10.5.2 causing mega-problems for musicians?

Priscilla: I am the happy owner of a Duet, which is a great piece of hardware, but...

It seems that whenever I plug it in to my MacBook 2Ghz C2D running 10.5.3, my CPU temperature - and thus the fan - goes crazy. Heres hoping that a new release of 10.5 will deal with this issue. I know I am not the only one with this exact problem, so I hope that a fix is imminent.

That's why I dumped my M-Audio hardware and went with Presonus. Their equipment uses the standard Firewire driver in Mac OS X, so there is no 3rd party driver required for the equipment to work. It also means that I don't usually need to sweat when Mac OS X 10.5.x rolls around. The upgrade to Leopard was painless as well.

I'm using plenty of Edirol and Yamaha stuff that is running great on Leopard.

M-Audio drivers are so bad they can't even co-exist with Digidesign drivers on the same machine running Tiger.

Digidesign users have made a choice. They have chosen ProTools instead of freedom of choice. Pro Tools users can NOT run any software updates not approved by Digidesign and that includes upgrading to OS X 10.5.

Prosumers have realised that Digidesign can no longer face the competition.
RME, MOTU and Apogee are making quality audio interfaces AND stable drivers!

PreSonus Firepod /FP10 crashes hard all the time in 10.5.2. Instant kernel panic. Behringer F-Control works though. Something is seriously wrong with those Audio FW drivers...!

I spoke to one of the digi guys in australia before going ahead with my 003 upgrade last week and he said that because apple was putting out updates in quick succession, they chose to wait until 10.5.3 before releasing a compliant leopard release. apparently within about 2 weeks of 10.5.3 coming out there will be a compatible release from digi. I have a feeling that they were about to put out a 10.5 release when 10.5.2 came along and broke things that were fixed in 10.5.1, but dont quote me.

You can add the Apogee Ensemble to the list of FW audio devices that KPs unless you leave your machine switched on all the time. This is particularly irking for those of us who had been having a lot of problems with other devices (such as the m-audio 410) and were lured into buying the thing because of comments like this on Apple's website: Ensemble, the first all digitally controlled, professional audio interface, designed specifically for the Macintosh.

For its more expensive kit, Apogee writes its own drivers. For the Ensemble (which ain't cheap) and the Duet it relies on Core Audio, which seems to have a major bug in it. Perhaps because of its closeness to Apple, Apogee has not provided a clear explanation of the problem, beyond saying that it mainly affects machines with more than 2GB of RAM, which would be most Mac Pros used for audio work, I suspect.

Until now, I was unaware of how widespread a problem this was across FW audio devices and how many people are frustrated by the apparent inability of the manufacturers of the devices to get the issues sorted out (either by providing their own work-around, or by making Apple address the problem). It is good to see it coming into the open at last.

The operating system comes out, and applications and drivers arent ready. It's not rock solid and people experience loss of data and operating system crashes.

Vista? No! Leopard!

It just works right?

I've never felt anything that's ever come from DigiDesign was even remotely compatible with Mac OS anything. I don't know why people use that crap. The UI sucks, there's always driver issues, there's always install and config issues...

as the owner of a professional recording studio i appreciate the fact that digi doesn't just jump out there and ship crappy updates just so that all the apple fan boys (myself among them) can run out and install the latest os. it takes time to work out all the kinks in a new system and digi takes it slowly (sometimes a little too much) and methodically. my facility can't afford the down time and so when a product works as well as protools i appreciate them keeping it working.

digi is also really great about telling you exactly what os/hardware/software version is qualified. if you venture outside those bounds it doesn't mean it won't work but it leaves you scratching your head wondering why your rig is broken. stay the course, wait for the official release and you will be fine. digi is great about squashing bugs out of the system and i'd rather them take their time and ship a workable solution rather than me just hoping that if i install and update it will work.

and yes, there are other alternatives to digidesign. that is, unless you need to do work in a commercial facility, deliver it to your label or have it be compatible in various facilities. we run logic, we run dp, we run cakewalk. there are many facilities out there that don't run these systems. but guess what every single client wants their master delivered as....a protools session.

i too upgraded a machine to leopard the day it was released. guess what, protools wouldn't boot anymore. so, i kept leopard on that machine and only that machine. then, a little later on i upgraded another machine. protools boots but it has a few issues. my main production machine (a mdd dual 1.25 g4) is still running 10.4.6. oh, and i haven't had a crash in several months. i won't be moving that machine along even in tiger for a while. i have no compelling reason to risk breaking a working system that is used daily to put money in my pocket.

digi will work this out. i personally am placing my bet on shortly after 10.5.3. if you just can't wait to play with time machine and spaces, don't blame digi for your own impatience when their website and support forums clearly state exactly what works and what doesn't.