Comments on: Mac USB Audio: M-Audio Says Avoid the Left-hand USB Port, All Ports Not Equal

By: A.serra

A.serra — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:19:21 +0000

I can confirm this for the aluminum unibody macbook(discontinued) as well. I run my sound card on the right, controllers on the left

By: chinese food

chinese food — Sat, 23 May 2009 10:09:36 +0000

My axiom doesn’t even work at ALL on my macbook. Ports make no diff. totally fine on a powerbook, or G5 machine. all apps refuse to find it on the MB. I’ve tried everything, the macbook won’t even look at it.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:09:55 +0000

In the fine print of most USB interfaces, you’ll see some mention of a use of even an optional AC adapter. And many do ship with an adapter.

Rat– erm, Radio Shack, here we come!

By: Mitchell Kehoe

Mitchell Kehoe — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:24:56 +0000

The Mbox tries to take every last drop of an entire USB bus?

I think they need to just bite the bullet and ship an adapter with it, because 500mA out of MOST usb ports is a fantasy.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:05:57 +0000

Do this:

1. Pull down Apple menu.
2. Select About This Mac.
3. Click the More Info… button
4. Click on USB at the bottom of the Hardware list.
5. Select the top USB Bus listed. It should already include the Bluetooth Controller

Note that the bus has 500mA available. Note that Bluetooth requires 100mA. This bus is the the one next to the power input. Plug in a USB device, press Command-R to refresh the list, and see your device show up. It will list it’s power demand. The Mbox will demand 500mA. If it shares a bus with Bluetooth turned on, there’s 600mA demanded, only 500 available.

Hope this helps some folks.

By: Peter Nyboer

Peter Nyboer — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:55:40 +0000

What’s lame is that M-audio either hasn’t bothered to get out a voltmeter or load tester, and cite the results in their announcement. Just what the audio world needs – another piece of vodoo!

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By: cobaltage

cobaltage — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:46:53 +0000

Also, Betamax was totally superior to VHS.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:33:46 +0000

@cobaltage: I can’t think of a specific case, but I believe there may be cases in which FireWire devices fail to receive ample power. But yes – perhaps partly because computer vendors generally aren’t arbitrarily cramming more gear onto those buses, I would say FireWire power problems (using the 6-pin ports) are comparatively rare.

Then again, 6-pin FireWire power ports are also known for frying camcorders when hot-swapped – perhaps the fault of poorly-designed camcorders.

The front-panel USB issue you’re describing I think is a different one, which is that sometimes those ports are designed to carry lower power levels. That is allowed under the USB spec, for use by keyboards / mics, which is presumably what the vendor assumed you would use those ports for. (I don’t like the arrangement, but just saying.)

In this case, these are *supposed* to be full-power ports, but in practice aren’t.

Not to be cynical here, but it seems to me that part of the problem is that the audio world isn’t — can’t be — as vocal as the much larger market for things like digital cameras, sadly.

By: cobaltage

cobaltage — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:29:48 +0000

The only reason IMO that this is a USB issue is that power issues in the real world implementation of USB are kind of pervasive. For instance, it frequently comes up that for desktop PCs, the USB ports on the front of the case often lack sufficient power for certain devices, like hard drives, requiring use of the (less convenient) USB ports on the rear of the case. But, at least AFAIK, 6-pin FW ports just don’t have the same problems. I have never heard of any consistent problem with a 6-pin FW port not providing adequate power on any computer system, Apple or PC, notebook or desktop, front or rear, left or right, for a FW device designed to be bus-powered.

A manufacturer of USB peripherals would point out that the amount of bus power available for a USB port is highly variable and beyond its control. But that’s precisely a problem for USB as a real world standard if bus-powered USB devices can’t rely on a given amount of power to run properly. We’re obviously talking about bus-powered USB audio interfaces here; these devices typically don’t ship with an AC power adapter or mains unit, because they are intended to be fully portable and hence bus-powered. But the M-Audio Firewire 410 shipped with a wall wart specifically because notebook PCs never have had 6-pin FW ports. (And the only reason that is is that FW ports were originally associated with video transfer, and video cameras have built in batteries.)

IMO, when both notebook PC manufacturers and the audio computer peripheral industry went with USB 2.0 over standardizing 6-pin FW, that kind of killed off fully portable, relatively high-powered DAWs, at least for now. Not that it’s impossible to put together something that works, but rather that you can’t rely on things working reliably or at your convenience.