Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33HB |
January, 07, 2003 7:23 PM |
mjoecups358 |
I purchased this Onkyo USB digital audio (1pair stereoRCA in/1 pair StereoRCA out) from Outpost.com for $45.00. It has a mic input as well... It also includes a 3 port USB hub, and an optional AC adapter (needed if no USB power). It seems to work under 10.2.3 with no added software, and allows the sound control panel to see/select it ok. Playthrough of alerts works. If inputing through sound studio the meters move and it looks to be working (I have not recorded anything yet though...) itunes allows playback of both streams and local media... BUT when any significant CPU activity occurs, the USB bus crashes hard, stopping playback and all USB devices (like a mouse). Significant CPU in this case is launching Chimera, so it's not really too significant other then the I/O. Also after this USB crash occurs, OSX continues to run fine, but no plugging or unplugging of anything will work on the USB card. I also tried running the Onkyo thing by itself on the USB card, no difference. Cut out the first time there's heavy disk activity. All of the above happened on a powerwave G4/420 (52.5Mhz bus) 512M Macally USB/FW combo...ATTO express PCI PSC UW SCSI. When I fired up my 9600/350 stil running 10.1.5 on the uther hand, this device works! I can launch other apps and it continues working(itunes stream playing 128K)! So I guess the disk activity/CPU crashing sound under 10.2.3 isn't limited to any audio interface in particualar, it's just some kind of system throughput bug/feature! I hope someone fixes this! It's mondo annoying! Marty PS Maybe some type of throttling on the activity that causes the crash? |
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RE: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33H |
May, 01, 2003 12:12 PM |
davelentz |
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I had been getting persistent dropouts from iTunes playback of AAC-encoded tracks until last night, when I plugged in my iMic and ran the audio output through it (it has a slide switch to select between input and output usage). Much better. 7500, XLR8 466MHz G3, Radoc combo Firewire+USB(2.0) card. |
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RE: Audio is not crappy ? ...OnkyoUSB Digit.U33HB |
April, 30, 2003 9:11 PM |
tomquinlan |
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So Marty Let me get this straight. Your Onkyo USB sound device is now working well when plugged into your USB 2 card with NEC chipset? What's the most stress you've put on it as far as sound in? I'm trying to decide if I want to take a chance on the Griffin iMic (Sound In) or Griffin Powerwave (Sound in AND out) since the Onkyo unit you have has disappeared from the face of the planet. Thanks. Tom |
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E: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33HB |
April, 30, 2003 7:28 PM |
rjbailey |
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The original link (http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/stories/S15456.html#storytop) doesn't work anymore, but it's cached at Google: http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:8r8lGeS2R0MJ:www.xlr8yourmac.com/ stories/S15456.html++S15456+site:www.xlr8yourmac.com&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 Guru, any thoughts on this? |
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RE: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33H |
April, 27, 2003 11:17 AM |
thomasc400 |
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Okay, similar problem. Mac 8500, Sonnet G4 450, Sonnet Tempo Trio, two Segate ATA 80 drives, m- Audio Revolution PCI card, and an old ATI Nexus video card. OX 10.2.5 and xPostFacto. I set this thing up as a music server as the Revolution coax out goes into my whole house stereo. So now my entire music library can be sorted, mixed and played from a screen in the family room -- except iTunes playback SKIPS! Sonnet lists an audio/video problem in that the PCI bus speed is two slow to handle the processor speed (or something like that) causing the skip. They have an AV tool that only works under 9 and told me that I'll never see one for X. I'm not willing to go back to 9 for this setup. I'm going to try a few things -- eliminating the video card and using internal, getting rid of some of the older RAM, trying a FW drive through the Trio (although that should be the same as the ATAs hooked up to the Trio), but otherwise, I'm out of ideas. Anyone? Thomas. |
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E: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33HB |
April, 24, 2003 12:14 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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xlr8yourmac.com has a page today, that revists this EXACT same issue, which apparently has nothing whatsoever to do with XPF or our unsupported hardware. Apparently it is just a BUG which also shows up on supported hardware (although likely less often). Here is the link: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/stories/S15456.html#storytop Marty |
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RE: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33H |
February, 18, 2003 10:58 PM |
mjotte |
