Fixing Mbox USB coreaudio Kernel Panics!

[donbenjy]

Right, so I'm fed up of using my MBP in fear of random kernel panics because I now that I've "hot plugged" my mbox in the past few days and haven't shut down since. For anyone that doesn't know, the coreaudio USB drivers for the mbox family has a "bug" which means that you might get kernel panics if you've plugged in or unplugged your mbox while the mac is turned on, and used the drivers. Running PT doesn't count, as that uses its own set of drivers (I think), although I'm sure that I've had the KP without running any other sound back through the mbox.

Digi are apparently working on a fix, although I can find evidence of the issue going back for 2 years, so I'm not holding my breath! Their official response has been to "not hotswap" which is really not cool if you're running a laptop (and surely the USB mboxes are for portable recording anyway?!).

So the point of this thread is to see if we can create a workaround for people that want to be able to use the coreaudio driver, and to be able to hotswap, and not get kernel panicked! What I'm thinking is a fairly simple applescript that we can run either before and/or after using the mbox.


So far, I've noticed that the coreaudiod process in activity monitor is constantly hanging (if I force quit, it restart and then hangs after about 20 seconds-2 mins), and a quick google has revealed that this is linked to the digi driver, and apparently removing it from the coreaudio directory will fix the issue of it hanging. I've not tested it yet, but I'm thinking that possibly even a simple script that will move (or hide) the driver and restart all coreaudio processes might sort it out, though I haven't been able to recreate the KP in a safe environment to test this. Anyone got any thoughts?

Cheers
Ben

[Slim Shady]

Why do you have CoreAudio driver installed if you're using the Mbox2? The CA driver isn't needed as the Mbox2 has a better way of integrating with the OS. I hot swap my Mbox2 Mini several times a day and never had a problem, plus I can hear all my MBPro's audio (iTunes, Quicktime etc.) through it even while PT is running.

[donbenjy]

I may be wrong, but I thought that coreaudio was the way of integrating with the OS...if the mbox has such a clever way of doing it, then why is there even a coreaudio driver? And why install it by default?

Obviously PT has a different method of connecting to the device, but for other apps, I was under the impression that you use coreaudio.

Are you saying that you definitely don't have the driver installed then? And you get system audio provided to the mbox via the usb cable? Could you explain how that works please?

Sorry if I sound sceptical, but I really thought that coreaudio was OSXs "intelligent" way of integrating audio in the system...