DICE MAC OS X DRIVER RELEASE NOTES

Requirements:

  Operating System:

  Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5
  Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.5
  Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.5
  Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6
  macOS Sierra 10.12.x

  Hardware:

  Minimum:
    Intel Core 2 Duo processor
    2GB RAM

  Recommended:
    Intel Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
    4GB or more RAM

  Please also consult your audio applications' requirements.


Version 4.3.1

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

1111

The MIDI ports could be incorrectly identified if a device was switched off just after being connected.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x/10.12.x

2128

The Control Panel could crash or hang after detaching a device.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x/10.12.x

2421

macOS Sierra 10.12 is now supported.

10.12.x

2477

The Control Panels's file browser did not show files with the .bin extension in the Firmware Loader tab.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x/10.12.x

2505

The Control Panel would crash when entering non-ASCII characters in the device nickname editor.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x/10.12.x




Version 4.3.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

1424, 2106

MIDI output data could be dropped when simultaneously playing back and recording MIDI in some applications (e.g. Pro Tools).

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x

1738, 1777

Audio glitches could occur on a device's higher input channels or when using stacked devices.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x

1794

Bit transparency tests could fail at sample rates of 96kHz and lower with certain channel configurations. This was introduced in 4.2.0.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x

2093

MIDI ports could become inactive after coming out of sleep mode. The MIDI Plugin is also now faster at detecting changes to a device's MIDI configuration.

10.10.x/10.11.x

2097

Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11 is now supported.

10.11.x

2100

A rare Kernel Panic could occur when in low memory conditions.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x/10.11.x




Version 4.2.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

847, 1315

MIDI data could be dropped after coming out of sleep mode or after detaching a stacked device.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x

1190

The driver's buffer management has been improved and its memory usage has been reduced.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x

1467, 1468

The driver's kernel extension is now signed, which is required by OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

10.9.x/10.10.x

1473

OS X 10.6 and OS X 10.7 are no longer supported.

10.6.x/10.7.x

1623

A rare Kernel Panic could occur when a device's channel configuration increased due to changing the sample rate.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x

1645

Audio and MIDI out data could be dropped momentarily when audio streaming was started at 176kHz or 192kHz.

10.8.x/10.9.x/10.10.x




Version 4.1.4

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

1310

A device's higher input channels could become distorted on devices with more than 16 input channels or when using stacked devices.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x/10.9.x

1312

Audio playback could become distorted in some applications on OS X Mavericks.

10.9.x

1346

The clock source could get stuck on "Internal" after switching to a different device.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x/10.9.x




Version 4.1.3

Issues resolved:

1131

When using stacked devices, a device's input channels could be incorrectly sample-aligned.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1218

When using stacked devices, CoreAudio would change the sample rate when a second device was power-cycled.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1230

When using stacked devices, the master device was not always restored correctly after a system power-cycle.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1232

Improved the driver's allocation of FireWire isochronous bandwidth.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1235

When using stacked devices, multiple MIDI device entries could appear for the same device in Audio MIDI Setup.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1238

A rare Kernel Panic could occur during a low memory or low resources condition.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x




Version 4.1.2

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

1161

Added a workaround to resolve an issue where asynchronous FireWire transactions could fail on newer model Macs, starting with OS X 10.8.2. This would result in firmware updates reporting a checksum failure.

10.8.2/10.8.3




Version 4.1.1

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

1135, 1162

Under certain conditions, the driver's streaming engine could fail to resume properly after a 1394 bus reset resulting in missing audio channels or no audio streaming.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1167

The Control Panel application would fail to launch on Core Solo and Core Duo 32-bit processors running OS X 10.6.8.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x




Version 4.1.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

889

Audio streaming could become distorted when using a FireWire hard drive on a computer using an LSI FW643 OHCI with revision 0x06. Higher revisions were not affected.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1024

CoreAudio could incorrectly restore an old clock source value at startup.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1067

An intermittent Kernel Panic could occur when changing the sample rate resulted in the number of input and/or output channels changing.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1084, 1085

Optimized the driver's streaming performance.

10.6.x/10.7.x/10.8.x

1104

The installer and software components are now signed to allow installation on Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" with default GateKeeper settings.

10.8.x




Version 4.0.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

22

MIDI latency has been improved.

10.6.x/10.7.x

277

MIDI data throughput has been improved.

10.6.x/10.7.x

976

Mac OS X 10.5 and the PowerPC architecture are no longer supported.

