To test the Mbox’s sound quality, we converted, at 48kHz, the audio output of a MIDI track via a higher-end Apogee Rosetta unit, a 16-bit Audiomedia III PCI card (to represent the low end), and the Mbox. However, hubs and PCI card-enabled USB ports aren’t supported. The Mbox handles 24 mono tracks of playback on “Digidesign-qualified” systems, which include all Macs with built-in USB ports.
You can also record your MIDI tracks to audio separately. This will restore the use of the “lost” input, but it’s an additional cost.
One workaround is to use a software synthesizer such as Native Instruments’ Absynth (), which Digidesign’s Direct Connect engine supports. To monitor MIDI hardware, you’ll need to surrender one of the Mbox’s recording inputs, and you won’t hear the MIDI parts in stereo. If you need to integrate MIDI audio, the Mbox may not be right for you.
For outdoor recording, however, be sure to carry extra batteries for your portable Mac - the Mbox is power-hungry. We used the Mbox comfortably with an early Power Mac G4 and a Titanium PowerBook G4. That the Mbox sits outside your Mac is also a plus: by converting analog audio into digital in an external box instead of via a PCI card, you negate the risk of adding noises that originate inside your Mac. The Mbox also contains two Focusrite mike preamps with 48 volts of Phantom power, so you can use condenser mikes, which work well with acoustic instruments and voices.
The Mbox provides two channels of 24-bit A/D/A (analog/digital/analog) conversion at either 44.1kHz or 48kHz with more than 100 decibels of dynamic range, which should suit the needs of most beginners. However, the included Pro Tools 5.2 LE software has plug-ins that let you add effects after you record.
including a new scroll-wheel! Very nice! He even showed me a picture of it and said it's coming later this year.The quarter-inch TRS inputs can be used to route a signal through off-board effects devices, such as reverbs or compressors, but the Mbox won’t let you record both the modified and unmodified sound, as you can with more-expensive gear. I want everything to go through the Mbox and bypass the SoundMax integrated sound card on my xw8000 mobo.Īnother interesting thing he told me was that there's a new redesigned version of the Digi 002 coming out this year (not the Rack, the actual Digi 002 control-surface), with a bunch of improvements. I'm doing this because I'm getting sick of pulling cables from my Yamaha mixer to put into the Mbox whenever I want to hear what I'm doing in either PT LE or Avid (since neither will give me sound using the built-in soundcard on my motherboard). WTF?Īny ideas? Help would be greatly appreciated. Yet it tells me that the Mbox is properly connected, installed and operating correctly.
In fact, when I switch my Primary Sound Device from the onboard-sound on my xw8000 motherboard to the Mbox, Windows tells me it can't find an Audio Device.
Windows sees my Mbox, says it's installed and working properly.but I get no sound. From there, I need to go into my Control Panel in Windows, select the Sound Settings icon, open up the Sound Settings tab, configure my primary sound card (Audio Device) to the Mbox and I'm in business. USB connection from the Mbox into my computer (which is how Mbox hooks up to the computer) from the 2 Main-Outs of my Yamaha mixer into the 2 inputs of my Mbox. into the outputs of any stereo track (or 2 analog tracks) of my trusty Yamaha mixer (works perfectly).