Lion + Focusrite Saffire audio interface, anyone stable?

[autological]

Hi --

I'm trying to run Lion along with a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 audio interface. I'm wondering if anyone has a system that is up and running 100% stable for more than a few days with this setup?

I'm having quite a few headaches with my hack. I keep getting it to work for a few days, then it bombs on me; kernel panics, can't boot, can't get into safe mode, can't do single user mode, etc. Just locked out until I reinstall. I believe Saffire.kext is at fault at least partially, because it shows up in nearly all my KPs, but I'm not certain it's the only issue. And once it starts acting up, there seems to be NO way to boot the machine unless I wipe the hard drive and start over. iBoot, rBoot, all the different flags; I keep trying things and it keeps panicking no matter what.

I've done this a few times, trying both Snow Leopard and Lion. It's frustrating because it will be working absolutely PERFECTLY for a period of time (days, weeks even) before it fails. Logic runs perfect, the interface works great, my GB Radeon 6870 kills it if I load up a game, etc. But then, random kernel panics after boot a few times, and eventually KP at boot every time. I'd be interested to hear your build if you're running the Saffire without issues, and especially interested if anyone's been in a similar situation and had a breakthrough. I could wipe and reinstall and have my computer running again (probably, hopefully) but I'd still be lost for how to fix the problem and I would prefer not to have to do that every few days, to say the least!

Anyone got any tips? Thanks!

 

[fuma]

Hi --

I'm trying to run Lion along with a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 audio interface. I'm wondering if anyone has a system that is up and running 100% stable for more than a few days with this setup?

I'm having quite a few headaches with my hack. I keep getting it to work for a few days, then it bombs on me; kernel panics, can't boot, can't get into safe mode, can't do single user mode, etc. Just locked out until I reinstall. I believe Saffire.kext is at fault at least partially, because it shows up in nearly all my KPs, but I'm not certain it's the only issue. And once it starts acting up, there seems to be NO way to boot the machine unless I wipe the hard drive and start over. iBoot, rBoot, all the different flags; I keep trying things and it keeps panicking no matter what.

I've done this a few times, trying both Snow Leopard and Lion. It's frustrating because it will be working absolutely PERFECTLY for a period of time (days, weeks even) before it fails. Logic runs perfect, the interface works great, my GB Radeon 6870 kills it if I load up a game, etc. But then, random kernel panics after boot a few times, and eventually KP at boot every time. I'd be interested to hear your build if you're running the Saffire without issues, and especially interested if anyone's been in a similar situation and had a breakthrough. I could wipe and reinstall and have my computer running again (probably, hopefully) but I'd still be lost for how to fix the problem and I would prefer not to have to do that every few days, to say the least!

Anyone got any tips? Thanks!

I've been using a Saffire Pro 24 DSP since 2010 (under leopard, snow leo, and now lion - on both a real mac and my 2600k build) it stays on 24/7 and I use Logic and FCP all the time.

Never had an issue whatsoever with the Saffire extensions.

I was recently contacted by member 'j00' http://www.tonymacx86.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=476291 about a similar issue.

You may want to PM him, I think he got rid of Chimera and went to Chameleon... but realistically that shouldn't be the issue. I have a feeling you guys are running into other problems that are making your systems unstable.

I would try to rebuild your OS disk from scratch and install everything clean.

 

[autological]

That's kind of the thing, though; I've done that a few times so far and I keep getting essentially the same issue so I'm not sure what to do differently this time around. Every time I feel I've sorted all the kinks out, the system will be up and running fine through a number of boots + shutdowns, and then start crashing a few days later. What could create this kind of pattern?

I don't know, this is my first hack, and I thought I had chosen pretty good components, most people with similar systems seem to have them up and running without a hitch. It definitely has taken/is taking a while for me to learn so many of the quirks, etc. of building Hackintosh but at this point I thought I was pretty comfortable with most of the important things I should be paying attention to and I just don't know what could be wrong. I have my BIOS set up right with AHCI, I have my hard drives plugged into the blue SATA ports on my MB, I have my Multibeast config which I mostly copied from someone else who had the same MB and Radeon, I did install the RealTek LAN drivers, got an Apple/PCI wifi card that seems to work fine OOB, I have a TI chip firewire card, Corsair RAM, etc. It seemed to me like a standard setup and I thought I had all the bases covered! At first, my system ran Snow Leopard mostly fine for about a month before it started crashing; when I couldn't get it back up I tried installing Lion rather than 10.6.8 and it worked great but right when I thought "OK, it's been working perfect for a week, maybe I'm in the clear" it just bombs! And once the KPs start, they keep coming; it's been really hard to get back in and move kexts around or whatever, so I usually do have to wipe and reinstall every time I hit a snag like this. One of the only constants is my interface because audio is primarily what I use the computer for; it is a little inspiring to hear from somebody who has a similar setup running stable but at the same time leaves me a little more confused as to what I can do to make mine work!

