Posted by: "George Leger III" george3@utopiaparkwaymusic.com georgelegeriii Tue May 1, 2007 3:09 pm (PST) > Problems with the Ensemble: > > 1) It often needs to be reinitialized. It seems that the Ensemble > looses contact with the Mac Pro way too often. Then the digital outs > stop working, but the headphone out's do... It's gotten so bad that > one client uses headphones when working on deadlines in order to > avoid becoming frustrated. I don't have any specific issues that > cause this that I can quote off the top of my head... sorry. I end up > dealing with allot of people over a month, so I can't remember every > specific issue, only generalities. I shouldn't be commenting here for reasons of journalistic integrity, but what the heck. There may be problems with the Mac Pro drivers, but I've had an Ensemble on a G5 for about two weeks now with not one of those problems. People have reported instability with long FW cables - which would kill the product dead in my room, since my machines are on the other side of the wall - and it sounds like that may be the issue with your client's box. But the cable I'm using is 10' and I haven't had any issues at all. Is it a different production run? Different drivers? Different machine (G5 vs. Mac Pro)? Regardless, i was anticipating a lot of issues I'd read about and that Apogee warns you about in the bumph: only 10.4.7+ and Logic 7.2.1 are supported. But I first installed it with 10.4.5 and Logic 7.1.3 and it worked absolutely fine. I've since put in 7.2.3 and 10.4.9, but it really wasn't as mandatory as it sounded. They also say that putting the computer to sleep isn't supported, but I've been doing that every night (after turning the Ensemble off - or actually asleep) and it doesn't complain at all. > 2) Not being allowed to run System sound digitally at the same time > as Logic. The Maestro application's patch bay only allows the user to > assign one audio stream to one set of outputs. Because of this, my > client must run their system sound through analog outputs. This means > adding a mixer just to monitor itunes. He does soundtrack work, and > requires referencing older material all the time. I know he could > simply drag and drop the files into Logic but this would mean > multiple copies of data potentially all over the place. I can do this > kind of thing with any of my other FW devices, why not the one that > costs so much money, and is supposed to be the end all be all... This exact second I have iTunes and Logic going out Ensemble outs 1&2. I'm playing along with Stevie Wonder. > 3) Unreliability when using FW drives on the same bus. There's only one FW bus on Macs, but I have a FW drive and the Ensemble attached right now. And I ran 36 channels (18 in each direction) + all kinds of stuff going on inside Logic with that FW drive attached. The problem you're reporting aren't universal, George, or they've been fixed. You're welcome to come over and see if you don't believe me! > This isn't an > Apogee specific issue, but it still makes FW a poor choice over a PCI > based audio card. Also, Logic has a hidden extra buffer for firewire > audio the end user has no control over. That means higher latency. It means higher latency, but at 256k it's still fine and you can run all kinds of stuff at once. I simply will not buy any more expensive cards. Period. The formats do improve over time, but the history of Mac card slots is one gigantic proctological mess - from NuBus to PCI to 64-bit PCI 3.3V PCI to 5V PCI to G5 but not G4 PCI to PCI-e to PCI-express and whatever the hell else I'm leaving out. I do like the UAD-1 on the other hand... Nick Batzdorf, editor/publisher Virtual Instruments Magazine - the world of softsynths and samplers www.Virtualinstrumentsmag.com 1-877 VImagzn (846-2496) 818/905-9101, cell 590-9101