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Posted

I'm having a new problem with OSX after upgrading from 10.5.8 to 10.6.3 and I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this issue and what they did to fix the problem?

I bought the Mac OSX 10.6 upgrade when it first came out, but I never installed it because everything was running so well with 10.5 and I didn't want to screw things up. Recently I started running into some issues where some software required OSX 10.6 to run. I made sure over the past several months that all my software was slowly upgraded to become 10.6 compatible before doing the OSX upgrade, and I did the upgrade 2 days ago. The upgrade went well, as far as I could tell.

But now i found that I can't use several of my DACs IF they are plugged into my 4 port Targus portable USB hub, without hearing clicking or popping and other interference. This includes my DACport, Nuforce HDP and Apogee mini-DAC. I keep several DACs plugged in at the same time and then use the Mac software to switch from one to another, depending on what amp I wanted to listen to. The Targus hub has a special cable that plugs into both USB ports on my Macbook Pro (rev Jan 2009), so that it has enough power. I have two of these Targus hubs, and the new problem occurs whether I swap out the hub or the cables. The above DACs work fine plugged directly into the Macbook. However, I can still plug the Pico Slim, iBasso D4, or Headstage USB DAC into the hub and they all work fine when switching between them with software. Even my Hauppauge USB HDTV TV stick with eyeTV software has now become unreliable regardless of whether via the USB hub or directly plugged into the Mac, and before this update I could plug the TV and 3 DACs into the hub at the same time without a problem.

What I don't understand is why did this problem start only after I did the system software update? Has anyone else seen this happen? I know one thing I can try is to buy a new powered hub and see if that solves the problem, but it's a real pain the in butt when everything was just fine before. I could also just get used to frequently plugging in and unplugging devices from the Macs own USB ports, and go back to optical when using my Mini-DAC. Without the hub I cant use my 500Gb ext drive, USB TV stick and DAC/amp at the same time (unless I use optical or firewire for a DAC). So if someone could recommend a particular hub brand or a software fix that they know works well in this situation I would really appreciate it.

Posted
I'm having a new problem with OSX after upgrading from 10.5.8 to 10.6.3 and I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this issue and what they did to fix the problem?

I bought the Mac OSX 10.6 upgrade when it first came out, but I never installed it because everything was running so well with 10.5 and I didn't want to screw things up. Recently I started running into some issues where some software required OSX 10.6 to run. I made sure over the past several months that all my software was slowly upgraded to become 10.6 compatible before doing the OSX upgrade, and I did the upgrade 2 days ago. The upgrade went well, as far as I could tell.

But now i found that I can't use several of my DACs IF they are plugged into my 4 port Targus portable USB hub, without hearing clicking or popping and other interference. This includes my DACport, Nuforce HDP and Apogee mini-DAC. I keep several DACs plugged in at the same time and then use the Mac software to switch from one to another, depending on what amp I wanted to listen to. The Targus hub has a special cable that plugs into both USB ports on my Macbook Pro (rev Jan 2009), so that it has enough power. I have two of these Targus hubs, and the new problem occurs whether I swap out the hub or the cables. The above DACs work fine plugged directly into the Macbook. However, I can still plug the Pico Slim, iBasso D4, or Headstage USB DAC into the hub and they all work fine when switching between them with software. Even my Hauppauge USB HDTV TV stick with eyeTV software has now become unreliable regardless of whether via the USB hub or directly plugged into the Mac, and before this update I could plug the TV and 3 DACs into the hub at the same time without a problem.

What I don't understand is why did this problem start only after I did the system software update? Has anyone else seen this happen? I know one thing I can try is to buy a new powered hub and see if that solves the problem, but it's a real pain the in butt when everything was just fine before. I could also just get used to frequently plugging in and unplugging devices from the Macs own USB ports, and go back to optical when using my Mini-DAC. Without the hub I cant use my 500Gb ext drive, USB TV stick and DAC/amp at the same time (unless I use optical or firewire for a DAC). So if someone could recommend a particular hub brand or a software fix that they know works well in this situation I would really appreciate it.

