Os-x yosemite driver?

[PeterSt]

Hmm ... that is really odd. Sorry guys.
Michael, will send you the link to 2.7.0 again.

Peter

[PeterSt]

Guys,

I don't know what *you* are doing, but over here all works fine. Is this because the effort I needed to apply to get a machine to Yosemite, not knowing too much of any Mac, spending 3 hours or so to get some player running in there and hardly knowing what I am doing really ?

Please notice that I tried to get Audirvana+ running, but when I finally managed that with all kind of offline copy operations, it told me that it couldn't retrieve a trial license. Logic, because not connected to the internet and I thought what the heck. So installed HQPlayer of which "you" seem to tell that it doesn't do 768 etc., that leading to Miska thinking all sorts of driver stuff changed (which could not be confirmed by anyone), but here too, all just works. Or "too" ... I mean, when HQPlayer works fine, all works fine I suppose. And when not it's the other player or just you. Can't make anything else of it !

FYI, played with Poly-sinc filter and TDPF dither, both 44.1 and 48 based, each upsampled to either 768 or 705.6. Speeds are fine hence sampling rate and clock switching all works OK.

One thing with HQPlayer : It took me over 2 hours the other day (under Windows) to grasp what and what not to do in order to put through changes. So *that* can be your culprit easily, like always needing a restart of HQP to put changes through (Audio Midi changes at least, for the Mac).

For 16x upsampling set Audio Midi to Multichannel and Quadraphonic and no changes required further.

In HQP load a track and select that, now click stop because it always starts to play right away (grrr, who invented that). Now change the sampling rate you see in a combobox more up in the screen.
In settings of HQP you can activate 2-wire to allow for 705.6/768, and this is a typical change which first needs a restart of HQP. And then of course apply the other things because it doesn't remember much of what you set previously (because it depends on the track selected (OK, as it's told) and no tracks will be there after a restart). Notice : same thing when you started out with another device (not NOS1) - it requires a restart of HQP to detect the sampling rate possibilities.

When you now press Play you can see that in Audio Midi the sampling rate is changed indeed (when implied) and you can trust me that the speed is OK. If not you have other problems like not enough power in your Mac - whatever.
Also notice that with 2-wire, in Audio Midi you only see half the sampling rate as set in HQP. This is OK (just works like that, no worries and under Windows it's the same).

Lastly notice that I may sound sort of blaming, but the main issue will be that everything in a Mac is as stupid as hell. Everything. That's why it took me 3 hours in the first place, I guess.

Lastly, might it matter, this has been a fresh install of the driver for the machine involved. Can theoretically matter, although I really don't know f*ck about it.

Regards,
Peter

[CoenP]

Hi Peter,

You must have had some 'beginners luck'  with the new driver install on OS-x 10.10.

I restricted myself to Audirvana+ (1.5.10, not the new 2.x one) this time and that one is limited to 8x OS only.

I have a trial of HQplayer that I used previously out of curiosity. Changing settings is very user unfriendly, and it took me quite a while to get any sound out of it at all, but when it works it is ok for 8x OS. However in all my 16x attempts with it crashed after I ticked the two-wire checkbox.

I will try to remove the driver and reinstall it and try it on HQP with 16x. To be frank I don't think it will make any difference but I'm willing to give it another shot.

Finally there may be more than a driver needed. I had to update the Ifi driver form my nano-DSD as well as the nano firmware (!) to get it to work on Maverics. Some stupid USB compatibility thing that needed work on both ends of the interface. The Ifi now plays glitch and stutter free, even while working on the laptop and at 384KHz rate.

I guess there is commitment to the Mac platform and the driver may work flawlessly in the end, then the developer has still a driver update issue to solve....

regards, Coen

[CoenP]

Hi,

Ok checked all the "phasure" related files in the two "library" directories on the MBP disk. It turned out that despite two installs, the date associated with creation of the files was still the one of the PREVIOUS install. No clue what this means , but I moved them to the bin and did a fresh install. Now the files all have the date of the most recent dmg file.

To be more specific, the updated files are:
- the two .kext files
- the .plugin file
- the .plist file

Could not locate the exec file, but I presume that is the one that is updated or used anyway.

Results with
Audirwana+: no new results, as expected, unfortunately.

HQplayer 3.4.0: no crash anymore with 2-wire checkbox, but no 705/768 stereo sound with the recipe above, only left channel. (midi output:multichannel/Quadrophonic; "2 channel, 2 wire box checked). Nor is either 44.1 or 48 material running at the right speed, 44.1 to fast, 48 to slow (like with Audirwana +).

Sorry, can't make much more out of it, completely useless.

regards, Coen



!!!!! UPDATE !!!!!:

I noticed that HQ player has a newer version 3.6. Downloaded and started that and finally had STEREO playing at 705 and 768! Well sort of because the music periodically breaks up into music+a lot of static noise.

