No Core Audio with MBox and Live?

rcologne · Post by **rcologne** » Thu May 11, 2006 12:36 pm

Hi,
I posted yesterday (http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ectio+mbox).

Went to an Ableton demonstration last night at the apple store to ask about my issue and was told by the Ableton rep AND the apple guy that the Mbox won't work with CoreAudio and Live - that you HAVE to use DirectIO. Is this true? Can't find anything about that on this forum or Digi's.

If so, DirectIO is not available in my audio driver pulldown menu, only "No Audio" or "Core Audio". What to do?

Anyone?

dom · Post by **dom** » Thu May 11, 2006 1:07 pm

fyi:

http://www.digidesign.com/download/coreaudio/tiger/

What is the Digidesign CoreAudio Driver?

The Digidesign CoreAudio Driver is a multi-client, multichannel sound driver that allows CoreAudio-compatible applications to record and play back through the following Digidesign audio interfaces:

* Pro Tools|HD Accel
* Pro Tools|HD
* Digi 002
* Digi 002 Rack
* Mbox 2
* Mbox

Full-duplex recording and playback of 24-bit audio is supported at sample rates up to 96 kHz, depending on your Digidesign hardware and CoreAudio client application.

The Digidesign CoreAudio Driver will provide up to 18 channels of I/O depending on your Pro Tools System:

* Up to 8 channels of I/O with Pro Tools|HD or HD Accel systems
* Up to 18 channels of I/O with Digi 002 and Digi 002 Rack systems (or 18 in and 16 out with S/PDIF Mirroring enabled)
* Up to 2 channels of I/O with Mbox systems
* For Pro Tools TDM systems with more than one card and multiple I/Os, only the primary I/O connected to the first (core) card can be used with CoreAudio

rcologne · Post by **rcologne** » Thu May 11, 2006 1:33 pm

Dom,
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, of course I have read the Digi site, so I know what CoreAudio is and SUPPOSED to do. By the way, I am running Panther version 10.3.8, not Tiger yet.
But that is just the problem, it's not working as advertised (smile). Should just choose "CoreAudio" as my audio driver in prefs, choose "Digi HW" for audio device and away we go . . . but, no.
Live is a popular program, Mbox is widely used, CoreAudio is obviously widely used - so why isn't this working. What am I missing here?

Suggestions welcome, and sorry if I've left out any important info; I've been trying to get this working for a couple of days now and am totally frustrated and bleary eyed!

dom · Post by **dom** » Thu May 11, 2006 2:21 pm

Actually, it works if correctly installed. Trust me :-)
Did you try to open another audio application? Are you able to select coreaudio/mbox there? I guess not - and in this case you should ask the Digidesign support for help to install it and to be sure to choose the right version for panther. Sometimes it seems to be tricky.

cheers,
dom

gomi · Post by **gomi** » Thu May 11, 2006 4:00 pm

rcologne wrote:Hi,
I posted yesterday (http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ectio+mbox).

Went to an Ableton demonstration last night at the apple store to ask about my issue and was told by the Ableton rep AND the apple guy that the Mbox won't work with CoreAudio and Live - that you HAVE to use DirectIO. Is this true? Can't find anything about that on this forum or Digi's.

If so, DirectIO is not available in my audio driver pulldown menu, only "No Audio" or "Core Audio". What to do?

Anyone?

You have to install the Digidesign Core Audio Drivers.

If you are in panther, grab the 6.9 DigiCoreAudio Drivers.

Only one app at a time can access the Digidesign hardware.

If for some reason you have the 6.4 Drivers installed, you will
have to manually open the Digidesign CoreAudio Manager and
add the Live.app to the list and apps that are allowed to
use the mbox.

Version 6.5 and up will automatically add apps for you.

boomklik · Post by **boomklik** » Thu May 11, 2006 10:55 pm

i'm running 10.4....and followed the digi directions 100%.

i cant even get the mbox to show up in sys prefs/sound.

rcologne · Post by **rcologne** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:16 pm

Gomi,
Thanks for the advice - I was more thorough in the description of my first post, so let me do a quick summary here.

My system is Panther 10.3.8, running PT LE version 6.9. I have installed, un-installed and re-installed CoreAudio version 6.9 through this entire process.
I originally used Live Digidesign Lite version 5.0.5 and had the same problem, of not being able to access audio through the M-Box and CoreAudio (Digi HW showed up in Audio Device in prefs, but if I chose it, I got an error message in Live that "Audio is off. Please choose Audio Device") SO i found a site (can't re-find it unfortunately now) that directed me to write a script forcing the system to use DirectIO rather than CoreAudio as my device in Live. After re-starting, Direct IO showed up as an Audio Device choice in prefs and away I went - it worked.

But, I found Live Lite limiting so upgraded to the full version 5.2. Read that CoreAudio should work just fine with MBox and Live. So, not to confuse the system, I trashed my little DirectIO script, trashed Prefs, installed 5.2 and again, chose CoreAudio as my driver and Digi HW/Mbox as my device. SAME PROBLEM as before - "Audio is off. Please choose audio device".

So I ran permissions and DiskWarrior on all my drives, de-installed, re-installed everything, including CoreAudio driver - this is why I'm running out of ideas. As I mentioned in the beginning of this post - I have checked forums and user conferences on both Ableton and Digi sites. Must be something I'm missing, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

Any comments now that you've gotten the fuller story?

rcologne · Post by **rcologne** » Tue May 16, 2006 6:53 pm

I have finally gotten it working and wanted to share what I have found out in case it helps someone else.

I will preface this with saying that Didigesign recommends AGAINST using OSX 10.3.9 and Quicktime 7.1, but here is what I did that got me working:
1. Updated my system to 10.3.9
2. Upgraded Quicktime to 7.1
3. With nothing else running or applications open, opened DIgiCoreAudio Manager FIRST
4. Opened Ableton Live
5. Go to preferences and choose "CoreAudio" driver, "DIgi HW (Mbox) for device
6. MAKE MUSIC

What we're all doing this for anyway!
Many thanks to those who posted trying to help -
Renee

No Core Audio with MBox and Live?

No Core Audio with MBox and Live?

Re: No Core Audio with MBox and Live?