Why is my USB interface not playing audio on iMac?

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Level 1

4 points

Why is my USB interface not playing audio on iMac?

I’ve got a Mackie Onyx USB interface and am running an iMac (10.13). The Mac recognizes the interface however when I try to play audio from any source (DAW, audio preview in the finder, iTunes, streaming from the internet) nothing will actually play. Like I press play and nothing moves— the audio won’t advance no matter the source. In YouTube and other internet apps, clips won’t load.

I tried a different interface with the same cables, same computer, etc and there was no problem. And audio plays fine from the internal speaker. I’ve restarted several times and made no system changes.This is a new problem— I’ve used this interface with this computer OS for months.

I am stumped. Any ideas??

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on May 17, 2025 10:30 AM

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Answer 1

MartinR

Level 7

23,517 points

May 17, 2025 11:36 AM in response to Mmmam

It sounds like you need to set your Mackie Onyx as the audio output device. Use Audio MIDI setup to do this. Audio MIDI Setup is in your /Applications/Utilities folder. For more information, see the chapter called "Set up audio input and output devices" in Set up MIDI devices using Audio MIDI Setup on Mac - Apple Support

As an example, here's how my Mackie mixer is set as the output device:

There are also ways to created a multi-output device so you can route audio to more than one output simultaneously, such as your Onyx + the internal speakers. However, you may need to install Blackhole Audio or similar utility to do that.

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