10.5.x

977

The installer now always places the Control Panel in the Applications directory, even if a previously installed version had been relocated.

10.6.x/10.7.x

993

A Kernel Panic could occur if the device's firmware provided an invalid parameter to the driver.

10.6.x/10.7.x

994

The driver's audio output latency is now lower.

10.6.x/10.7.x

1008

The Operation Mode settings have been renamed. On both platforms there are four modes available: Low Latency, Normal, and Safe Mode Levels 1 to 2.

Old SettingNew Setting
NormalLow Latency
Safe Mode Level 1Normal
Safe Mode Level 2Safe Mode Level 1
Safe Mode Level 3Safe Mode Level 2

On Windows, the Operation Mode setting no longer affects the minimum ASIO buffer size.

10.6.x/10.7.x

1013

The Control Panel could crash if an exception occurred during the initial connection to the driver.

10.6.x/10.7.x

1017

The Control Panel could take up to 50 seconds to launch if an exception occurred during the initial connection to the driver.

10.6.x/10.7.x

1029

The Control Panel's Event Log window is now wider by default, and is now resizable.

10.6.x/10.7.x




Version 3.5.6

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

905

A device could sometimes appear in Audio MIDI Setup with 0 input channels and would require a reboot to restore functionality.

10.5.x/10.6.x

843, 911, 922

A device that was detached from the computer could remain listed in Audio MIDI Setup.

10.5.x/10.6.x

915

When loading Pro Tools 9 projects that used different sample rates, the driver would sometimes not switch to the correct sample rate or Pro Tools 9 would complain of a sample rate mismatch.

10.5.x/10.6.x

923

The driver has been upgraded for Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" compatibility.

10.7.x




Version 3.5.5

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

876

The Control Panel application could crash at startup if the driver preference file was inaccessible.

10.5.x/10.6.x




Version 3.5.4

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

855

Improved how the driver allocates isochronous bandwidth.

10.5.x/10.6.x




Version 3.5.3

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

746

If a device was attached while certain applications were active (iTunes and applications that use QuickTime, including web browsers), the CPU usage would increase and these applications' audio playback could become distorted.

10.5.x/10.6.x

747

The uninstaller application would not correctly detect and uninstall the driver on a Mac running OS X 10.6 if the driver had been installed before the Mac was upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6.

10.6.x

756

If the user's language was set to a non-English language, the MIDI plugin could crash resulting in OS X's MIDIServer process continuously restarting.

10.5.x/10.6.x

769

The Control Panel application could sometimes crash when quit.

10.5.x/10.6.x

798

Channel names were not displayed in Audio MIDI Setup's speaker configuration window.

10.6.x




Version 3.5.2

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

721

The driver could fail to load at system bootup with a device attached.

10.5.x/10.6.x




Version 3.5.1

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

706

The driver would hang when used with a device that used a large channel count and a particular channel configuration.

10.5.x/10.6.x

711

A Kernel Panic could occur in low memory conditions.

10.5.x/10.6.x

713

MIDI output is now more accurately aligned with the audio.

10.5.x/10.6.x

715

The driver will now ignore any devices that are not on the same FireWire bus as the master device.

10.5.x/10.6.x




Version 3.5.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

38

Using large Core Audio buffer sizes on PowerPC Macs would often result in audio glitches.

10.5.x

261

The driver's streaming engine has been improved to minimize CPU usage.

10.5.x/10.6.x

450, 637

The driver has been updated to include Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" 64-bit driver support.

10.6.x

520

Audio could become silent or distorted if other realtime processes delayed the driver's streaming engine from processing its FireWire audio.

10.5.x/10.6.x

539

The driver is now much faster at reconfiguring its streaming engine, for instance after selecting a new sample rate.

10.5.x/10.6.x

612

When loading Cubase projects that used different sample rates, the driver would sometimes not switch to the correct sample rate.

10.5.x/10.6.x

643

After attaching a device for the first time, a device could sometimes appear in Audio MIDI Setup with 0 input channels and 0 output channels and could not be used for audio input or output. The workaround was to toggle the sample rate or clock source to get it to be republished correctly.

10.5.x/10.6.x

649

On rare occasions, the driver could hang when a device was removed.

10.5.x/10.6.x

661

In the Control Panel application's Event Log window, the device lock changed bits were displayed in reverse order.

10.5.x/10.6.x

665

The driver's streaming engine would unnecessarily restart twice when a device's channel configuration would change because of a change to the sample rate.

10.5.x/10.6.x

666

The driver's clock synchronization logic has been improved.

