Turn on, tune in, drop out: Apple's whizz-bang T2 security chips hit a bum note for Mac audio Audio professionals are complaining that the T2 security coprocessor in new Apple Mac models causes annoying audible glitches when using USB-connected recording gear. According to a report from professional audio site CDM, the T2 chip Apple uses for secure boot and storage encryption in last year's iMac and MacBook models has …
I haven't read the threads and maybe someone has tried this and found it doesn't work, but what about dongling a USB 2.0 hub via Thunderbolt ? Would that take T2 out of the critical path for anything connected through the dongled USB hub, or does it still get involved ?
Maybe ?
I haven't been keeping up, but a decade ago USB of any description wasn't recommended for live audio recording (because of these sort of interuptions), and all the pro and semi pro kit was FireWire. I'd assumed that Thunderbolt, another DMA-suporting protocol, was the natural successor for FireWire applications, but like I said, I haven't been keeping up and I'm not a Mac user.
Don't get me wrong, I understand in principal why it is good from a security standpoint. But for that added security you:
1) Can't use 3rd Party SSD replacements,
2) Certain components can't be repaired without the blessing of Apple,
3) Alternative Operating Systems have somewhere between no ability to see the internal SSD and intermittent support
Personally, I find the whole idea behind the T2 chip a little terrifying. It's the SSD controller, fingerprint controller, boot-loader, an image processor for the webcam, an audio controller for the microphones, sensors to detect if the lid is closed on laptops, etc., a whole lot of security in one neat place. The day that chip gets cracked, I wouldn't want to own a modern Mac that's for sure.
To answer your question, Apple, because:
1) Can't use 3rd Party SSD replacements,
2) Certain components can't be repaired without the blessing of Apple,
3) Alternative Operating Systems have somewhere between no ability to see the internal SSD and intermittent support
Expect more and more things to be pulled into the T2 chip in future models, so it becomes less and less repairable.
"It frankly astounds me that Apple, a company that was and still is considered by the industry the pinnacle of stable work tools, did not care to test their products in environments where they will be used"
Pro audio gear is notoriously slow to change; products stay on the market unchanged for 8-10 years or more. Many (anecdotally, I'd say most) pro audio interfaces on sale now -- including some relatively new designs -- use USB 2.0. Why? No clue. But for whatever reason, there's a shit-ton of USB 2.0 audio gear in stage and studio rigs all over the world and Apple should make it their business to know that. FWIW, I have never seen a Thunderbolt or USB-C pro audio device in the wild.
I have Apple products, but mostly because they are not other things. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro -- because it's the only* way to get away from the Windows 10 slurp and forced updates. I have iThingies, mostly because it's the only way to have a smartphone or tablet without the unblinking gaze the Google or Amazon panopticon.
Apple's hardware and software quality were never perfect, but they have absolutely cratered in recent years. Butterfly keyboards, free 'root' logins for everyone, the Group Facetime faceplant, a new massive Keychain security fail, the ongoing saga of iOS 12.x updates breaking cellular and WiFi, hockey-stick-shaped $1000+ iPad Pros, ThrottleGate, the entirety of iOS 11. The days of Apple products displaying the quality that is expected at their premium price are long gone.
Apple supposedly has 132,000 employees, but I can't for the life of me imagine what most of them do all day. It's obviously not QA testing or code review.
* I tried to make Ubuntu Studio do something useful in a music context, but the very, very short list of supported audio hardware did not include anything I own. Also, JACK is an abomination.
USB 2.0 has plenty of bandwidth for multitrack audio and sufficiently low latency when properly implemented.
16 bit audio at 44khz is 700kbit/s uncompressed, so a bus offering 480Mbit/s should easily handle over 400 channels of audio (allowing for some overhead).
Most people want fewer than 8 channels.
So as a manufacturer, do you use the more than adequate, on-literally-everything interface, or do you use the really expensive interface that hardly any laptops have?
Oh, and most of the laptops and desktops that do have Thunderbolt only have one of them...
Unfortunately "only" having to properly implement anything is exactly one bridge too far in 99.99999999% of cases. USB2 bandwidth may be more than adequate in theory, but it doesn't matter that I get 30FPS on average in a game when I get all of them in one half of a second - and precisely nothing in the other (or, you know, for the next five seconds - hello there SC...). I remember quite vividly having any audio that was playing glitch on my desktop every time any network traffic occurred whatsoever - and that was hardware bolted onto the motherboard southbridge not even attached via USB, and it was not a single-version bug but the state of affairs with the official mobo drivers from a reasonably reputable supplier! I can't even remember exactly what workaround or update solved it, but to this day my drivers are frozen to the version that finally worked reasonably, any further updates be damned*.
Properly prioritised and enforced resource access is simply NOT something anyone pays any attention to in the twenty-first century - everyone just assumes they are either alone on their bus, or the bus is "fast enough anyway" to let them get away with bloody murder. Except it never actually is, and sometimes to the point where you end up like this - getting to hear it quite clearly.
* let me tell you about that one time when the mouse cursor kept randomly turning into corrupted garbage for an infinity number of further versions of the graphic driver for their then-flagship card long after AMD swore they fixed that - guess when I updated THAT driver the last time...
.. it gets rid of "creatives" using Apple. I think it actually harms the brand :).
That said, I have detected issues with Bluetooth. which. has. bouts. of. audio. interruptus. at. times. Very annoying, but as I'm old fashioned I have no problem using a cable.
Until they take away that 3.5mm jack too, that is.
A few years back they had an issue with their own USB 2 keyboards dropping off the USB bus randomly on iMacs.
Then, the issue was the NVidia chip that controlled the USB and Ethernet.
It was wonky and the same chipset in PC's caused annoying ethernet drops as it essentially reset the interface for a random amount of time, randomly.
The fix back then?
Get a USB cable extender.
Seriously. Because the Firmware on the keyboard (yep those aluminium jobbies had firmware...) would see the extender and clock down from USB 2 to USB 1.1.
Which wouldn't drop off the USB bus, due to whatever bug was in those chipsets.
Those were some fun times in support, let me tell you...
(Between this and the news of Solutions Inc going bang, I'm feeling quite nostalgic for the Fruit Factory today...)
This lazy and obtuse attitude toward the Mac by Apple has been going on now for well over three years. Let's name some names of the guilty:
Tim Cook: CEO
Dan Riccio: Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering
Johny Srouji: Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies
Wake-The-Netherworld-Up Apple! You're FaceTimePlanting!
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