Dumping PCIe Support with Mac 10.15 Catalina

[alanderian]

As I understand, MOTU will no longer support their PCIe card or the associated interfaces, just as Apple brings back it's Mac with PCIe slots (which Mac users have been waiting for for 6 years.

Here's the thing: the driver is 64 bit and still works, the control panel is 32 bit and does not work. It's a 2.1 mb (not GB, mb) app.

I upgraded from 10.14.6, so all of my interface settings were imported to Catalina. Using the Audio/MIDI utility, most of the parameters can be controlled, but not adding an interface or turning channels on or off.

I use the 2408mkiii to send audio to my mix computer.

So I either have to keep a dummy SDD of Mojave, boot up in Mojave, change the settings there, import those into the preferences in User - Library - preferences of the Catalina system.

Or spend about $1500 to replace a perfectly good interface with another one that actually does less than the current one.

Or MOTU puts one of it's junior programmers for a day on porting the MOTU PCI Audio Setup from 32 bit to 64 bit (which probably should have happened 6 years ago when Mac went 64 bit)

Perhaps changing the code from

8 = sizeof(double) (32 bits) to 16 = sizeof(long double) (64 bits) from what I remember of C++

It's nice the new interfaces have USB support but compared to PCI data rates? There's no comparison. And I have had DP choke on sequences with Kontakt, Omnisphere and Stylus RMX running because it couldn't handle the both audio and MIDI. I really don't think dumping PCIe support, and the associated interfaces are a good idea.

Thunderbolt? I've seen a 25 to 20 increase in CPU usage with thunderbolt connected audio interfaces over PCIe connected audio interfaces.

PCIe is not going away anytime soon, and it would be nice if MOTU continued supporting the interfaces, which from my experience, are superior in performance to what they are putting out now.

[mikehalloran]

DosDude1 has a hack to run Catalina on the 5.1 Mac Pro.

MOTU has neither released 64 bit drivers nor said that they won’t. Everything in your post is dependent on that, one way or the other.

With the new New Mac Pro, no one knows if the 424e firmware will be compatible. The drivers and the firmware will have to be compatible for that to work — if either isn’t, it won’t.

[monkey man]

Well, I can't see any reason why MOTU wouldn't update the driver/s if it's really only a 32/64-bit issue.

The new cheese graters will accommodate the 424e card AFAIK (they had better or I'm screwed too), so as you suggested, it's only a matter of MOTU's updating the driver/s, something it has always done in order to ensure ongoing support for its legacy interfaces, be they audio or MIDI.

The MIDI ones are up now, so let's see how long the audio ones, covering legacy-FireWire as well as AudioWire take...

EDIT:
Dayum Michael, just saw your new post. I sure hope the card will be compatible...

[mikehalloran]

...
EDIT:
Dayum Michael, just saw your new post. I sure hope the card will be compatible...

Intel firmware was why the TB-PCIe chassis solutions could not work. Only one UAD Quad card at the time had upgradable firmware and it took them over a year to make it work.

If the problem was with Thunderbolt only then the 424e should work. We’ll know when the next MP is released and someone tries it.

As the audio drivers also work with current MOTU interfaces, it seems likely that we’ll see them. I’m hanging onto my 828mkII till that driver issue is settled one way or the other.

[monkey man]

Thank you so much, Mike.

I was hoping that whatever "techie" stuff prevented them from working with TB-expansion chassis wouldn't apply in this case, and from what you're saying, it might not. Fingers crossed!

[alanderian]

What is TB pcie?

I was told today by a motu tech they would not be updating to 64 bit.

I also told them there are a lot of guys that have these interfaces, that they still work with catalina, the kext still works, the only thing missing is the app. If enough people complain perhaps they will. I’ e got about 8 interfaces I’d have to replace.

The closest current interface I see for my needs, (3 banks of adat lightpipe), is the 112d. Be prepared to spend $1500 for it. (Also why they probably don’t want to update the drivers.)

[monkey man]

What is TB pcie?

A breakout PCI chassis that's connected via Thunderbolt.

I was told today by a motu tech they would not be updating to 64 bit.

This makes no sense to me. MOTU has always supported legacy interfaces.

[alanderian]

Well it kind of does. The mac pro 2013 didn’t have a pci slot. So the new ones are the first to have them in six years. And while catalina can work on the previous 2012 cheese graters, they are not officially supported.

BUT, what about windows? Are they still supported there? At the moment I can’t check, but I suspect they still are. Perhaps that’s the angle to approach them with.

There is a work around that is not too terrible. But what the motu guy said to me is they’ve been supporting them for fifteen years and that’s long enough. My response was I’ve got 10k worth of interfaces, am I suppose to just trash them all? He didn’t have an answer for that. Sounds like Avid to me.

[alanderian]

I just checked. The legacy interfaces are supported only up to windows 8, the new ones through windows 10.

And I don’t see a new interface they have that has three adat lightpipe banks, audio monitoring, and a way to connect that is as fast as PCIe.

This is a downgrade in performance as far as I can see.

