M Box Users Options

[nlowther]

Hey all you MBox users out there.
I want the to get the Mbox 'cause Pro tools is great for what I want . Only thing is Ive been toid by some people that it cant run Virtual Instruments without noticeable latency and chews up processor speed real quick when adding effects.
Tell me its not true, tell me simplicity rules and keep away from the maze that is Logic.

[arvidtp]

For once the mbox coreaudio driver doesn't completely suck! Wow. This is a vast improvement. Software such as Reason no longer crashes always, and multiclient support means I can (almost) just set the mbox as default and have every app play/get sound though it, even for casual stuff. Works nicely with Jack OS X - no more strange need to open the prefs dialog before starting jack all the time. They finally listened to all the people complaining on the DIgi user forum I guess (i was one of many). My advice: if you haven't tried this, do so NOW. It is vastly better. And you don't have too much to lose - thats for sure.

There are still limitations, however. It does not work with some software that it never worked with, like Audacity, but who knows who's fault that is. Could very well be audacity. Seems like it has caused some software like iMovie to hiccup/crash, but nothing really reproducible. There seem to be lots of little bugs in iMovie 3, now that I am using it a lot, so again I dont know who's fault that is. And, as stated it is single-client when Pro Tools is active. And it doesn't reduce latency at all - a major complaint of mine. 512 samples is too large a buffer for certain things when performing, or even when recording using certain timing-critical software instruments like percussion-type stuff. I think I will still stick with my internal sound card (unfortunately) for performance, as it can go nicely to 64 samples latency, and use the mbox as analog pres for that. Also it still screws up (not crashes, but freezes audio IO until you quit all Digi Coreadudio-using apps and restart them it seems) if you put your mac to sleep while accessing the driver.

Another annoying thing I noticed, to be picky, is that whenever i restart, the Digi Coreaudio manager resets the buffer from 512 where I like it to 1024, disregarding my previous preference. As a fix I have written a simple applescript that uses UI scripting to open the Digi Coreaudio manager, switch to 512 and quit, and I have added it to my startup items. (I can post it on my site if anyone else has this issue and wants the script) That seems to do that trick, except sometimes (very rarely) it seems to randomly switch to 1024 when the driver is not used for a while and then used again. I haven't yet figured out what triggers that.

Good luck to all. The mbox may spend more years on my desk than I thought. Thanks Digi for getting it close to right this time.