I don't have much experience with troubleshooting Macs, but maybe this might help:

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

Posted
It's a sign, Larry. Get rid of those inferior DACses. :)

I have not noticed similar behavior, but I have noticed the awful beachball a lot more with Snow Leopard.

Have you tried a powered hub?

Unfortunately I can't afford a pair of PWD to use in both the bedroom/Macbook rig and main rig, sorry. I think I'll need to go look at powered USB hubs tomorrow, but I wasn't sure if anyone could recommend one that they know would fix the problem.

Why not use optical

I suppose I can switch the bedroom CD player to coax into Apogee (for WA6/eXStatA), and then use optical for Macbook into Apogee. But the nice Emotiva optical cable that I am using is very stiff and difficult to manage or route around the Macbook rig, which is on a small rolling bedside table next to my listening chair. I'll need to get a more flexible cable that wont put torque on the optical jack and will let me roll around the laptop table.

I could also switch back to the iBasso D10 with a short optical cable, but I would still want to plug it into USB to keep it charged. This could feed my balanced Protector on my table, but the DACport is a little better sounding. I wanted something for this role that would be self powered and not need to be tied into wall power. (too many cables)

Posted
I'm having a new problem with OSX after upgrading from 10.5.8 to 10.6.3 and I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this issue and what they did to fix the problem?

I bought the Mac OSX 10.6 upgrade when it first came out, but I never installed it because everything was running so well with 10.5 and I didn't want to screw things up. Recently I started running into some issues where some software required OSX 10.6 to run. I made sure over the past several months that all my software was slowly upgraded to become 10.6 compatible before doing the OSX upgrade, and I did the upgrade 2 days ago. The upgrade went well, as far as I could tell.

But now i found that I can't use several of my DACs IF they are plugged into my 4 port Targus portable USB hub, without hearing clicking or popping and other interference. This includes my DACport, Nuforce HDP and Apogee mini-DAC. I keep several DACs plugged in at the same time and then use the Mac software to switch from one to another, depending on what amp I wanted to listen to. The Targus hub has a special cable that plugs into both USB ports on my Macbook Pro (rev Jan 2009), so that it has enough power. I have two of these Targus hubs, and the new problem occurs whether I swap out the hub or the cables. The above DACs work fine plugged directly into the Macbook. However, I can still plug the Pico Slim, iBasso D4, or Headstage USB DAC into the hub and they all work fine when switching between them with software. Even my Hauppauge USB HDTV TV stick with eyeTV software has now become unreliable regardless of whether via the USB hub or directly plugged into the Mac, and before this update I could plug the TV and 3 DACs into the hub at the same time without a problem.

What I don't understand is why did this problem start only after I did the system software update? Has anyone else seen this happen? I know one thing I can try is to buy a new powered hub and see if that solves the problem, but it's a real pain the in butt when everything was just fine before. I could also just get used to frequently plugging in and unplugging devices from the Macs own USB ports, and go back to optical when using my Mini-DAC. Without the hub I cant use my 500Gb ext drive, USB TV stick and DAC/amp at the same time (unless I use optical or firewire for a DAC). So if someone could recommend a particular hub brand or a software fix that they know works well in this situation I would really appreciate it.

Can you open up the Console (In Macintosh HD -> Applications -> Utilities) and see if there are any interesting messages about USB coming up when you get the clicks or pops? If anything starts getting screwy with USB you usually get a console message about it. As for hubs, I'd probably buy a Belkin and definitely a powered hub.

Posted

Oh, looks like 13" got revved a little also . . . still core 2 duo but faster clock, and it has a bumped integrated GPU. They say the GPU bump yields 1.8x the previous 13" on Doom 3, 1.6x on Call of Duty 4.

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