10.5.x/10.6.x

682

A device's nickname could become corrupted when it was shortened.

10.5.x/10.6.x

683, 684

On rare occasions, a device's nickname would not be restored correctly after a system power-cycle.

10.5.x/10.6.x




Version 3.4.2

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

249

At sample rates of 88.2kHz and higher, MIDI dropouts could occur when large amounts of MIDI data was output.

10.4.11/10.5.x

616

The uninstaller application has been updated to work on Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard".

10.6.x




Version 3.4.1

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

573

The driver had a kernel memory leak that would occur whenever streaming was restarted.

10.4.11/10.5.x

580

In a rare situation, changing the sample rate in a Core Audio application could result in no audio being passed until the application's driver connection was reset.

10.4.11/10.5.x

583

The driver would not load on some PowerPC Macs running 10.4.11.

10.4.11




Version 3.4.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

295

The driver could fail to instantiate a device properly after attaching and detaching devices many times.

10.4.11/10.5.2

443

The Control Panel application could crash if the Event Logger window was open while exiting the application.

10.4.11/10.5.2

468

The default height of the Control Panel window is slightly smaller, and still allows up to 5 devices in the device list before scrolling.

10.4.11/10.5.2

494

The MIDI driver's input parser has been improved and its memory usage has been reduced.

10.4.11/10.5.2

495

On rare occasions, the MIDI driver would not publish the device's MIDI port when the device was attached.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.3.4

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

477

The firmware file info fields were not correctly endian swapped on the Mac PowerPC platform.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.3.3

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

48, 144

Each device supported by the driver may now have unique MIDI port names.

10.4.11/10.5.2

347

A crash could occur when the Control Panel was quit.

10.4.11/10.5.2

389

When attempting to change the Clock Source in the Audio MIDI Setup application, the Clock Source would revert back to Internal.

10.4.11/10.5.2

398

The MIDI driver now dynamically enables or disables the MIDI ports when a device is attached or removed.

10.4.11/10.5.2

399

A bus reset would occur when the Control Panel was quit, resulting in an interruption to the audio streaming.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.3.2

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

71

Control Panel Look and Feel overhaul, including layout, icons and color schemes. Improved visibility of various items and events for the user.

Look and Feel

  • Flatter look, with concentric rounded-rectangles.
  • New Control shapes along the lines of the flatter look.
  • New Device item layout.
  • Native-looking title bar buttons.
  • Updated color scheme.
Layout
  • Added Info tab, displaying versions and vendor info.
  • Reorganized the Bus tab, added more visible alert when lock is lost.
  • Simplified Device Nickname controls.
  • The Master Device Unique ID is now shown in a ToolTip when hovering over selected master.
  • Removed Sample Rate Change Restriction setting.
  • Moved Operation Mode from Advanced to Bus tab for Windows (matches Mac OS X).
  • When there is only one Sample Rate or one Sync Source, the GUI controls are made invisible.
  • Changed alignments and highlighting in some areas to make it easier to find values quickly.
Events
  • Added Parameter Locking support. GUI elements are disabled when Audio clients are active, replaces Sample Rate restriction setting.
  • Improved error reporting for driver version mismatch, no devices, low resources, etc. When a low resources error occurs on Windows, some text appears explaining that the user may need the 1394b hotfix from Microsoft.
  • Warning icon over the device shows when an event has happened, info icon stays visible for a while after that, indicating that the device's TootTip will show accumulated recent events.
  • Added event log window, which appears with shift+click on the active device. This shows all recent events and some status messages.
WDM
  • Renamed the Advanced tab to WDM since it now only has WDM controls.
  • The WDM Channel Mapper Dialog now responds appropriately to parameter locking.
  • Removed Direct Out from WDM Out Speaker Configurations.
  • Removed Input Mapping from WDM Channel Mapper Dialog.
Other
  • Only one instance of the Control Panel is allowed to run.

10.4.11/10.5.2

351

Optimized the streaming performance in the driver.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.3.1

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

42, 50

In some situations, the displayed sample rate could differ between the Control Panel, a DAW, and Audio MIDI Setup.

10.4.11/10.5.2

219

Changing the sample rate in Cubase could result in no audio being passed until Cubase's driver connection was reset.

10.4.11/10.5.2

289

The second MIDI port on an isochronous stream was not working at 176kHz and 192kHz.

10.4.11/10.5.2

297

Audio playback could become distorted after changing the sample rate in a DAW.

