20.3 Supported Sample Rates
RME's Mac OS X driver supports all sampling frequencies provided by the hardware. Besides 96 kHz this also includes 32 kHz and 64 kHz.
But not every software will support all the hardware's sample rates. For example Spark does not display 32 kHz and 64 kHz. The hardware's capabilities can easily be verified in the Audio MIDI Setup. Select Audio devices under Properties of: and choose the Hammerfall DSP. A click on Format will list the supported sample frequencies.
If the unit is in clock mode Master, selecting a sample rate will immediately set the device to this frequency, which can be verified in the HDSP's settings dialog (System Clock). Format thus allows you to activate any sampling frequency quickly and easily.
20.4 Repairing Disk Permissions
Repairing permission can solve problems with the installation process - plus many others. To do this, launch Disk Utility located in Utilities. Select your system drive in the drive/volume list to the left. The First Aid tab to the right now allows you to check and repair disk permissions.
20.5 PCI card and PCI slot compatibility
Unfortunately not every RME card will work in every PCI slot of an Apple computer. To our knowledge, the current Hammerfall DSP systems can be used in any PCI slot of all G4 and G5 models. In case additional PCI cards of any manufacturer are used, it might happen that the RME card is no longer found by the system. Swapping cards between slots can be helpful in this case.
20.6 Various Information
The driver requires 10.2.8 or higher. Older versions of OS X are not and will not be supported.
Via >System Preferences/
In the lower part of the window, the audio hardware's capabilities are shown and can be changed in some cases. On the record side no changes are possible. Programs that don't sup- port channel selection will always use channels 1/2, the first stereo pair.
Since OS X 10.3 playback can be configured freely and to any of the available playback chan- nels. This is done via Speaker Setup. Even multichannel playback (Surround, DVD Player) can be set up easily.
OS X supports more than one audio device. Their simultaneous usage within one program had been limited to Motu's Digital Performer until 10.3.9. Since 10.4 (Tiger) Core Audio offers the function Aggregate Devices, which allows to combine several devices into one, so that a multi- device operation is now possible with any software.
The Hammerfall DSP driver adds a number to each unit, so they are fully accessible in any
Our experience so far is that using more than one HDSP MADI will work only on dedicated server systems having multiple PCI busses. The PCI bus load of 128 channels plus the realtime behaviour necessary for audio are critical parameters. A usage of two cards at full track count is therefore difficult to achieve on current Mac computers. See chapter 30.7, PCI – Performance.
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