New "Mac Studio" from Apple

[operator]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Oh dear, another one. This hopefully should be a straightforward process to troubleshoot but you are not helping yourself by spamming this onto another general thread. Next time please create your own new thread.

Sorry, I thought this was relevant to Mac Studio.
If it so easy to troubleshoot, surely Avid support should be able to populate the playback engine with more than just Aggregate I/O?

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

...Everybody else can get this to work without this problem on thousands and thousands of M1 Macs.

Please remember this is about Mac Studio M1 Max. I know M1 macs work. I said that in the post. If anyone has the Playback Engine menu dropdown working with 2022.5 on Mac 12.4 on a Mac Studio M1 Max, I would love to know.

Thank you for your suggestions, but let's remove any possible driver incompatibility by just using the Apple System audio. With no external interfaces connected I expect to see Mac built-in Digital Output, or Line Output in the Playback Engine dropdown menu, not just aggregate. Or am I wrong?

Digital Performer, DaVinci and RX9 apps are all working without issue with the same devices and drivers. I really don't want to sacrifice a goat by re-installing Mac OS

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by reichman

I got mine almost three months after I ordered it, and it was two weeks late from the end of the expected delivery window. I know. Loading it up for the first time today.

Hmmm... then I suppose that's what I should expect, too.

Let us know how you're getting along with the new machine.

[Darryl Ramm]

You don’t say what Avid support did so how can anybody here who might have a clue know if they did anything useful or were a complete waste of time?

Originally Posted by operator

Please remember this is about Mac Studio M1 Max. I know M1 macs work. I said that in the post. If anyone has the Playback Engine menu dropdown working with 2022.5 on Mac 12.4 on a Mac Studio M1 Max, I would love to know.

There are *many* of these Studio systems in use, if this problem was hitting others you would have people on here screaming about it. And they are not. You don’t need to ask. You need to fix what is wrong on your system.

Thank you for your suggestions, but let's remove any possible driver incompatibility by just using the Apple System audio. With no external interfaces connected I expect to see Mac built-in Digital Output, or Line Output in the Playback Engine dropdown menu, not just aggregate. Or am I wrong?

How can you “just use the Apple System audio” if you cannot select that in the playback engine dialog. Which is what I am trying to get you past. I laid out a series of things to try. For a reason. It’s only showing the aggregate device. So delete that device entirely. What happens then? Surely that was tried already?? Trash prefs… has that even been done here yet? Unplugging/disconnecting all other interfaces will force their drivers to unload -- incase one of those drivers is causing some incompatibility/corruption in the low-level CoreAudio HAL that Pro Tools is using to populate the playback engine list (yes even if other software sees the devices OK). Oh and having had my head inside some of the HAL interfaces and it might be possible that localization could cause problems there, including because of the overall complexity, and ongoing changes in software interfaces there. And if not in macOS/HAL itself but possibly drivers doing bad things, or Pro Tools having a bug, or a combination that trips up... did Avid support exclude that? So again, start by excluding third party drivers by unplugging interfaces (after deleting the aggregate device). What region/language is your Mac set up to use? You might try changing that in Preferences>Language & Region to USA/English after trying other stuff.

And yes you have spent more time on this already and well past the point that (if I knew basic stuff was tested) that I would do a clean reinstall of macOS and Pro Tools on a test volume and just see if that worked and keep reinstalling stuff. And I might be done in less time than has been spent on this already… or I would find what causes this problem by testing as I reinstalled stuff. And if the test goes OK I switch over to running off the new working install.

I really hope you did not use the system migration utility to move apps or drivers to this Mac.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I really hope you did not use the system migration utility to move apps or drivers to this Mac.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I disagree.
I know from experience that using the Migration Assistant have been known to case problems before. Like ten years ago. After some years I discovered that the main problem was with pro tools, and if you deselected the transfer of 'Applications' which left transfer of settings, preferences, bookmarks, passwords etc, saved you alot of time, and I would install PT fresh. Worked thru many OSX transitions.

And the last year I've been moving a lot between macs, and it's still problem free. I still haven't tried to transfer PT w/MA, but I will at the next junction.

The new boot-volumes regime, I forget the exact name, with the read-only system volume, that we have from Catalina and up, relies heavily on Migration Assistant, and most mac users can't be bothered to do 'clean installs' and such.

It works, and it is an essential tool on mac, more than ever.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but I do think it's relevant.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I disagree.

Look carefully at what I said. ** to move apps or drivers to this Mac.** I was not talking about moving users. If you are using migration assistant to move apps and drivers over to a Mac, especially a new Apple Silicon mac, vs doing clean app and driver installs you *are* talking a large risk. And if it happens that it was done in this case (I have no idea if it was), then that's more impetus to try a clean reinstall.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Look carefully at what I said. ** to move apps or drivers to this Mac.** I was not talking about moving users. If you are using migration assistant to move apps and drivers over to a Mac, especially a new Apple Silicon mac, vs doing clean app and driver installs you *are* talking a large risk.

I did notice you wrote that, but I want people not to feel they should aviod MA.

For the record; The last few years, my way of doing a transfer of user data from one mac to another, or one macOS version to another, on PT systems, has been, on a fresh os install, I install ilok and PT stuff, check that things work, then use MA with 'Applications' deselected, then simply copy the apps I want, from the backup to the applications folder manually. The application's library files is already copied by MA. Works, and saves hours.

[thebeatless]

Migration assistant works fine. Stop wasting hours reinstalling everything like I did. It made ZERO difference. It really isn't that big of a deal.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by thebeatless

Migration assistant works fine. Stop wasting hours reinstalling everything like I did. It made ZERO difference.

Again, I disagree. The user data volume can become corrupted, by installations, upgrades, OS upgrades and user errors. Sometimes a clean install is a good solution.

I like to do a clean install every other OS upgrade or every other year, even if I don't have problems, helps to have a sleak and optimized computer.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by thebeatless

Migration assistant works fine. Stop wasting hours reinstalling everything like I did. It made ZERO difference. It really isn't that big of a deal.

Oh here we go again. "Works fine" until it does not. And then you need to troubleshoot it. And here is why I'm asking what was done. Stop implying it can cause no problems and is totally safe. It bloody well can cause problems, as should be obvious to anybody technical who thinks though all the potential problems, especially in the middle of an architecture migration. And when somebody has a problem, like the person posting here, it's a sensible thing to ask if it was used. But you guys keep at it. I'll leave you experts to help folks foolishly posting problems to this thread.

[reichman]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

Hmmm... then I suppose that's what I should expect, too.

Let us know how you're getting along with the new machine.

It's early days. I'll post a full report after I have sessions that really challenge it. But so far, it's graphically snappier than my trashcan and Pro Tools/Eucon/Dolby Renderer perform really well. I lost some old plugins (RIP anymixPro), and have some legacy storage issues to resolve (tower of drives need to connect via eSATA). But my new Sonnettech hard drive is the best drive I've ever purchased. Highly recommended. Works well with all my Macs old and new. More details soon.