[HCMarkus]

And I don’t see a new interface they have that has three adat lightpipe banks, audio monitoring, and a way to connect that is as fast as PCIe.

https://motu.com/products/avb/112d/specs.html

OK, TB may be slightly slower than a direct PCIe connection, but for audio uses, there is no meaningful difference. The missing D/A is unfortunate, but plenty of available gear can handle that task.

The above said, additional $$$ in outlay isn't desirable; it sure would be cool if MOTU decided to support the legacy PCIe interfaces in the 64-bit only world; such workhorses! OTOH, if running a working studio, must one move to the latest OS versions at this time? The day will come when the transition must be made, but it ain't today. At this point, I plan on running Mojave for at least a couple more years.

PS: I've actually been very happy running via USB with my 828es. It was the perfect replacement for my 828mkII, and worries re: USB latency and overhead have thus far proven unfounded.

[alanderian]

As far as efficiency, What I have seen is this

Running Pro tools with the native pci card, through madi, the pro tools cpu meter shows 5% load
Same set up using TB chassis, PT jumps up to 20-25%.
Running pro tools, using a pci 424 card and 2408 mk 3, cpu meter shows 25-35%.

This usage is while running Pro tools and VePro with eight instances with about 400 instruments and 30 instances of the lexicon pcm plugins feeding into pro tools, on a 4 core i7 3.6 mac.

On my DP mac I have occasionally had DP take a crap from the instrument plugins overloading the cpu, and for a long time had to use 9.0.1 because the pregen didn’t work right. I slave Pro tools to the DP computer when mastering and one one time in particular PT was losing sync because DP was crapping out and dropping the MIDI timecode output. Also to this day Output Signal overloads DP.

And since DP is dealing with both MIDI and audio, the efficiency of the audio is a big deal, and even what may seem like a minor difference is something I’ve come up against and caused major issues. The MIDI timecode issue was three hours of trouble shooting to solve what should have been 15 minutes to print stems. I don’t need those kinds of headaches on a daily basis.

[mikehalloran]

Except for the AVB Pro Audio series, every legacy device is using the same MOTU Audio driver v1.6.73220 (Release Date 2017-07-01), FireWire, PCI, USB and Thunderbolt.

Since the Apple firmware has not changed with Catalina, it doesn't make much sense that MOTU plans to support legacy USB and TB devices while leaving PCIe and FW in the cold.

If anything gets dropped, I expect it to be PCI.

Since Intel has never supported FW and Apple dropped it after 2010*, the only FW support has been the portion of the functionality built into Thunderbolt. That's not going to change as it has everything to do with Intel and nothing to do with MOTU nor Apple.

*BTW, 2011–12 was a kludge. There was no real FW support, only built-in FW-TB adapters on TB Macs. Like the 2013—on, the only part of the spec that works is what's passed through the adapter. Any doubts are dispelled by the fact that most bus-powered FW devices will not work with the <7.4V (2010 and earlier Macs put out 24+V per the FW spec).

I don't know if it's possible for MOTU to write a 64 bit audio driver that supports Thunderbolt without also supporting FW. Maybe we'll get lucky on PCIe (I still have my 2408).

[alanderian]

Yes. The current drivers are 64 bit, but the control panel apps are 32 bit. Sorry but there is no reason that I can see for doing them 32 bit. Lets hope they see the light.

[nk_e]

And I don’t see a new interface they have that has three adat lightpipe banks, audio monitoring, and a way to connect that is as fast as PCIe.

https://motu.com/products/avb/112d/specs.html

OK, TB may be slightly slower than a direct PCIe connection, but for audio uses, there is no meaningful difference. The missing D/A is unfortunate, but plenty of available gear can handle that task.

The above said, additional $$$ in outlay isn't desirable; it sure would be cool if MOTU decided to support the legacy PCIe interfaces in the 64-bit only world; such workhorses! OTOH, if running a working studio, must one move to the latest OS versions at this time? The day will come when the transition must be made, but it ain't today. At this point, I plan on running Mojave for at least a couple more years.

PS: I've actually been very happy running via USB with my 828es. It was the perfect replacement for my 828mkII, and worries re: USB latency and overhead have thus far proven unfounded.

RE having the latest OS: I think the OP is contemplating an upgrade to a new MacPro and they come with Catalina preinstalled. I heard somewhere that they can also run Mojave, but I have not seen that officially stated by Apple.

[crosswick]

Hi - seen as I was hoping to run Logic 10.6 (which requires Catalina) with my PCIe-424 (plus 24IO and 2408mk3), I thought I'd do some experimenting.

Turns out that if I copy these .plist files over to a new Catalina install (from Mojave in my case) and reboot, I got my settings (for instance, all my channels) back:

- from <username>/Library/Preferences: everything that starts with com.motu, including the folder
- from <system disk>/Library/Preferences/Audio: com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist and com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist

Then reboot and voila. This made me quite happy!

Might be a bit of a chore in case I want to change settings again... I wonder whether making a custom .plist file editor would be doable.

My system btw is a Mac Pro 5,1