Unfortunately the to slow/to fast situation remains:

Nos1a clocks set by the driver at the wrong rate?

That would make real sense:
-  44.1xn output @48 NOS1a base clock = too fast + periodical buffer underflow,
-  48   xn output @44.1 NOS1a base clock = too slow + periodical buffer overflow.

Also this is not completely repeatable with A+, where -only- my 192 files play perfect with -only- 1x oversampling (OS).

Note that the "Phasure control panel" shows the correct rate values.

 

[Bob Stern]

Coen, you might try the following Terminal command:
sudo nvram boot-args="dart=0x0 kext-dev-mode=1"

as discussed in posts 201 and 203 here:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/official-os-x-yosemite-thread-22030/index6.html#post368663

[CoenP]

Thanks Bob,

This command is no solution for the to fast/to slow problem that was introduced by the latest driver.

Is it intended to prevent crashes or also drop-outs?

regards, Coen

[Bob Stern]

It has prevented dropouts with certain audio device (DAC) drivers.  I do not know whether it will help with Peter's driver, but it is worth trying, and I do not believe it can make anything worse.

As stated in the ComputerAudiophile posting I referenced, you can revert to normal OS X defaults using:
sudo nvram -d boot-args

You must restart the Mac for any of these changes to take effect.

Another tip:
When installing an updated version of a device driver, the following command, followed by a restart, clears the cache to ensure that the new driver is used rather than the old driver:
sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/

[PeterSt]

Really appreciate the help Bob.

[PeterC]

Given promising signs from Peter and tips from Bob, I have tried to install driver 2.8.0 resulting in a complete fail.

Well, now I just get a mess…barely recognisable as music at either 16x or 8x (with Phasure switch in appropriate place and shutting down and restarting everything)!

Searched for hidden files and removed .kext before reinstalling; did not find .plist or .plugin…thought I looked in all the usual hiding spots.

I did get a song to play via A+ but it was wrong speed (44.1 file supposedly upsampled to 384 but playing slow); now hopeless with either HQP or A+.

Have used both Bob Sterns terminal command suggestions and restarted (again).

Have all problems: distortion, wrong speed, drop outs, stops altogether!

Given that that only thing I have not done is delete some of those hidden files, maybe that is it?

Tried reinstalling version 2.7.0…still f***ked up!  sh*t.  Not sure what I could be doing wrong.  I previously had no issues with 2.7.0 as long as everything was max upsampled to 384.

[PeterSt]

OK guys. First of all very sorry for your troubles; Of course I am totally in the blind myself (more than you if all is right) but let's try to get to the bottom of this.

First off, the 2.08 driver will be in

\System\Library\Extensions.
Phasure_CUSTOM_EXT.kext
Phasure.kext
both dated December 17, 2014.

If you don't have this, something else is wrong.
Somewhere will be a file for the Control Panel and one other program I think, but I regard this unimnportant (at least for now). If something is wrong or a re-install is required, these two files should be deleted (but which should go automatically !).

NOTICE :
What went bad with Apple in comparison with 10.8 is that the install moved (or seem to have - or was required to be) from
\Libray\Extension\
to
\System\Library\Extensions\

This is a bit vague, but if you find something in there for Phasure, it will not do a thing while you think it installed by viewing this.
But probably this will not have happened to you.

Also notice that this is to some degree about how to re-install the 2.07 version. Michael, did you manage to revert to this ? Is there a special note on this from you ?


Then to be sure, my Yosemite says it's 10.10. Not sure whether it would show 10.10.1 etc. when it would be that. This was downloaded/installed on December 30, 2014 and was upgraded from 10.8 (without intermediate steps). I recall that in parallel to this download (which I initiated on maybe December 10 or so) another download was auto-initiated on December 30 when I continued the download (I paused it this 20 days earler) which to me looked like an addition to 10.10 native. Not sure where to look what's really installed for updates.
The install itself was done without further internet "in the end", meaning that I didn't allow further iTunes etc. updates. Did not install Cloud stuff - and anything that I could avoid when asked for (so I didn't allow any further thing and then hooked it off the Internet).

Installs like A+ (which in the end failed - see previous post) and HQP were done without internet connection (moving around USB pens).

I hope this is a start ...
Peter

[PeterSt]

One more hint to drivers which won't install hence leave the old stuff be :

First off you won't notice this. The green OK tells you all is fine, while nothing happened (thank you Apple). One of the (totally stupid) reasons is this (and please correct when better data is available) :

The increment of a version number is tracked by OSX. This - and this seems to be new - means that no "newer" version like 2.0.1 can be installed over a 2.0.8 already running. Really so, and this is reason #1 as it seems to me that you can't revert (to 2.0.7.). But delete mentioned files and all looks to be good, while *still* something is in there knowing about this.
In the end I could not fully track this because these kind of issues I ran into on 10.7, at that time not knowing yet that things so much changed that 10.8 is required for minimum.

