I already posted this somewhere else, and thought I had solved it but it happened again today - anyway, this would be the best place to ask, no? I recently offloaded my loop & sample libraries to an external FW800 drive, and connected an Access Virus TI 2 to my system (via USB, still using my MBOX II Pro as my monitoring interface though).
After doing these two things (and updating to 8.11, but I believe I've ruled that out), audio began dropping out entirely. I'm still metering all the way out to the Master fader, and occasionally I'll drop a clip into a track or hit a note on the keyboard and it will play. Inevitably, if I stop/re-start playback or try to so much as cue another clip, the audio drops out (but I'm still reading meters). Under preferences, I can SOMETIMES get sound back by switching the (CoreAudio) driver off and on, or changing the I/O devices (either tends to have an effect, which is weird) back and forth from the MBOX to the Virus.
I think it's either an issue with the new FW800 drive (where my loop libraries and the main Live library reside), or conflict of interest between the MBOX 2 (FW400) and the Virus TI (USB). Today I noticed that whenever audio seems to cut out, the blue light on the FW800 drive blinks. The 'D' light at the top-right corner of Live doesn't blink at all, though.
I've tried unmounting/disconnecting all other drives (two FW400 drives, one running through the MBOX and another running through the FW800 drive), to no avail. HOWEVER, moving a sample library to my internal drive seems to sidestep the issue. So, I'm inclined to think that this is an issue related to the new drive hogging the FW bus, but I'm scratching my head as to why it wouldn't be working. I would really like to be able to offload all my libraries, sample and loop packs to the external drive but can't find a way around this.
For reference, I'm running the following:
- iMac, 2.8GHz Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM (soon to be 8GB, maybe that'll make a difference?)
- MBOX II Pro connected directly to FW400 with one (non-critical) FW400 drive daisy-chained through it
- Access Virus TI2 occupying one USB port, Akai APC40 on another, (non-critical) hub on the third
- FW800 drive directly connected with one (non-critical) FW400 drive daisy-chained through it
Thanks for your time and assistance!