HD | Native card not recognized by Catalina?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Extreme Mixing

I think you should check your playback engine and make sure it's set to what you think it is. Sounds like Pro Tools is not seeing what you think it is. Maybe it's looking at sound flower or some other device.

Steve

This seems to be going around in circles.

If the Omni is dead and there is no interface present even if the HD Native card is otherwise fully working then you can't have that selected as the Pro Tools playback engine... so Pro Tools will be using some other device as playback engine... what that is doing is all irrelevant if the purpose was to get the Omni working.

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But if the OP has a ULN-2 and wants to use that instead of the HD hardware then yes just install the drivers for that if they are not already installed and and make sure its the playback engine (hold down 'N' while Pro Tools starts until the playback engine dialog appears).

If there is not a need/desire here for Digilink Interfaces, and say you don't need more than 32 IO with Pro Tools ... then I'd ditch this hardware a heartbeat. And if there is not a preference for Pro Tools as a DAW, heck even more reason to sell the lot with hardware working or not, and at least stop paying Pro Tools support taxes.

[gtomassetti]

Quite true. I believe that the Omni has gone to that great e-waste landfill in the sky...

Now, I have downloaded and installed the latest HD drivers and the most recent PT update, and was able to set my ULN-2 as the hardware.

But...

First, using a previous project, I can't even click Play on a track without getting the Hardware Buffer error, which I can't even remember the last time I saw that one.

Second, using a brand-new project with only a single audio track, I can't get any input into PT from the ULN-2, even though the routing appears to be correct.

I've reached out to one of the very helpful Metric Halo people (no sarcasm there, I really mean that) to ask if he has any advice on how to use the ULN-2 as the PT interface. Hopefully I'll hear back from him tomorrow.

My own thoughts are pessimistic. Until yesterday, the Omni connected via DigiLink to a PCIe HD Native card that lives in a Sonnet Echo Express chassis. The card itself appears to be functioning (there are lights on it that I can see inside the chassis). But since the ULN-2 has no DigiLink option, I'm not sure what can be done here...

Regarding Darryl's later comments, I don't need more than 32 I/O; never did and can't imagine that I ever will. At the same time, yes, paying the "support taxes" to Avid is getting pretty tiresome.

I may reach out to my Sweetwater sales engineer to ask him how I might go about selling the lot and just work with Studio One and/or Reaper. There comes a time in DAW land, and in poker, where you have to decide to cut your losses and go home...

[Darryl Ramm]

OK focusing on the ULN-2. Just go back to absolute basics to get this working.

(Avid HD Drivers have *nothing* to do with anything once you are using the ULN-2)

Start Pro Tools without a session. Hold down 'N' until the playback engine dialog appears. Select the ULN-2 as the playback engine.

If you don't see that option you likely have a ULN-2 driver issue. Make sure you have installed the latest ULN-2 driver compatible with your macOS version, and have followed any install instructions, especially related to driver security settings. Remember that Catalina is 64-bit only, if you had old 32-bit ULN-2 drivers they will no longer work.

If things look OK then create a new empty session.

Go to Setup> IO and Default *everything* to be sure. On Input tab select all paths, click Delete, click Default, repeat for other tabs.

In your new empty session drag and drop a know good MP3 or similar audio file and let it create an audio track. Hit play and hopefully that output works to your monitors and/or headphones.

Create a new audio track and get that to work with one of your inputs on the ULN-2.

The point here is not how to work basic Pro Tools, you know that, the point is to carefully check the playback engine is set correctly, the driver is working, and you carefully removed/Defaulted all IO and then do simple tests to see if stuff is working before trying out out in existing large sessions.

(and BTW I did not think your Metric Halo comment was sarcastic... they seem to have good support.. maybe more reason to ditch the Avid hardware and add more MH stuff if needed).

[gtomassetti]

Well, thank you for all of that, Darryl.

I did as you instructed, using 'n' to select the ULN-2 (named as MHLink, because the new 3d updates connect to the computer via Ethernet now).

In I/O I deleted and defaulted everything.

I dragged an mp3 into a blank session, and regardless of what I did, I got the CPU overload message. If I switched the playback engine to built-in output, it worked, but it wouldn't with the MH, regardless of the hardware buffer size.

I'll have to look on the MH site to see if there are specific ULN-2 drivers that I should have. As far as I know, the drivers and firmware for everything MH are up-to-date. I only installed it yesterday, and I needed to download their new MIO software, and update the firmware for the ULN-2.

I have a personality type that HATES it when I can't figure out what the problem is or why things won't work, but at the same time, I believe I'm swiftly approaching the end of my years-long association with PT, so I am not going to let it bother me too much.

That being said, my experience with the MH support team is that they'll bend over backwards to get things working for their users, so we'll see how that plays out over the next couple of days.

Regardless, I really do appreciate your attempts to help me, and to explain what I may not have been understanding clearly.

Cheers,

GT

[Darryl Ramm]

Just in case you have insanity that some drivers get in Pro Tools. Try changing the buffer size to some small value. And then immediately set it the largest value you can... now try doing stuff and see if the CPU error reoccurs. It's that changing value step that helps some drivers at times. Also confirm if you get the error and just keep going that it does come back, there is an issue where folks get CPU errors on first use after open but then it goes away itself.

More than that and Metric Halo folk will hopefully be able to help you out.

[gtomassetti]

👍

[Southsidemusic]

Sorry to butt in here and sorry in advance if this has been done already, just can’t find any mention but pull out the HDN card from the Sonnett chassie as kt is not needed and I bet it is interfering with the MH interface.

And IMPORTANT uninstall the AVID HD driver as that WILL meds with the ULN drivers. Been there sold it and working perfectly here now with Apollo X interfaces.

And appologize if you already removed the HDN card and removed the HD drivers.

[gtomassetti]

That is great advice, Christopher, and I will take it!

I didn't know that the Avid HD drivers would mess with the ULN-2, so it's definitely worth looking into that!

Thanks again!

GT

[gtomassetti]

Well, it was a good idea...

I physically removed the HD PCIe card from the Sonnet chassis. Then I did a search for how to remove HD drivers in the KB and found this:

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...e-Audio-on-Mac

So I trashed the indicated folder (/Applications/Avid/AvidAudioServer) and restarted the computer.

I held down "n" whilst booting PT and selected MHLink as the I/O device. However, I'm still having the same problem with getting nothing but the hardware overload error, even on a brand-new project with a single mp3 in it.

I've reached out to Metric Halo and did get one reply, but it was more questions from them, so I'm hoping that somebody there can call me and I can share my screen, and hopefully they will be able to get me sorted out.

[Darryl Ramm]

While I appreciate Chris' (Southsidemusic) huge experience here, I've never seen the problem he mentions, but assuming even if this is happening. Just removing the HD Native card will prevent any drivers loading. And as far as I can guess you may not have the HD drivers loading anyhow... but you never clearly replied to my question of running kextsat. I would just run kextstat and see, if kextstat does not show any drivers loaded then you should be able to ignore anything else here as an issue and move on to debugging the MH setup.

What *exact* error message are you getting?

What is showing in the Pro Tools log file when this happens? ~/Library/Logs/Avid/Pro<blah>

What exact MH driver package/version did you install?

What exact model MH interface do you have?

Be paranoid and move all plugins to the unused folder and trash prefs adn restart with no third party plugins and just see if this is radically better now. Yes I know it worked find with HD Native. But still do this test.

Remind us what exact macOS version you are on.