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I think that you have found a good, cheap solution to the audio problems on 7500/7600/8500/8600 macs with fast IDE/SCSI pci cards. I have a 7500 with a SIIG Ultra/ATA 130 card and boot OSX 10.1.5 from a Maxtor drive. Listening to music in iTunes with this setup, with enough disk access the sound would break up and then stop until I rebooted the machine. By experimenting, I found that if I copy large-enough files while iTunes is playing, I could get an error in the finder that the files could not be copied due to an input/output error, and once I got a kernel panic! I figured that this would be too unstable for everyday use, so I tried plugging a Griffin iMic that I seldom used into my Belkin USB card. The result was the same that was reported here with the Onkyo; the USB bus would crash (my mouse would stop instantly) but the computer would continue. Then I read here that a USB2 card with a NEC chipset worked, so I rushed to my local PC shop to get a cheap NEC USB2 pci card (5 ports for $19, manufactered by Syba). After swapping out the 2-port Belkin card and connecting my mouse and iMic to the USB2 card, the iMic and mouse worked flawlessly! I can copy files and start applications while listening to MP3s or CDs with no audio stuttering or lock ups or Finder copy errors. As an added bonus, with decent powered speakers the $35 Griffin iMic sounds noticably better than the internal sound ever did. From what I read elsewhere, USB2 devices might not work on oldworld macs, but (at least on my machine) USB1 devices work well with this card and OSX 10.1.5. My guess is that USB2 cards are better able to handle regular USB devices (I've read that USB1 devices can get faster throughput when connected to USB2 cards then when connected to USB1 cards). As a bonus, I have 3 extra USB slots now too. So maybe the pci bus and the IDE cards aren't the problem with the on board audio problems since, by putting more load on the pci bus, the audio can play fine with a third-party solution. It's probably just some timing problem with the onboard audio, just like video problems have been reported with the onboard video and faster processors. I hope this still works when I upgrade to OSX 10.2! To make sure that I never use the onboard audio and the instabilities that it causes, I even moved the AppleOnboardAudio kernel extension out of the extensions folder so that it never loads. Martin |
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E: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33HB |
January, 24, 2003 2:17 AM |
mjoecups358 |
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Yeah it works all right, altough I have no USB 2.0 peripheral to test with as of yet... So I can only vouch for it's USB 1.1 function which is better then the Opti chip. Marty |
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E: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33HB |
January, 23, 2003 11:07 PM |
tippingj |
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This NEC chipset works?? I thought that the NEC based USB 2.0 cards had some issue with oldworld machines.. |
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E: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33HB |
January, 23, 2003 2:21 PM |
marcush |
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I'm planning on getting one of the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI sound cards that I saw demoed at Macworld. Though my Ratoc Firewire/USB2.0 card may or may not have a problem with a USB input source the M-Audio representatives at the show recommend that you should always go with a PCI card if you have room for one because the available bandwidth is higher. The card actually has higher Khz ratings for audio I/O than the USB solution. Other than that both their external USB box and PCI card are functionally identical and the price $99 is the same. |
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RE: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33H |
January, 22, 2003 5:31 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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Ok, Today I had a thought. Rare yes... I installed a brand new USB2 card I have here in place of my macally USB/FW combo. so 1) This USB 2.0 card which is based on an NEC chip seems to work perfectly with Onkyo usb audio thing! iTunes playback, even Soldier of Fortune II!!! it works better then the built in audio! (which cuts out). 2) This seems to indicate to me that 10.2.3 has some issue with the Opti USB chip (82c861), which 10.1.5 didn't have. Anyhow, this is promising as the USB 2.0 card was $15.00, as long as you have slots for it... Marty |
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RE: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33H |
January, 20, 2003 7:23 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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I tried swapping the USB card which worked in the 9600 (generic PC Opti card), into the Powerwave (macally USB/FW)combo. Both cards appear to use the identical Opti chip for USB interface. Switching made no difference, still the same audio crashing at first heavy disk load/CPU load, So it isn't a Card issue in this case... I have a Gut feeling that all the audio problems are somehow related to changes in mac os 10.2s I/O code? It feels like the PC bus is overloading somehow... Since I believe the IDE card problems with audio stuttering under 8/9 proved to be somehow to be a PCI bus issue. Would it be possible to make a PCI bus throttle for OSX with Xpostfacto? This would limit PCI activity. So clearly it would be a performance trade off. Am I crazy ? Marty |
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E: Audio is still crappy...Onkyo USB Digital U33HB |
January, 20, 2003 5:58 PM |
OSXGuru |
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It may have something to do with the FW/USB card. There is another thread with quite a bit of discussion of compatibility issues with those cards, which seems to vary by machine. (We really need to get that search feature going). |