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How old is your Mac? That issue sounds very strange to me. CoreAudio is far and away the most impressive and powerful audio API across the board. It's ridiculo

by qppo 6y ago

How old is your Mac? That issue sounds very strange to me. CoreAudio is far and away the most impressive and powerful audio API across the board. It's ridiculous how much you can do with it and the abstractions it provides. It's also been better, faster, and supported lower latency than Windows up until WASAPI came around - you needed to use ASIO on Windows for years. Even today you can't programmatically change the sample rate of a device on Windows, which means that engines like RtAudio have to do resampling under the hood to support basic functionality that's been in CoreAudio. The only problem with it is that the documentation has evaporated. Which admittedly is a big one.

nvarsj 6y ago
> How old is your Mac? That issue sounds very strange to me. New MBP 16". Apparently it's a problem with the T2 security chip and affects almost all external USB 2.0/3.0 audio devices. Just do a google search for audio drop outs and T2. All digital audio goes through the T2 chip which seems to add latency and these drop outs. I think the only solution at the moment is to use a USB-C native device (but I haven't tested this). If you already have substantial hardware like I do, Catalina is basically unusable (and no fix in sight from Apple...).
- qppo 6y ago
  fwiw I don't think any audio manufacturer (hardware or software) has advised it "ok" to use Catalina, and OS upgrades have been a problem for as long as I've used professional audio tools. I understand with brand new machines it's a problem, but buying less-than battle tested hardware/software has always been problematic. If you already have substantial hardware, you probably shouldn't be buying a brand new machine and expecting it to just work after a major OS upgrade.
  - nvarsj 6y ago
    I shouldn't expect a widely used standard (USB Audio) to work after upgrading my hardware? All the Windows and Linux machines I've had have no problem with USB audio and I don't expect they ever will.
    - qppo 6y ago
      I mean I can't even get (all) my USB audio gear to work properly on Linux, at all. For example system settings on Ubuntu Studio misinterpret anything with more than 2 channels as a surround device. But that's OK because the hardware manufacturer has advised they don't support Linux for their proprietary device management software because "widely used standard" like class compliant USB audio is not sufficient for their use case. And I've been burned enough times by OS upgrades that I know to be cautious. I'm not saying the situation is good, just that it's a shitshow everywhere. I got around a dozen emails from my device and software vendors telling me not to use Catalina, so I'm not yearning to go out and buy a new Mac to run my software on and connect my hardware to it. I'll shit on Macs for that, but under the hood, CoreAudio is much more impressive than anything on Windows or Linux.

by qppo 6y ago

nvarsj 6y ago

> How old is your Mac? That issue sounds very strange to me. New MBP 16". Apparently it's a problem with the T2 security chip and affects almost all external USB 2.0/3.0 audio devices. Just do a google search for audio drop outs and T2. All digital audio goes through the T2 chip which seems to add latency and these drop outs. I think the only solution at the moment is to use a USB-C native device (but I haven't tested this). If you already have substantial hardware like I do, Catalina is basically unusable (and no fix in sight from Apple...).

qppo 6y ago
fwiw I don't think any audio manufacturer (hardware or software) has advised it "ok" to use Catalina, and OS upgrades have been a problem for as long as I've used professional audio tools. I understand with brand new machines it's a problem, but buying less-than battle tested hardware/software has always been problematic. If you already have substantial hardware, you probably shouldn't be buying a brand new machine and expecting it to just work after a major OS upgrade.
- nvarsj 6y ago
  I shouldn't expect a widely used standard (USB Audio) to work after upgrading my hardware? All the Windows and Linux machines I've had have no problem with USB audio and I don't expect they ever will.
  - qppo 6y ago
    I mean I can't even get (all) my USB audio gear to work properly on Linux, at all. For example system settings on Ubuntu Studio misinterpret anything with more than 2 channels as a surround device. But that's OK because the hardware manufacturer has advised they don't support Linux for their proprietary device management software because "widely used standard" like class compliant USB audio is not sufficient for their use case. And I've been burned enough times by OS upgrades that I know to be cautious. I'm not saying the situation is good, just that it's a shitshow everywhere. I got around a dozen emails from my device and software vendors telling me not to use Catalina, so I'm not yearning to go out and buy a new Mac to run my software on and connect my hardware to it. I'll shit on Macs for that, but under the hood, CoreAudio is much more impressive than anything on Windows or Linux.