Intel Fireface 800 - Manual (Page 41)

User's Guide Fireface 800 © RME
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20. Mac OS X FAQ
20.1 Round about Driver Installation
The driver with the file suffix zip provided by RME is a compressed archive. Zip is directly sup-
ported by OS X, a double click on the file is all one needs to do.
The driver consists of a package file (pkg). A double click will start the OS X installer.
The actual audio driver appears as a kernel extension file. The installer copies it to >System/
Library/ Extensions<. Its name is FirefaceAudioDriver.kext. It is visible in the Finder, allow-
ing you to verify date and driver version. Yet, in fact this again is a folder containing subdirecto-
ries and files.
Nonetheless, this 'driver file' can be removed by simply dragging it to the trash bin. This can be
helpful in case a driver installation fails.
20.2 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.
20.3 MIDI doesn't work
In some cases MIDI does not work after the installation of the Fireface driver. To be precise,
applications do not show an installed MIDI port. The reason for this is usually visible within the
Audio MIDI Setup. It displays no RME MIDI device, or the device is greyed out and therefore
inactive. Mostly, removing the greyed out device and searching for MIDI devices again will solve
the problem. If this does not help, we recommend manual removal of the MIDI driver and rein-
stallation of the complete driver. Otherwise repairing permissions may help.
The Fireface MIDI driver is a plugin. During installation it will be copied to >Library/ Audio/
MIDI Drivers<. Its name is Fireface MIDI.plugin. The file can be displayed in the Finder and
also be removed by simply dragging it to the trash bin.
20.4 Various Information
Via >System Preferences/ Audio-MIDI Setup< the hardware can be configured for the system
wide usage. Programs that don't support card or channel selection will use the device selected
as Standard-Input and Standard-Output. (Soundstudio, Mplayer, Amplitube etc.).
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. To access other inputs,
use the following workaround with TotalMix: route the desired input signal to output channels
1/2. Hold the Ctrl key down and click on the labels AN1 and AN2 in the third row. Their labels
turn red, the internal loop mode is active. Result: the desired input signal is now available at
input channel 1/2, without further delay/latency.
Use Speaker Setup to freely configure the playback to all available channels. Even multichan-
nel playback (Surround, DVD Player) can be set up this way.