.14.3 and am still experiencing occasional audio dropouts. I'm going to talk to Apple about it. You guys have fun, I guess.

 

[HeavyMantra]

I bought a 3000 dollar machine that's unusable for what I bought it for...

 

[Ploki]

Ha ha! You’re wayyyyy off base. I don’t have the energy or care to tell you all the ways you are wrong. That’s cool though. Tuck Timmy in tonight LMAO! Have a great day.

this has nothing to do with timmy or me using apple, i have protools 11.5 and since avid bought it it's slowly turning to ****. Just about everything Avid touched has turned to **** with time, including Sibelius, Euphonix control surfaces, and don't even get me started on Media Composer.

for me, audio works fine with external firewire interface, and i reckon thunderbolt interfaces work fine too.
It's **** that it doesn;t work well on builtin and usb, but no professional should really have a problem with that. USB is not a professional protocol.

i should really call apple tho... this has been dragging long enough

 

[canyelles]

There is an interesting post on the rme thread

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=138472#p138472

"So getting off the phone just now with a Senior Advisor in the pro applications department specifically for Logic Pro. I was told that the USB-A ports were not designed for audio data but only for charging devices. So audio was not intended when they designed and included these ports on the 2018 Mac Mini which is why we're having these issues. This only pertains to USB2 on the 2018 Mac Mini. USB3 through the USB-C ports should work fine which means using what MC referred to which is the TB3 hub/dock. He told me during his training on hardware he remembered learning about this. He also recommended to use a hub or a dongle in particular the same one that MC referenced here on this thread. So not RME at all guys. Sounds like it's by Apple's design that this happens. Thanks to the guys at RME in the meantime working hard to get it to work!"


Sounds like apple ******** to me.

 

[Ploki]

wow, terrible

 

[Duncan68]

For some reason, I'm noticing fewer dropouts on 10.14.3.

 

[canyelles]

For some reason, I'm noticing fewer dropouts on 10.14.3.

It didn't do anything for me. And neither did the 10.14.4 beta.

I am just glad I bought the Caldigit Thunderbolt 3 hub.

 

[harriska2]

There is an interesting post on the rme thread

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=138472#p138472

"So getting off the phone just now with a Senior Advisor in the pro applications department specifically for Logic Pro. I was told that the USB-A ports were not designed for audio data but only for charging devices. So audio was not intended when they designed and included these ports on the 2018 Mac Mini which is why we're having these issues. This only pertains to USB2 on the 2018 Mac Mini. USB3 through the USB-C ports should work fine which means using what MC referred to which is the TB3 hub/dock. He told me during his training on hardware he remembered learning about this. He also recommended to use a hub or a dongle in particular the same one that MC referenced here on this thread. So not RME at all guys. Sounds like it's by Apple's design that this happens. Thanks to the guys at RME in the meantime working hard to get it to work!"


Sounds like apple ******** to me.

Which port is specifically usb2? I thought the mini included 2 usb3 ports that are backwards compatible with usb2 devices. Or is he saying usb2 sound devices are not going to do well plugged into the usb3 port?

 

[pogodrummer]

There is an interesting post on the rme thread

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=138472#p138472

"So getting off the phone just now with a Senior Advisor in the pro applications department specifically for Logic Pro. I was told that the USB-A ports were not designed for audio data but only for charging devices. So audio was not intended when they designed and included these ports on the 2018 Mac Mini which is why we're having these issues. This only pertains to USB2 on the 2018 Mac Mini. USB3 through the USB-C ports should work fine which means using what MC referred to which is the TB3 hub/dock. He told me during his training on hardware he remembered learning about this. He also recommended to use a hub or a dongle in particular the same one that MC referenced here on this thread. So not RME at all guys. Sounds like it's by Apple's design that this happens. Thanks to the guys at RME in the meantime working hard to get it to work!"


Sounds like apple ******** to me.

This is absolute BS. The issue appears with any USB2 interface directly connected to any USB bus internal to the Mac. That means an USB2 interface connected to a C-A adapter will have the same issues.

I have a theory as to why it's not happening with TB hubs. Will post below.

 

[pogodrummer]

Hello. I wrote the Reddit thread which AppleInsider eventually picked up on. I'll try explaining what I know so far.

