HELP! Bad El capitan and ren issues!

Hey guys! I just got a brand new 2014 mac mini 2.6g 8gig of ram running el capitan and version 1.9.6 of mpc software and I am getting horrible distortion and popping. I change the driver settings and it goes away and comes back 20 min later. Toggle the driver settings again and it comes back 20 min later. Seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Doesn't matter what resolution its set on or what sample rate or buffer size but it seems to go away when I change anything within the driver settings. Tried on bitaudio and coreaudio and it happens on both with many different settings. It has nothing to do with my system as you can see in the video the CPU isn't overloading or anything. Does anyone have any ideas?

I posted a video below:




Thanks in advance!

Connect your REN to a usb hub. It works for me. Also turn on the hardware then software when booting. Last, make sure you have latest firmware and updates for Mac.

My cable is 2.0 but the computer has 3.0 ports

nope that's all the new macs have. I guess the guy above was saying to use an adaptor which I can try but I assume the mpc must be able to use usb 3 especially since it is backwards compatible...

DannyBmpc wrote:nope that's all the new macs have. I guess the guy above was saying to use an adaptor which I can try but I assume the mpc must be able to use usb 3 especially since it is backwards compatible...

Hit or miss with the Ren and some Mac's. Some people on here had issues using it directly with USB 3.0 ports.

any work arounds?

I have a 2015 MBPRO. I have resorted to using an external interface for inputs and outputs. This completely bypasses the sound card on the Ren. So in essence, you are using the Ren like you would the MPC Studio but with more knobs and q- links.
It works and I have no problems at all, ever.
The Ren is a controller and that is what you get. The interface worked great on my Windows computer, but not on my new MBPRO.

The USB hub trick didn't work. Reinstalling the driver didn't work. Akai says to buy some crappy box that no one ever said works. The Akai Forum responses are either ignored or full of 1-800 numbers.

I had an interface and hooked it up, it worked. No more time wasted.

ya that's what I am about to myself. I have a usb adaptor on order that may or may not work. Luckily I have a few old interfaces laying around. When I talk to akai they act like its apples fault. No one elses has this major a problem with their hardware. Its obviously a driver issue but they just act like its something we gotta deal with. I had a mac that I couldn't upgrade past OSX 10.7.5 and I got a new computer so I could get the new versions of the software and so it would be faster and I end getting penalized for it....

update: neither the usb hub or separate interface works... It must be a software/hardware issue with the connection from the mpc... any one else have any ideas??

What were you using before upgrading to the new Mac ?

Hi,

I had the same problem with my ren, on a 2013 macbook pro, 2 years ago.

This issue is still one of the most asked question on akai community forum, and it hadn't been solved yet : obviously the ren's audio interface is not (and will never) entirely compatible with some of the new apple's usb3 ports (et vice et versa)...

Workarounds : use an other audio interface (focusrite pro24 dsp in my case), or (that's what I've finally done) sell your ren, and then buy the touch instead, which works great with my macbookpro, and which is a top notch controller.

Anyway, I don't really use anymore the touch audio interface, as I prefere tu use a specific tool for audio managing.

konc3pt wrote:What were you using before upgrading to the new Mac ?

a 2006 mac book pro. Had none of these issues. It was slow as **** but at least I could hear my projects.

Ya they seem to be completely ignoring this one and hoping it goes away. All the techs I have talked to at akai say that I need to call apple because obviously its apples hardware that is used by millions of people everyday and not akai's shitty software devolpers.... My issue is the rens interface sounds amazing compared to a lot of them out there and I refuse to ditch my ren for a touch. Has any one tried the usb to thunderbolt that they suggest?

While it's clearly not a bad sounding interface, I really don't think the Ren interface is anything special, in all probability it's likely just a rebrand of something else 'inMusic' (e.g. lower end M-Audio interface).

If it were me and my Mac refused to play nicely despite every other app and hardware working perfectly I'd be looking to offload the Ren (preferably directly back to Akai for a full refund). Then grab a decent interface and pair it with an mpc studio or touch (assuming you wish to stay with the MPC line - might have to change your username if you jump ship )