10.4.11/10.5.2

304

The Control Panel's Operation Mode field could incorrectly display "Normal" after making a change to the Sample Rate field.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.3.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

244

The installer now also copies the control panel customization file if there is an .defs file provided for this customization.

10.4.11/10.5.2

254, 255

The control panel is now able to show a better fatal device or driver error description.

10.4.11/10.5.2

263

The sync source names were not correctly endian swapped on the Mac PowerPC platform.

10.4.11/10.5.2

286

The permission of the persistent storage file generated by a PAL based control panel was user dependent and access could therefore fail when generated by another user.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.2.1

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

262

Only the first MIDI port on a device would be available.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.2.0

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

11

A Kernel Panic could occur when unplugging stacked devices.

10.4.11/10.5.2

25

When the previous master device is removed, the new master device's sync source is now set to Internal.

10.4.11/10.5.2

37

When changing a device's nickname, it would sometimes not be updated in the UI.

10.4.11/10.5.2

107

Test scripts have been added to the dice command line binary folder to run automated streaming tests on OS X.

10.4.11/10.5.2

109

The new JUCE and PAL based Control Panel is now installed by default.

10.4.11/10.5.2

123

Preliminary and local builds are now marked to avoid their distribution.

10.4.11/10.5.2

131

The driver will now only send the interface ready notification to the client which is registering itself.

10.4.11/10.5.2

173

The new Control Panel checks for atomic delete+program capability of downloaded image data. If the firmware is capable, the explicit delete step is skipped.

10.4.11/10.5.2

199

A Control Panel hang has been fixed. A thread deadlock was possible under certain situations.

10.4.11/10.5.2

202, 218

A bug in the application driver interface (PAL) has been fixed avoiding a kernel panic "zalloc: \"ipc kmsgs\"", a result of exhausting kernel resources. This could occur after adding or removing devices many times while a control panel application was open.

10.4.11/10.5.2

203

The operation mode settings available on OS X have been updated to match the settings available on Windows. On both platforms there are four modes available: Normal, and Safe Mode Levels 1 to 3.

Old SettingNew Setting
DAWNormal
NormalSafe Mode Level 1
SlowSafe Mode Level 3

10.4.11/10.5.2

210

A Control Panel application crash was fixed. This was due to an unhandled divide by zero in meter region size calculations.

10.4.11/10.5.2

241

In rare conditions it was possible for an older driver to still be active after installation because the OS X kext cache was not rebuilt.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.1.2

Issues resolved:

CASE

DESCRIPTION

OS

12

A rare Kernel Panic could occur while changing the speaker configuration in the Audio MIDI Setup application.

10.4.11/10.5.2

30

Ableton Live (demo) version 7 crash. After quitting Live with the sample rate set to either 176k or 192k, then opening the Dice Control Panel and/or the Audio MIDI Setup application and switching the sample rate to a lower/different sample rate, Ableton Live will crash when it is launched again. This has been reported to Ableton, and confirmed as an Ableton issue. It should be resolved in a future release of Ableton.

10.4.11/10.5.2

31

Using multiple devices, removal of one device could result in iTunes no longer being able to play until all devices were removed or until the computer was restarted.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.1.1

Issues resolved:

DESCRIPTION

OS

Inconsistent latencies - the latencies will vary when disconnecting and reconnecting the device.

10.4.11/10.5.2

Fixed rare micro alignment errors where multiple isoc streams exhibit different latency. Multiple streams will now be sample accurately aligned.

10.4.11/10.5.2

The driver now defaults to using OP_MODE_SLOW if the driver settings file does not exist (fresh installation).

10.4.11/10.5.2

Persistent storage of driver settings such as operation mode and NickName will now be stored even when changed from PAL based control panel.

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.1.0

Issues resolved:

DESCRIPTION

OS

Driver Installer modified to install without reboot

10.4.11/10.5.2




Version 3.0.1

Issues resolved:

DESCRIPTION

OS

Bug related to notification handling and locking.

10.4.x/10.5.x

System crash related to device arrival/removal.

10.4.x/10.5.x

Protocol fix: driver was writing to improper location at startup.

10.4.x/10.5.x

Phase offset not proper after losing/regaining lock on external sources.

10.4.x/10.5.x

Device Communication Protocol fix.

10.4.x/10.5.x

Driver writing to invalid space (overwriting Nicknames in some devices).

10.4.x/10.5.x

Driver reading extra memory for channel names.

10.4.x/10.5.x

Skype not working on various machines.

10.4.x/10.5.x