SteveG
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 6695
|
 Posted - Wed Aug 13, 2003 11:56 am
|
|
|
Okay... I have no idea what will happen under any particular circumstances. What I did find was a load of stuff relating to systems that the M-pox won't work with:
Caution - Mbox is NOT supported on the following systems or systems with the following components:
Dell Inspiron line of laptop computers
Computers with motherboards containing SiS (Silicon Integrated Systems) chipsets
Computers with motherboards containing mixed chipsets from AMD plus VIA combined
"ESS Solo-1 PCI AudioDrive" Sound, video and game controller. This device can be disabled from the "Device Manager" in the "System" Control Panel.
SampleCell II PCI cards and SampleCell Editor are not compatible with Windows XP
Pro Tools LE 5.3.3 is specific to the Mbox. It will not work with any other Digidesign or third party hardware or in standalone without the Mbox connected [/list:b81b0ce852]
Now, this doesn't say that the box won't work with other S/W, but they do say that it's optimised for use with ASIO drivers, and as we all know by now, CEP isn't. But all may not be lost (although you'll have to be a bit brave to try this).
Let me quote directly from the SOS review of the M-box (Sorry SOS - this is just the easiest way not to have everybody read through a load of MAC rubbish):
The M Box installer CD places two drivers on your hard disk. One is the Digidesign Audio Engine used by the bundled Pro Tools software, while the other is a Sound Manager driver. This allows you to use simple applications such as SoundApp to play back audio, and to hear your system sounds through the M Box.
Other recording applications must communicate with the M Box via Digidesign's Direct I/O system, a possibility which depends on the availability of a compatible Direct I/O driver (or, in the case of Steinberg software, an ASIO-to-Direct I/O driver). At the time of writing, no sequencers other than the bundled Pro Tools LE are officially approved or supported by Digidesign for use with the M Box. However, the success of the well-established Digi 001 system led all the major sequencer manufacturers to develop Direct I/O drivers, and in some cases these appear to work with the M Box as well. Initial reports suggest that Cubase and Digital Performer users have been pretty successful in using the M Box in this way, but that Logic users will need to wait for an update from Emagic.
I downloaded the Steinberg ASIO-to-Direct I/O driver, developed for use with the Digi 001, from http://service.steinberg.net/knowledge.nsf/show/mac_audiocards_digi001. With this installed, Cubase and the M Box worked together on my system, although you don't get the option to set an audio buffer size. Cubase's Audio System Setup dialogue reported the fixed latency as 34.8ms, which was high enough to be a problem when playing electric guitar via a digitally connected Johnson J Station. Since the zero-latency monitoring is a hardware feature of the M Box, however, you can still hear your analogue inputs with no delay.
The long-term prospects for using the M Box with software other than the bundled Pro Tools LE are good, but the bottom line is that until Digidesign complete their tests of other sequencers and declare them officially compatible, users of those sequencers can expect no guarantees. For the time being, therefore, it's probably a unit that should be bought only by those who are happy to use Pro Tools LE.[/list:b81b0ce852]
So it's up to your mate. But forums that "are not taking any new members at this time"? What's thatall about? They are either a bunch of elitists, or they know something wedon't...
_________________
 |
|
|
|
ozpeter
Location: Australia
Posts: 3200
|
|
Posted - Wed Aug 13, 2003 6:32 pm
|
|
|
| Quote: |
Hi Nath...don't want to get into a whole PT/CEP dealie - but the truth is, the M-Box (and other digi hardware) really only runs well with Digi software, and that includes the Digi001, 002, Audiomedia III and the M-Box.
As far as the M-Box focusrite pre's are concerned, I've heard they're very good. It's not the 'red' series (obviously) but it's flat-out good technology - and digi now owns Focusrite anyway, so it's not like they have to 'skimp'. I've got one of their Platinum series pres, and it's a charm.
---Syntrillium, M.D. |
That was from the mouth of the horse! There's about a dozen previous references to the MBox on the forum - I didn't search for 'Digi001' but I recall someone coming badly unstuck with that in combination with CE and the M-Box recently - might be worth searching for.
- Ozpeter
|
|
All Forums
stupid digidesign M-box question
Topic 