Side note : I can't upgrade my 10.7 to anywhere because of a perceived non-GUID partition I don't know anything about (that particular iMac was just bought running from an Apple Shop but with the notice that I installed Bootcam on it later).

Next thing we ran into is that no version can be above "99". So something like 2.102.1 can not exit. But of course the green OK is there as always.

This is all just side info and context for who-knows-what.

Peter

[PeterSt]

A question to those perceiving "wrong speed" :

Can I aussume that this is "wrong all over" ?
I mean, it is easy to interpret this (for me from your reporting and for you by not thinking somewhat longer) that you receive the speed from e.g. 48K as it is 44.1. So say 10% too slow.

But I don't believe this can happen, because this just works fine, and the slow down must be something else (like not enough juice). In the end I mean this :

If you can proove that this *is* the 10% difference, then all I can think of is that the driver did not install as it did over here and that you use something old after all. So notice : the 2.0.7 does NOT solve this issue (unintentionally). Still though you can make that manually right like this (HQP example) :

Assumed your NOS1a was left in 44.1 base state (say previously you played 44.1 material and all was fine and then you hook it up to Mac/2.0.8.
Now you play 48 based and perceive the wrong speed. But what you will have done also (most probably) is tell HQP to now output in 384 (opposed to 352.8 ). Only then the 48 based clock will be used (because 384 is 48 based). N.b.: Same with 768 and 705.6 with two-wire).

Now what I suggest is :
Whether you choose 384 (768) for output or 352.8 (705.6) - assumed you play 48 based material - your issue will be the same and report wrong speed. And so once again :

It is not so easy to understand how player like HQP operates, maybe espicially when used to XXHighEnd. So with the latter you can just say "upsample 8x (or 16)" and that's it. Very easy to detect the wrong speed because you can not *set* anything wrong. But for example, set HPQ to 352.8 output while meanwhile you change the base material from 44.1 to 48, changes ... *nothing*. Output is and stays 352.8. So if you now perceive a change in speed, blame HQP itself (but don't because it is fine) or blame something like not enough juice or whatever more that can be wrong. But never fool yourself by thinking that the clock requires switching because it just does not in this case.

Btw, if nothing changed, then A+ can explicitly set the 8x etc. So what I just said does not count for A+ (works the same as XXHighEnd) unless you denoted "maximum" (which would always be 384 and then again no clock will change, BUT it it would always be 48 based).

Still get it ?
Maybe not. Because when you hook up your NOS1 in the "always 384" situation (like latter about A+) then I can expect that nothing happens for sampling rate CHANGE because that it what's required to change the clocks in the NOS1a. Think like an event which requires to fire - the explicit change.


All this mst probably will not change much, but to me it is clear that this can all be the most confusing because you already assume it doesn't work anyway and now blame what you expect from this. And this is not so easy to interpret, as I now hopefully layed out.

Peter


PS: Avoid large buffering for A+ at first because to me it is 100% clear that you implicitly report about that part not working well ("works for a few seconds" etc.).

PPS: Pfff.

[PeterC]

Ok, I realised that when I reported that driver 2.8.0 did not work, I only tried to send (to the DAC) material at 352 and 705 upsampled from 44.1 material in HQP.  The output contained lots of drop outs, noise and stops; barely recognisable as music much of the time.

I have since tried the same test but with HQP upsampling and AudiMidi set for 384 and 768 and find both work without any noise/ drop outs/ stops...except that it plays slow by ratio of 44.1/48.

With 2.7.0 I was able to get the timing of the music right only if I used material upsampled to 352.  384 was too slow by ratio of 44.1/48.  Neither 705 or 768 worked at all.

Does that shed any light?

[PeterSt]

I have since tried the same test but with HQP upsampling and AudiMidi set for 384 and 768

Peter, I did not test this, but I am pretty sure this is WRONG procedure. It works the other way around !! And actually as I told, but possibly too much in between the lines :

1. Change the output rate in HQP (main screen, the rightmost combobox IIRC);
2. Observe (and nothing more) the samplig rate changing in Audio Midi automatically.

What you seem to do if I understand correctly, is after all these facts change the sampling rate in Autio Midi again. That's a guarantee for things not working ... (becasue it slaves to the audio player like HQP and it does that at changing the rate in the player (at least HQP) and NOT when you press play anymore).
So you destroyed it through the backdoor. Ehm, I hope !

[PeterSt]

This will be without much value (but it disturbs me as hell) :

You Mac guys always say that everything on a Mac is so intuitive. I tell you (ok, from my logic) : nothing is. NO-THING.

And sure I hope this topic in the end proves that.