Mac OS Sierra and DAC problems?

[Gonzbull]

On 4/4/2017 at 10:20 AM, NOMBEDES said:

 

 

LOL:  I think you have made my point!

Listen to "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" (CS&N) and then listen to the dreck which passes for (popular) music today.

 

More to the point, there is a big difference between someone in the music industry using creative computer tools to produce and record music and some poor smuck attempting to keep his home system running in the face of constant interference from AAPL et al.

 

 

 

Tastes in music aside, all the major studios which churn out some great modern records have computers as an integral part of their setup. 

Home computer audio is relatively straightforward and so are the big studio setups. They're essentially the same. The big difference being channel counts. As in more inputs and outputs of audio and the hardware and software that enable this. 

My studio machine runs MacOS Sierra and we've had absolutely no problems with hardware interfacing. 

I do see your point about the poor smuck however lack of knowledge is the mother of all f...ups. 

[Sirius6B]

Hey guys, I have Sierra and Audirvana 3 all up to date. I have noticed via USB connection to my Peachtree DAC-IT a serious drop in sound quality. Music shifts from speaker to speaker and gets scratchy as well. Going back to El Capitan seems prudent now provided Apple still supports it and Audirvana 3 works. Apple wants their giant leap forward and seems to want to leave us USB Neanderthals in the dust. USB issues with Sierra seem quite common on the net. 

[Gonzbull]

On 4/10/2017 at 3:53 AM, Sirius6B said:

Hey guys, I have Sierra and Audirvana 3 all up to date. I have noticed via USB connection to my Peachtree DAC-IT a serious drop in sound quality. Music shifts from speaker to speaker and gets scratchy as well. Going back to El Capitan seems prudent now provided Apple still supports it and Audirvana 3 works. Apple wants their giant leap forward and seems to want to leave us USB Neanderthals in the dust. USB issues with Sierra seem quite common on the net. 

I've got Sierra and A+ V3 running a Dangerous Music Source via USB and no problems here. All up to date as of today. SQ is great. Maybe there is something else amiss in your system. 

[Sirius6B]

Well Gonzbull, I did a wipe and reinstalled everything and it seems to have done the trick. Audirvana stops occasionally however and like everything else with Sierra runs hot. 

[Gonzbull]

8 hours ago, Sirius6B said:

Well Gonzbull, I did a wipe and reinstalled everything and it seems to have done the trick. Audirvana stops occasionally however and like everything else with Sierra runs hot. 

Glad you got it working mate. What do you mean by running hot? I did try once to upsample to DSD and that's when I got some heat happening. 

[Sirius6B]

Sierra runs hot on my early 2011 MBP. I turned Siri off and it helps. Barely keeps with some movies. With the first install of Sierra; my old Mac was in danger of overheating.

[afgverhart]

Hi, I ran into the issue of my DAC not being recognized anymore after upgrading to OSX Sierra 10.12.4. It worked fine up to and including 10.12.3 but not sound at all with 10.12.4 using Roon, iTunes or Audirvana. Apparently Apple changed something in the USB implementation that stops certain DACs from working. My DAC is actually built into my preamp which is an AVM V30. The DAC shows up in Roon as 'GFEC ASSP CoreAudio'. After the upgrade it was still there, but Roon would not play any sound over it. The progress indicator does not move as if Roon is unable to initiate the DAC. After restoring an old backup of 10.12.3 everything worked again. So I am still on 10.2.3 now. The 10.12.5 release should solve some USB stuttering audio issues, but I have not tried it on my setup yet.

 

EDIT: Oops, forgot my setup: Mac Mini 2011 i7 server 8Gb, 2*750Gb > AudioQuest Cinnamon USB > AVM V30 > Hypex nCore 400 mono power amps > Pioneer TAD S1-EX

[gmgraves]

On 3/31/2017 at 10:23 PM, Indydan said:

I stumbled onto this in another forum. It seems that some people who use a Mac as a music server, upon installing Sierra OS, their Mac no longer recognized their DAC. Something with Sierra and how it operates USB ports renders some DACs useless.

 

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/65232

 

http://www.mac-forums.com/os-x-operating-system/337540-usb-audio-output-dac-sierra-10-12-1-a.html

 

http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=45887&hilit=sierra

 

I am still running El Capitan on my Mac Mini. I will not "upgrade" to Sierra because I have no idea if my Rega DAC R will work with it. But, if I have to reinstall the OS for some reason, or buy a new Mac Mini, it will most likely have Sierra 

 

I would like to hear from Mac users running a Mac with Sierra and their model of DAC. Of course, I would like to know if Sierra is compatible with my Rega DAC R. But, if people using Sierra post and name their DAC, and if it works or not, the thread could be helpful to others who wonder if they should install Sierra or not.

 

I too am still running El Capitan. I saw nothing in the list of Sierra features that interested me that much, and I rely on Logitech's "Media Server" to send my tunes to my main stereo system. A couple of times since I've had the Squeezebox Touch, and Apple has upgraded it's system, the upgrade has "broken" the Logitech Server. Since I don't need any feature that's new on the OS, I decided to let sleeping dogs lie. 

[afgverhart]

Tried Sierra 10.12.5 today, but the issue is still not solved even though Apple indicated that they had solved USB audio sound stuttering problems. Not for me, still the same issue.

