Songcast disables my APOGEE USB audio drivers

[Geoff P]

I am using Apogee's Duet 2 USB A/D converter box with my MAC Air running OS Lion to rip favourite LPs to digital for streaming on my DS. I use Ableton Live Lite 8 as the digital processing software.

This has all worked fine until now. The Apogee interface/control app is used to set record levels and can also set record resolution. The Duet 2 appears in the drop down list of audio capture and replay devices in the Ableton software preferences and they talk to each other. From then on recording and export of wav files normally works smoothly.

However Songcast 'blocks' the Apogee Duet so it is no longer found by Ableton. Songcast appears along with the MAC' s built-in audio as the only audio capture sources in Ableton preferences. The Duet 2 is no longer visible and Apogee's own interface control application does not see the Duet 2 either.

As you would expect uninstalling Songcast returns everything to normal.
Obviously Songcast interferes with and disables the Apogee Duet USB audio connection.

I suspect this may also be true for other USB audio devices simply because of the way that Songcast is implemented. I will not be surprised if this has to be a fact of life and if so will just have to uninstall Songcast when I want to record......BUT am just checking in case something can be configured to get round this problem.

Geoff

[stevens Linn Staff]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for reporting this. Without meaning to pass the buck, have you also notified Apogee about this issue? The reason I ask is that they are in a position to potentially diagnose the issue since they can simply download and install Songcast. They should then be able to determine the reason why their device is not working. We do not have a Duet device here and so we cannot test this out.

I want to stress that I am not trying to point the finger at Apogee's software here. From an engineering perspective, Songcast and the Duet are not playing together and it is currently unknown as to where the problem lies. Apogee are simply in a better position to investigate the issue.

What I can say is that Songcast does not directly interfere, interact or disable any other device driver software on the Mac. The way Songcast works is by adding an additional audio output device to the Mac. When Songcast is turned on, this device is set to be the default audio output device for the Mac. This means that audio produced by the applications running on the Mac is ultimately fed through to the Songcast device driver software, which then sends it over the network. At any time, you should be able to switch the default audio output device to one of the other output devices (e.g. the Duet 2) and Songcast will switch off. What I am saying is that the behaviour that you are currently experiencing should not be a "fact of life" - given that the Duet 2 is basically an A/D and D/A converter, I don't see any reason that would fundamentally prevent this and Songcast from working on the same system. The only limitation that should exist is that you should not be able to send the audio output from your Mac to the Songcast device **and** the Duet 2 at the same time, which I think is reasonable.

Having said that, there is some simple logging that you could report back in a reply that might shed some light on what might be happening. Could you try the following:

1. Make sure your Duet 2 is plugged in
2. Uninstall Songcast (which forces a reboot)
3. When your Mac restarts, verify that the Duet 2 is present
4. Install Songcast (which forces another reboot)
5. When your Mac reboots, open the Console.app, which is in Applications/Utilities
6. In the window that appears, make sure "All messages" is selected in the left hand pane. Goto the "File->Save a Copy As..." menu item and save the console log.
7. Attach that file to your reply

I will take a look at the logs to see if I can determine anything that might be going wrong.

Regards,
Steven

[Geoff P]

(2012-01-04 16:13)stevens Wrote:  Hi Geoff,

Thanks for reporting this.

Regards,
Steven

Hi Steven

Thanks for your reply.

It all seems to have been a storm in a teacup. I reinstalled Songcast expecting it to do the same as before but I can now plug in the Apogee, switch to it as the active device in 'Audio midi setup' and it takes over with no problems.

All I have to do, which is logical, is make sure that in Kinsky my DS is set back to 'playlist'.

In my recording software preferences I can set the Apogee as both the audio 'IN' and 'OUT' device which gives me resolution up 192KHz and that works fine. If I choose Songcast as the audio 'OUT' device it restricts recording to 44.1KHz which is not a surprise I guess.

Incidentally i-tunes is capable of playing 96Khz/24bit wav files with add on software such as 'BitPerfect'.

is it likely Songcast will be adapted to do the same in the future?

Sorry for stirring things up unnecessarily.

Regards
Geoff

[stevens Linn Staff]

Hi Geoff,

glad it is all working for you. Songcast on the Mac currently outputs 44.1kHz 24-bit audio and this is a limitation that we are aware of. In the future, it would be good to expand this so that, like songcasting from DS to DS, the sample rate and bit depth of the source audio is preserved. This is on our radar, but I cannot say exactly when we will do this.

Regards,
Steven