Apple Silicon and Kext vs DriverKit drivers

[Piplodocus]

Hi all!

I got a M1 Max MacBook Pro back in 2021(?), whenever the 15" Pro/Max was new. Originally put kext drivers on it for my RME UFX II. Worked great. But MacOS moaned periodically that kexts wouldn't be supported in a future version of MacOS. So after looking about and reading RME forums worked out they had DriverKit as well as kext driver versions. So I installed that (I think after Ventura came out). It's not been smooth sailing since. A lot of audio glitches. I can also pretty much guarantee that if the screen locks itself I'll get a glitch waking/logging back in.

Now on latest Sonoma. Recently (a couple of months ago) got pissed with how bad it was. Seems RME folks on the forum think the DriverKit one is pretty solid ans not far off the same latency. But mine has been awful. Admittedly this machine is used for a lot of things though and has been through Monterey->Ventura->Sonoma upgrades. Yeah, I know, reinstall, only use a music laptop for music production, etc, etc, but this is my 1 machine for everything and it *should* work and should be powerful enough to run projects and general system tasks without dropouts.

So I reduced system security and went back to kext drivers. Seems fine again! Only audio issue I've had is one crash once that seemed to imply maybe it was related to RMEs kext driver. But all glitches and other annoying stuff that drove me mad is gone. I'd far rather a low-level system driver that takes the whole system out once in a blue moon than something that is higher-level and generally useless all the time but will never crash the OS.

So I'm curious how others have experienced doing music production with DriverKit audio interface drivers on their Macs? Very interested in RME-specific obvs, but asked here not the RME forum, as surely this applies to all Mac users using drivers for their interface from all manufacturers? Do all interface manufacturers have DK drivers these days and do they suggest one over the other? Do most of you use DriverKit with no issues and if I do a re-install at some point I should go with them and they'll probably be fine? What's your experience? Anyone experience similar issues?

Or have Apple just created a shit-show for music production by trying to push everyone to DriverKit for low-latency audio-critical stuff and although a nice idea to run drivers at user level, is inherently flawed? Or have you found a specific app, or apps, that seem to make DK drivers flakey?

Obvs my latest kext ones are currently fine, so I don't want to mess with it at the mo. But supposedly that option will disappear at some point, so I'd like to know if it's only my current install seems to dislike DK audio drivers, or if this is a widespread issue.

[Tarekith]

Personally I am still using the kext driver for my RME UFX+ as well. I think it's good RME are working on another solution for when Apple eventually stops supporting kext drivers, but for now they seem more stable so I'm sticking with them.