 

I want my OS to be up to date, especially with all these ransomware attacks. My OS cannot be vulnerable to these kind off security issues. So back to optical out again and hoping that a future update will solve this. I will also reach out to AVM now to hear what their advice is.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, afgverhart said:

Tried Sierra 10.12.5 today, but the issue is still not solved even though Apple indicated that they had solved USB audio sound stuttering problems. Not for me, still the same issue.

 

I want my OS to be up to date, especially with all these ransomware attacks. My OS cannot be vulnerable to these kind off security issues. So back to optical out again and hoping that a future update will solve this. I will also reach out to AVM now to hear what their advice is.

 

You're probably pretty safe on that front. Not saying that Macs are immune or anything like that, I'm just saying that throughout the history of the PC, going all the way back to the mid eighties, the hackers who write viruses and exploit system vulnerabilities have mostly ignored the Mac as well as Linux and other flavors of Unix. There just aren't as many of these platforms around; certainly not enough for a pandemic to get started. But they seem to run like wildfire through the Windows community because there are so many of them; not enough points of separation.

[gmgraves]

On 3/31/2017 at 10:23 PM, Indydan said:

 

I am still running El Capitan on my Mac Mini. I will not "upgrade" to Sierra because I have no idea if my Rega DAC R will work with it. But, if I have to reinstall the OS for some reason, or buy a new Mac Mini, it will most likely have Sierra 

 

 

 

Yes a new Mac will most assuredly have Sierra installed, and unfortunately Apple's "gestalt" ID protocol for their computers makes it fairly well impossible for an owner to replace the OS with which the computer was delivered with an earlier one. I've tried it. There might be some hack that would allow it, but I've never heard of one if there is...

[wgscott]

On 4/4/2017 at 11:53 AM, Samuel T Cogley said:

All I can say is that despite what other curmudgeons might have told you, being a curmudgeon does not increase your popularity.

 

Except amongst the few whose opinions matter.

[simonhiggs]

4 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

Yes a new Mac will most assuredly have Sierra installed, and unfortunately Apple's "gestalt" ID protocol for their computers makes it fairly well impossible for an owner to replace the OS with which the computer was delivered with an earlier one. I've tried it. There might be some hack that would allow it, but I've never heard of one if there is...

Internet recovery mode (Command Option R on boot) will do it. Some 2010/2011 machines might require new firmware.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2016/02/25/how-to-start-up-your-mac-in-internet-recovery-mode/

[RunHomeSlow]

if you just play your music from your MAC, you don't need Sierra... Again there is no bug in Sierra for Music computing, maybe your DAC need a new driver or something else or that company didn't care to make it up to date with Sierra, but no problem with Sierra. If you want Sierra on your MAC for playing music or use it for anything else at the same time and any system before it...

just boot from a CD, a DVD or a USB stick and install whatever system you want from it... no hack needed on ANY new mac, just reformat that drive... install Windows if you want it !! just type from your best friend Google, you'll find...

Macworld also has bootable-install-drive instructions for Yosemite (OS X 10.10), Mavericks (OS X 10.9), Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), and Lion (OS X 10.7)...

 

[RunHomeSlow]

By the way... using A+ 3.0.6 with Sierra 10.12.5 with Direct Mode enable, all good 

[AudioDoctor]

21 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

By the way... using A+ 3.0.6 with Sierra 10.12.5 with Direct Mode enable, all good 

 

With the old kext file, right?

[AudioDoctor]

5 hours ago, wgscott said:

 

Except amongst the few whose opinions matter.

 

I am a proud curmudgeon!

[RunHomeSlow]

9 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

With the old kext file, right?

 

Yes, a little 15 mins hack...

Yes, that need playing a bit with Sierra to get it back on, but easy for anyone who can read a text file 

[RunHomeSlow]

Curmudgeon!

 

I needed Google for that word too

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Curmudgeon

[wgscott]

A curmudgeon is an optimist who is in possession of the facts.

[wgscott]

12 hours ago, RunHomeSlow said:

Curmudgeon!

 

I needed Google for that word too

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Curmudgeon

 

If you really need a how-to manual, this one is far superior:

[afgverhart]

On 22-5-2017 at 7:54 AM, AudioDoctor said:

 

With the old kext file, right?

I have been Googling a bit after this comment. What I found so far is that the solution might be to replace the file AppleUSBAudio.kext in the Extensions folder with an older version of that same file from Mac OS 10.12.3 or before. Is that the solution you have in mind?

[wgscott]

10 minutes ago, afgverhart said:

I have been Googling a bit after this comment. What I found so far is that the solution might be to replace the file AppleUSBAudio.kext in the Extensions folder with an older version of that same file from Mac OS 10.12.3 or before. Is that the solution you have in mind?

 

I think it would need to be 10.11.X for this to work.

[afgverhart]

6 minutes ago, wgscott said:

 

I think it would need to be 10.11.X for this to work.

As the problem in my case started with 10.12.4, I assume that any older version of the kext files should solve the issue. The problem is that I cannot replace this kext file as it is locked by the OS. I followed instructions I found online to replace a kext, but did not work. I think I need to boot from another drive to be able to fix this.

[RunHomeSlow]

7 hours ago, afgverhart said:

I have been Googling a bit after this comment. What I found so far is that the solution might be to replace the file AppleUSBAudio.kext in the Extensions folder with an older version of that same file from Mac OS 10.12.3 or before. Is that the solution you have in mind?

 

the .ktext extension to be replaced is only for enabling again Direct Mode in A+ with Sierra. Direct Mode is dead since 10.12.0  If your problems occured only since 10.12.4 it is not what you are looking for... might be a driver issue with your DAC or else?