Is the problem with hubs at all, or just passive hubs? Once I switched to a self-powered, 7 port hub, all my usb issues went away.
I’ve also experienced differences between hubs, so it could be the hub you have been using - you could try a nice, powered hub.
As for anything being not cheap, if yer going mac get used to things not being cheap.
That’s a very serious consideration, I’m not just blowing it off. Everything is going to be more expensive.
Access recommend not using hubs for Virus Ti connection.
There’s the inevitable buffering, latency and shared bandwidth involved when you have a hub in there. Streaming real-time audio with low latency over a hub isn’t something which technically makes sense to do. Unless people have had good experiences?
I’m already at least partially Mac, and it’s not just for audio work. I’m a pro developer.
My solution for the Virus TI2 is a ‘private’ USB-port on the Thunderbolt-Display which runs on thunderbolt-bus. Using a mac mini which provide 4 usb ports (shown as plugged on an internal hub). This allows the TI2 to work properly on its poor usb-interface (audio routed to line-outputs as well).
The 4 ports on the mini are plugged with a NI-Maschine, a Scarlett 18i6+Octapre (optical bus) and a 5A(mpere) powered 10-port-USB-hub (A4, MnM over Korg UM-one, Pro2, Bass Stat2, Mox6, Cubase dongle) and a Logitech powerd 4-port-hub (midi only Streichfett, SparkLE).
It took hours of testing countless combinations whereas a properly working TI2 was the challenge. At least i turned off the energy saving in OSX, which made problems when shutting down the usb-ports in sleep-mode.
I guess that the Sonnet-Thunderbolt-chassies will work fine on a mac-pro, imho probably the only way to ‘save’ the RME’s when swichting to mac.
