Mobile I/O v1.5 introduces a new Metric Halo technology, Adaptive CoreAudio Timestamping, or ACAT, which allows the MIO driver to report the active stream rate without variance, and lets clients run at higher CPU loads, increasing overall system performance.

Metric Halo has completely revised the latency management code in the MIO Driver. The new driver provides consistent, extremely low-latency at all sample rates and buffer sizes. The new code also allows the driver to run with a reduced output latency as compared to earlier versions of the driver. In consultation with testers world-wide, Metric Halo has tuned the driver reported latency values to ensure that overdub recording is “dead-on” with the current versions of all the major DAW/Sequencer applications that support CoreAudio (including Logic, DP4, Cubase SX and Nuendo).Version 1.5 also addresses a variety of reported issues with the previous version of the driver, including operation at both large and small buffer sizes, optimized performance for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and channel naming adjustments for improved compatibility with multibox operation within Digital Performer.

Metric Halo president Joe Buchalter commented on the release, “I’m very happy to announce this new update. After the obstacles presented in the past several months negotiating not only the rapid development of Mac OS X, but also the varying degree of implementation by third party software developers; this is the result of thousands of hours of development, testing and feedback from our customers. It’s been a long road, but we at Metric Halo are proud to be involved in this next leap forward for audio on OS X.”

Version 1.5 has enabled all 18 outputs from the computer at 44.1 and 48kHz (14 channels at 88.1 and 96kHz to account for the 4 channel reduction in ADAT output with S/MUX operation) with the 2882 line, and adds four new +DSP plugins to the +DSP plug-in set: MIO Channel Summer, MIO Channel Differencer, MIO Channel Sum/Differencer, and MIO Delay. These plugs are basic programming building blocks to let users make complex and custom processing routings.

Version 1.5 also adds new system level reset commands to reset various aspects of the Mobile I/O hardware without having to disconnect the hardware from your computer.

Mobile I/O users can download the v1.5 package from the Metric Halo Mobile I/O Drivers Page. A full list of enhancements and improvements can be found in the MIO v1.5 ReadMe pdf, available from this location: ReadMeFirst.pdf.