Sorry for kind of venting here but it's starting to feel like I'm running out of things to try. I really appreciate your post. I did see that other thread where the guy said he installed Chameleon, I'll get in touch but I looked at that software and it seems to be way older than the current Multibeast + whatever bootloaders it comes with, so I'm not sure I have high expectations! But I'd try anything to not be stuck with a bum computer. It is just a bummer to be trying so many things in the dark without ever really finding out what the actual problem is, and every time I think I get it working, soon enough I see that I haven't really figured it out! Well, at least I can be thankful for resources like this one with helpful people hanging around.

 

[j00]

You may want to PM him, I think he got rid of Chimera and went to Chameleon... but realistically that shouldn't be the issue. I have a feeling you guys are running into other problems that are making your systems unstable.

I would try to rebuild your OS disk from scratch and install everything clean.

So yeah I get rid of Chimera for Chameleon, can't explain exactly why but it works. My KP was due to the install of the Mix Control while using Chimera as BL. I dont know if it's a realistic way to fix this issue but this is the working one for me and my system is 100% reliable at the moment, the focusrite doenst suffer any bugs, the mix control is running perfectly great.

I think that the clean install is the good procedure you need to follow.

 

[autological]

^^ Thanks for replying so quickly to my PM, I appreciate it.

OK, I guess my problems do indeed go deeper than the Saffire. I've started getting kernel panics after booting from my Unibeast install flash drive while attempting to do a clean install. This just keeps getting worse every time I try anything, first I can't even get into safe mode or anything and now I can't even do a fresh install? First happened while I was trying to verify permissions on my HD. I restarted and I tried to just wipe my disk and reinstall; I reformatted the drive and started installing Lion again; about two minutes in kernel panic. So what is going on with my build! Is there a problem with my hardware? Could my RAM be bad? Could my CPU or GPU be bad? I don't get how the computer can go from working fine for weeks to not working at all and crashing so severely like this. I'm (virtually) certain I have my BIOS set up right, supposedly all I had to do was do Optimize Defaults, switch on AHCI mode + 64-bit HPET. I'm wondering if I should be looking into another motherboard at this point, the Z68A-D3H-B3 seems to be kind of unpopular on this board even though a few people report them to be working no problem, including one of the golden builds. I just don't get it.

 

[witchbutter]

I am 100% stable with a Saffire Pro 26 I/O and 10.7.3. I have used this sound setup with a few real macs and PCs and what I can say is that it has always been temperamental, especially with firewire chipsets on PC systems. I have it working now with an Asus P8B-WS which includes a VIA based firewire card. In the past Focusrite support had recommended that I only use Texas Instruments chipsets, so I would suggest finding a cheap PCI firewire card with TI chipset and trying that.
In hindsight I was a MOTU user before this and my experience with Focusrite drivers has been poor as well as the build quality is very cheap. The next outboard unit I buy will not be Focusrite.

 

[autological]

Thanks for the post. I'm wondering what precisely you mean by 'temperamental'. I can say after what I've been going through with my computer for the last few hours that the Saffire clearly isn't the biggest problem I'm having with it (+ I'm starting a new thread in a second for this reason), but I do want to know what to look out for. I do have a TI card (two actually, a Lacie FW 400 and a SYBA 4/800 card, both are TI branded; I don't keep them both installed at the same time), any other issues come up for you?

I'm also wondering what made you go with an ASUS motherboard for your mac rather than Gigabyte, which seems to be the standard for most people here.

+ Also shoutout Denver Colorado! I live here too! I feel like I need to find a hack expert in town to help me with this, you know anyone? lol

I know building this thing is supposed to be an adventure or whatever, but I just want a working computer and it's starting to feel hopeless or like even if I get it working I'll always be dreading the moment when the kernel panics come back out of nowhere and I'm back to square one again, as has happened so many times now.

 

[witchbutter]

I chose ASUS because I had access to a Xeon E3-1230 on the cheap and I wanted to go full workstation. I am using ECC memory as well.

When I say temperamental I mean it will do things like start to crackle after being on more than 4 hours or so, or the output will just get fuzzy. I shut it off then back on and it clears. I think it just be cheap on the inside. The inputs always stay clean, and that's what matters.

I will say that hackintosh is all about persistence. Took me about 3 weeks of frustration to get this going. I'm betting some of the issues you describe have to do with needing to customize your DSDT. I had a really hard time with HPET and CPU support.

Couple things you might also consider: you might need an EFI string to get that Lacie FW to work if you dont customize your DSDT. If you are using a DSDT you may want to start over extracting a clean one while the card is inserted and then adding your edits to it.

The other thing I did is include the Apple HDA rollback in addition to any onboard audio kext when I ran MultiBeast. The onboard on this is ALC892 and even though I dont actually use the onboard i installed the 892 kext with Apple HDA rollback. If you read the lengthy thread on 10.7.3 when it came out there are a lot of comments about the AppleHDA rollback. I believe that kext was pulled from Snow Leopard.

I don't really know any other big nerds in Denver besides myself. I'm the kind of guy that builds a PC and has it working perfectly then will completely reassemble it in a different way to see if some other feature works better that way. It's a character flaw lol.

 

[witchbutter]

I installed a Sonnet Allegro FW800 PCIe today. It was instantly recognized in 10.7.4 and got rid of my performance issues.