1) It's a high-priority bug, which Apple has been aware of for quite a while. Affects all Macs running the HS + spectre/meltdown patch, but rarely appears in non-T2 macs, which seem to be all affected*
*all apart from iMac Pro, as far as I tested.

2) Personally confirmed the bug on 6 2018 machines so far, not counting the ones friends and colleagues also confirmed, all running 10.14.3, with several different soundcards from different manufacturers (USB2/USB3)

3) The bug is deep inside the kernel, unfixable by interface manufacturers, and is independent of the application that's running and load on the CPU.
the Time and Location daemons are not the cause, they merely trigger the faulty line of code in the kernel and cause pauseAudioEngine().


What's below here is pure conjecture, I am definitely not qualified to speak about the internal workings of MacOS, but I have been reading quite a lot on the topic and I may have found some correlation.


The T2, amongst other things, manages ins/outs, including the USB ports. Which means it also handles USB clocking. I believe there is a hardware issue which introduces significant enough amounts of jitter to cause dropouts when using audio interfaces which transmit audio back to the computer.

There is a lot of confusion regarding USB audio, especially asynchronous/isochronous data transfer, but as far as I understood it asynchronous means the external interface handles the clocking, while isochronous refers to how the data is divided up into chunks while being sent through USB.

Now if the T2 had so much jitter that it couldn't sync up with the PLL in the audio interface glitches such as dropouts would occur.

Wild theory: This only happens on audio interfaces with inputs. Anecdotal evidence has led me to believe the issue doesn't exist on USB DACs which only have audio outs. I have yet to test this on my own, but I plan to shortly.

 

[rmdeluca]

So getting off the phone just now with a Senior Advisor in the pro applications department specifically for Logic Pro. I was told that the USB-A ports were not designed for audio data but only for charging devices. So audio was not intended when they designed and included these ports on the 2018 Mac Mini which is why we're having these issues.

Unfortunately, this is nonsense. USB hardware has to meet specific standards in order to even be called USB or use the trademark.

One can certainly make the argument that Apple has a bug (whether hardware or software) that is causing certain USB audio devices to pop/stutter/hiccup, but one can't say the ports weren't designed to do the thing the specification they conform to requires them to do.

There is a lot of confusion regarding USB audio, especially asynchronous/isochronous data transfer, but as far as I understood it asynchronous means the external interface handles the clocking, while isochronous refers to how the data is divided up into chunks while being sent through USB.

Now if the T2 had so much jitter that it couldn't sync up with the PLL in the audio interface glitches such as dropouts would occur.

Asynchronous means the two ends don't have to be synchronized for data transfer to occur. This implies buffering and a mechanism to report when buffers are empty/full.

Isochronous means both ends have to be synchronized within tolerances at all times during data transfer.

An analogy - imagine we're passing a ball back and forth and each successful throw+catch represents one packet of audio data being transferred. If we're asynchronous, I could throw the ball at your feet and when you decide to pick it up you'll play it. If we're isochronous, when I throw the ball you have to catch it in midair or the ball shatters and is lost forever with no means of recreating it.

Unfortunately, either transfer mechanism can cause pops/clicking. If I'm not sending new packets in before you've played the previous one in asynchronous mode, you get a buffer stall and a click when the DAC suddenly starts outputting DC 0V. In isochronous mode, any time we get out of sync packets are dropped and again the DAC outputs DC 0V, causing a click.

I don't think you're on the wrong track (frankly, for the last 15 or so years that I've been doing audio software development I've been dealing with these exact issues over various hardware classes), but I suspect you've got a lot more narrowing down before you can make a blanket statement about what's going on. You really need a bench test where you can capture USB traffic in real time (with timing information using an externally accurate world clock) and watch the waveform on an oscilloscope/RTA (also synchronized to the same clock) to be sure.

This is something that first-party USB audio interface manufacturers should be doing due diligence on anyways, and if they are seeing a problem they SHOULD already be working with Apple.

 

[phairphan]

I remember going through USB audio hell back when Apple rewrote their USB stack in El Cap. If I were a gambling man, I'd put money on this being some confluence of that rewrite (re)rearing its ugly head in conjunction with the T2. This is only the second time that Apple has deployed the T2 in a USB A equipped machine, and I suspect that the MM has already sold more units than the iMP to date (i.e., more beta testers for Apple).