Focusrite 2i2 issues
Focusrite 2i2 issues Posted on: 07.06.2012 by Trenton Morrissette I recently purchased a Focusrite 2i2 a few months back as my first audio interface after asking around here for suggestions (Mostapha was a big help, i'm sure you'll see this and hopefully you have an idea what i'm talking about). Ever since installing it however, it will constantly drop out on my mac and the only way to get audio back from it is to reboot the laptop. The issue has actually become quite frequent, and every several hours i'm forced to restart my computer. My drivers are of course up to date. This is only an issue on my mac. I use it frequently on a windows desktop and have never experienced this issue. Its a shame because its a great interface, but the frequency of issues i'm having with it are making it borderline useless. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this before I give up on it and turn to a different interace? Is this a common problem with usb interfaces in general? | |
| Trenton Morrissette 07.06.2012 | I recently purchased a Focusrite 2i2 a few months back as my first audio interface after asking around here for suggestions (Mostapha was a big help, i'm sure you'll see this and hopefully you have an idea what i'm talking about). Ever since installing it however, it will constantly drop out on my mac and the only way to get audio back from it is to reboot the laptop. The issue has actually become quite frequent, and every several hours i'm forced to restart my computer. My drivers are of course up to date. This is only an issue on my mac. I use it frequently on a windows desktop and have never experienced this issue. Its a shame because its a great interface, but the frequency of issues i'm having with it are making it borderline useless. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this before I give up on it and turn to a different interace? Is this a common problem with usb interfaces in general? |
| Dorie Scelzo 08.06.2012 | Yeah…I haven't used those things in years. I don't believe it's related. |
| Trenton Morrissette 08.06.2012 | Cool thanks i'll check that out. Focusrite emailed me back and suggested disabling any sleep timers that are on the laptop as theyre known to disable USB devices apparently. I'll try that out but seems a little odd. |
| Dorie Scelzo 08.06.2012 | Also, look at yasu. It's an OS X utility that clears system/application caches and runs the unix maintenance scripts. It makes a pretty big difference and doesn't require too much thought. This is how I have it run, and it makes a big difference. I believe it decides to run the daily/weekly/monthly cron scripts based on how recently they've been run…but running them isn't bad. Basically, cron is always running and runs processes in the background according to a schedule. But if the computer isn't up when it's supposed to run things (in this case…some maintenance scripts) it might just not get to run them at all, depending on how the system is set up. It's easier to just run them occasionally than worry about fixing it for most people. Here's a link about prebinding, which apparently isn't necessary anymore…but I left it on the default because I remember Pro Tools going wonky if it was wrong in the past. It probably doesn't do anything. And I sometimes clear font caches because as much as I respect design, I just don't care to have caches of fonts sitting around just because some web dev decided to use something weird. |
| Trenton Morrissette 08.06.2012 | Thanks for the reply, just glad to know its a common issue and not just on my end. I've noticed the same thing where it'll never give me a problem during use, but coming back to it it'll just not work. I sent an email to focusrite but I doubt anything useful will come of it. Also a 30 second reboot sounds like magic. Takes me roughly 2-3 minutes right now with a standard hard drive...need to look into a SSD. |
| Dorie Scelzo 09.06.2012 | They changed CoreAuio in Lion. I'm not sure of the exact details, but there are a lot of USB CoreAudio sound cards that occasionally require a reboot, including the Apogee Duet 2 and, well, basically everything I've looked at. NI cards, for example, don't seem to have that problem because they don't seem to use Core Audio (though I haven't actually used them with an Application that would tell me). I could be wrong…it's not something I research because other than maybe an TS A6 in the future…I'm done buying NI's crap. I haven't noticed it during use, but there are a lot of times I come back to mine after a day or two and it just doesn't output any sound until I reboot. It's annoying, but my SSD gives me a 15-second reboot time, and Lion's reopen windows feature (which I don't use when running audio software) bring it back to where it was in <30 seconds……so I've decided not to care. I haven't had that issue with any Firewire card I've tried…but they're more expensive (and all FW400…which makes external drives feel slow when you're used to FW800 and only have 1 FW controller). You get what you pay for…and what you got for ~$100 is good sounding preamps and converters that occasionally requires a restart……I'm dealing with the same issue and have decided just not to care. If it cuts out in the middle of recording a mix, I'd be pissed, but it hasn't happened yet. If it really bugs you, you might be able to exchange it for a FW card, but it'll cost 2-3 times as much. If you do go that route, the echo audiofire 2 seems to be one of the best/cheapest around (good converters; solid drivers; IIR filtering; etc.) with a similar IO configuration. |
| Leeanna Ayla 07.06.2012 | One of the things I check early on when I'm having sound card issues is that the sample rates match on the card and the computer. |
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