[PD] OSX Intel: status of M-Audio / MOTU multichannel in/out, support?

[Collin Oldham]

Ok, Damian, in that case, here's the long, sad story:

I bought a firewire 410 three years ago based on my happiness with a 
m-audio mobilepre usb, and my need for more ins and outs. First 
disappointment was, you can't hot plug it. It must be plugged in at boot 
time, or it might fry your firewire. I learned to live with that, and 
used it with my G4 iBook on osx 10.3 and 10.4 with Pd and jack and core 
audio in various combinations, and it usually worked fine, and was my 
main interface for a couple years.

Then I needed to run a patch in Max/MSP runtime, and it could not find 
the 410. So I updated the driver. The driver for osx 10.4.11 is _still_ 
in beta. Hmm. Then the firmware wouldn't upload, so it wouldn't work in 
Pd or anything else. So I downgraded, no luck. I eventually did a clean 
install of 10.4 and progressively tried each os update with it's 
respective driver. No luck. Then my iBook wouldn't boot, then would boot 
sometimes and then crash. Good thing I had just made a back up! Replaced 
the HD (I'm way OT now!) Same behavior.

Was the problem a flaky iBook all along? Well, I have another G4 iBook, 
and I tested with that, and my wife has a MacBook, no luck there either. 
Maybe my 410 is just broken. I know there have been some driver issues, 
and a long wait for a 10.5 driver. There is no Linux support! I'd like 
to test it on a windows machine to see if it works there.

SO, to speak on-topic, it works fine with Pd, if it works at all and 
doesn't fry your iBook! ;)  I would just avoid it.

I bought a edirol fa-101, which "just works" with osx and doesn't use a 
driver. Hot pluggable too. Has more ins. It is made of metal. Fully 
supported on linux (according to the freebob folks, I haven't tried it 
there yet.) And it works on the Max/MSP patch that got me started down 
this road. It did not resurrect my iBook, (but it can cure lepers ;))

your,
Collin


Damian Stewart wrote:
> Collin Oldham wrote:
>> are you looking for a firewire interface? I have a long sad story 
>> about a m-audio firewire 410, which I will otherwise spare you. I'm 
>> now using an edirol fa-101, so far happily.
>
> Hi Colin,
>
> well, the situation with me is, i'm doing audio for a friend's school 
> project, and we need some way of doing multi-channel audio - the 
> proposal is that she buys the audio interface and i buy it off her at 
> some stage in the future (when i have some cash).
>
> we're actually looking at an m-audio firewire card, because it's 
> reasonably cheap and comes recommended. are you saying the M-audio 
> doesn't play nice with Pd? or does the sadness come from something else?
>
> thanks
> d
>