Been looking all over the lovely internet, but at no avail..
I have been saving for 3 years since i bought my last macbook.. Finally it was time.. But not being savy when it comes to computers i foolishly decided to listen to the salesperson in the applestore, and left with a brand new macbook air.. lovely machine.. fast and light.. BUT.. he failed to mention that theres a difference between the pro and air usb ports.. and even though i showed him the requirements for traktor, he advised me to go with the air..
So here i am.. With a broken setup as i cant get my trusty old Audio 8 to work.. So what now?.. Is there any known fix for this?.. I found none.. Do any of the other NI audio cards work with usb 3.0?.. Found none here too..
So are there any audio cards that work well with traktor AND usb 3.0?.. Or am i just fucked?..
If anyone has any suggestions, solutions or ANYTHING constructive, plz add.. im angry, and desperate and sad.. And unable to digital dj..
There’s a lot of audio equipment that doesn’t have drivers compatible with usb 3.0, which is why I’m glad my laptop has both 2.0 and 3.0. One solution is buying a powered usb hub (which are pretty cheap I believe…20 maybe 30 dollars?) and put your audio 8 into that. This one is 25 dollars, has 10 usb 2.0 ports, and has great reviews: Amazon.com
A powered usb hub gets power from an external source, as in an actual plug, rather than your computer’s usb port. I think a powered usb port would be exactly what you need…Try one out and see if it works.
TBH, i would say its a temp fix, but personally Im not all for hooking the Audio 8 to a hub. Before you start buying hubs, try out a hub that you have lying around at home.
One thing I would suggest is to reboot your Mac, open up console, and plug in the audio 8. It will show you what errors the mac is giving you. That will also help NI to figure out what the hell is going on with the drivers.
Can you post the error msg your getting in console via text or screen-shot (apple+shift+3 or 4) of what your getting?
Also, you mentioned being Danish…not sure about the policies over there, but Apple allows you to return computers for 14 days. If I were in your position, I’d return it and either continue to use your existing macbook for a few weeks/months until these issues are sorted out or buy a refurbished late 2011 MBP. Unfortunately, if everyone does that, then we might not know when things get sorted out.
Also, the sales guy didn’t steer you wrong, AFAIK. The MBP has USB 3.0 too and dropped USB 2.0. The only things you’re missing on the Air are Firewire, LAN, and the SD card slot. I couldn’t live without FW, but the others are irrelevant.
Yeah, they dont allow those types of returns in DK.. And the refurbished one was on the table aswell when i got the air.. Anyway, tried a powered USB hub today with zero luck.. Same static sound..
Although, the NI 10 worked swimmingly.. Tried it at the store.. Gonna try the NI audio 6 tomorrow as 510usd for the audio 10 is a bit much..
Oh and NI answered the ticket.. They are testing the new Macbooks with their hardware, and are well aware of the USB 3.0 issues, but atm they cant help with compatibility issues..
Cool. That sucks about DK returns. Somehow, we Americans forget that the rest of the world follows a much more “caveat emptor” philosophy. I’ve returned so much stuff that ended up not being right that it’s not even funny. Hell…here it pisses me off that some specific companies won’t let you return hardware that comes bundled with software because they can’t be sure you didn’t install the software before you returned it.
I’m not sure I’d wait on a driver. Part of it was that they ended their partnership with Stanton, but FS2 never did work on Intel Macs. Something half similar happened with Kore. NI doesn’t have a great track record with this kind of thing. Might be best to offload the Audio 8 and get an Audio 6 if you want to keep using Traktor.
Just be happy you don’t have an S4. Same kinds of issues, but that would take out your whole setup.
And I’m looking at the same kind of thing when it’s time to upgrade…I use an SL1…and I seriously doubt Rane is going to make that work on USB 3.0 because it’s a USB 1.1 device. So, I’ll have to upgrade……which probably means switching back to Traktor also…because it costs half as much……or, god forbid, spend a lot more on CDJs or something.
I can’t really see taking this long. I mean, in their business MacBooks really are a major player, if this takes too long their reputation will take a serious hit.
There has been a lot of discussion about this over at the NI forums in various threads in the different forums. From what I’ve seen:
People have posted that the A2/A8/S4 do not work. Haven’t seen anybody post saying any of these work.
People have posted that the A6/A10/S2 do work. Haven’t seen anybody post that these don’t work. “Work” in this case means for a few minutes as a trial, not for long enough to do a set or event. However one person posted just today that they hooked up a Komplete A6 and had that going for a few hours nonstop and it worked fine (had 7ms latency in Ableton /w 24/96 too which is great).
You’ll notice that the interfaces that are being reported as not working are all of the older interfaces. My suspicion is that all of the interfaces that work use XMOS chips (NI went into agreement with XMOS last year). The S2 may blow that theory out of the water though, cannot remember how old it is.
And people seriously relying on it for their livelihood/career know not to update as soon as something comes out.
Lots of Pro Studios are just now being pissed off that they’re having to upgrade from G5s and a version of Pro Tools that’s several years old because the upgrade path no longer uses all of their existing hardware.
If you need it to work, do not upgrade for several months……let the amateurs and trust fund babies figure it out first. This isn’t NI and Apple…it’s everything.