External Microphone Not Working

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External Microphone Not Working

(12 posts) (6 voices)

Started 14 years ago by morrisan
Latest reply from unipacequipment172

morrisan
Member

Hi,

First great product! Many uses for many people. This could really take off for Useful Fruit. We would to use it to record all of our internal meetings, Board meetings and some training. But we must resolve a microphone issue...

I have the purchased the $150 MXL AC-404 USB conference microphone http://www.mxlmics.com/products/web_conferencing/AC-404/AC-404.html

This is a high quality mic made by Marshall, the amp and microphone compnay that all the best musicians use. This is not a cheaply made conference mic.

It is a microphone that requires no drivers and apparently uses the USB CODEC.

Here are the details:

- PN works fine with the Internal microphone.
- the USB CODEC shows in up in PearNote (PN) audio preferences
- PN recognizes the AC-404 in audio preview (green bars move when there is sound)
- the only time PN records with the AC-404 is: 1) on restart 2) the first time PN is opened and 3) on the first record only. I cannot add to the recording.
- In all other instances than above, PN appears to record but on playback it starts briefly and then stops.

If there is anything you want me to test from my end let me know.

My system specs:

Macbook Pro
PowerPC G4 1.5Ghz
512MB RAM
OSX Leopard 10.5.6

Thanks!

Posted 14 years ago #
c-had
Developer

Hmmm. I've never seen that before, but I've never used this mic before either. A few questions:

1) What type of system is this? You said a Macbook Pro G4, which doesn't exist. Is it a Powerbook G4 or a Macbook Pro with an Intel processor? I'm guessing a Powerbook G4, but I want to be sure.
2) What version of Pear Note are you using? 1.3? If so, could you try downloading the latest 1.2 beta release? Just go into preferences and check the "Include beta releases" checkbox, then check for updates and you should get 1.2b7. Does it exhibit the same behavior?
3) If that doesn't solve the problem, are there any messages from Pear Note in system.log? You can look by launching the Console app (/Applications/Utilities/Console) and selecting system.log from the Log List.
4) Do you have any other Macs to try it on? Possibly an Intel Mac?
5) Do you have any other software on that records audio that you could test the microphone with? I just want to make sure the problem is unique to Pear Note.

Thanks for letting me know about the problem. Hopefully we can figure this out without too much trouble.

Chad Sellers

Posted 14 years ago #
morrisan
Member

Hi Chad,

Thanks for the reply. Here are answers to your questions:

1) A brain cramp on the computer specs. It is a powerbook G4 @ 1.5Ghz w/ 512MB and OSX 10.5.6
2) I downloaded 1.2. And it is still doesn't work. I couldn't get 1.2b7 after checking the boxes you identified.
3) Here is the system log

27/04/09 11:30:33 AM [0x0-0x12012].com.usefulfruit.Pear Note[103] Mon Apr 27 11:30:33 2009 MIO_Unit_Helpers_QTFileWriterBase.cpp:2332:WriteAudioTrack ### Err -206

4) It works on a MacBook Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo Mac @2.6 GHZ with 4G RAM with this mic. Unfortunately, we only have the PowerBook G4 to take on the road, so I nee to make this work.

5) Given #4 above, we know PN works with the mic.

I hope the error message above helps and again any testing you want, let me know.

Thanks,
Andrew

Posted 14 years ago #
c-had
Developer

1.2 is the latest version now. I released it on Friday.

Hmmm, that's a new error on me. I searched around and couldn't find any documentation from Apple on it. Can you try using different quality settings in Pear Note to see if it happens with all of them?

Also, did you find any other software on this Mac to test with the mic to make sure the problem is isolated to Pear Note?

Posted 14 years ago #
morrisan
Member

HI Chad,

I tried 32 (again) and 64 and they both failed, but lossless worked! Lossless = 7MB per minute = 420MB per hour. It will be a massive file if we record our entire board meeting (~5-6 hours). Have you noticed any stability issues with larger files (i.e. over 1GB?)

I tried testing the mic with Audacity (PPC version) and it failed.

Did you want me to run a test with lossless and post the console? Is there any other test you want me to perform?

Thanks,
Andrew

Posted 14 years ago #
c-had
Developer

Our chances of complete success here seem to be slim. The fact that:
1) you have to reboot to get it to work again in Pear Note and
2) it doesn't work in Audacity either
makes it seem like there's some sort of issue with the PPC mic driver included in OS X. Unfortunately, the PPC code from Apple isn't getting much love these days, as they're mostly focused on Intel at this point.

But, let's not give up hope yet. When you tried Audacity, did it give off any Console messages? Any clue of a way to work around this? When you run Pear Note with lossless format, are there any messages in Console?

I did think of a possible workaround, but it's pretty annoying. Assuming you have enough hard drive space, you could record your note in Lossless (assuming that continues to work), then later, after you're done, export it as an AAC and then re-import it back into Pear Note. When you re-import, make sure you choose to link the audio with the current timeline (rather than insert at the beginning or append to the end). That should result in smaller files that work, but it's a good bit of manual labor on your part.

I hope this helps,
Chad

Posted 14 years ago #
morrisan
Member

Hi Chad,

I agree PPC is not getting the love it should considering how many machines are still in play worldwide. As we all know, Macs have a much longer shelf life than PCs. We are an office of 15 macs and only this February are all machines Intel.

No console on lossless. Here the Audacity console message:

01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] PaOSX_CalcNumHostBuffers: past_NumUserBuffers = 4
01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] PaOSX_CalcNumHostBuffers: input.bytesPerUserNativeBuffer = 2048
01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] PaOSX_CalcNumHostBuffers: output.bytesPerUserNativeBuffer = 0
01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] outputDeviceID = 0
01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] inputDeviceID = 260
01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] primaryDeviceID = 260
01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] PaOSX_OpenInputDevice: -------------
01/05/09 4:07:00 PM [0x0-0x16016].net.sourceforge.audacity[130] Too many channels! requested: 2 max: 1

Your work around is good but I'd prefer to get the lowe quality working but at least lossless works.

Thanks for all your help.

Andrew

Posted 14 years ago #
c-had
Developer

Andrew,

I'm sorry, but that doesn't look promising. The driver definitely seems to be misbehaving on PPC and I'm out of ideas. I'm really very sorry about this.

Chad

Posted 14 years ago #
descher
Member

Hi Andrew, seems like you have done a lot. The ac-404 is device compliant with usb1.1 and 2.0 and therefore needs no drivers. I would suggest contacting Pear Note and Audacity and see if they made any changes in their software as you upgraded up the line to an OS that really is meant for intel core duo processors. Marshall is working with Apple to se if they have an idea other than to buy a new Mac.

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