John
It looks like the days of silence for Hiface MK1 users running OS X Mavericks could (at last!) be numbered. Michael Trimarchi at Amarula Solutions, a company who specialise in writing USB code for Android smartphones, has a driver ready to roll.
M2Tech were caught off guard last year when the Apple update to OS 10.9 effectively killed their existing MK1 Hiface driver. This affected not just those using the dongle USB-S/PDIF converter but also DACs that deployed M2Tech’s OEM USB module. Growing tired of waiting for a new driver to be written, Metrum Acoustics recently ditched M2Tech as their USB OEM provider of choice. The MK2 Hiface remains unaffected.
Trimarchi, who is pals with M2Tech’s leading engineer and designer Marco Manunta, had this to say:
“M2Tech has all the source code so it’s possible to support the users. We have implemented integer mode and resolved every problem with hotplugging and module unloading. The only missing feature (that almost works) is stopping music in the driver during ‘suspend’ and starting it again upon [system] ‘resume’; it works but with some noise. The people at M2Tech are working very hard to design new products and they didn’t have the know-how to code an OS X driver and we didn’t understand the importance until now”.
Trimarchi reports that M2Tech’s previous coding hire sat on his hands for three months. Oops. (Such hearsay is unverifiable at time of writing).
OS X Mavericks users game enough to test beta code can download Trimarchi’s driver from his Google Drive account from the M2Tech website.
Further information: M2Tech | Amarula Solutions
