linking audio interfaces

knightknife

New member
heres a scenario. I have two m audio mobile pre interfaces. Can i link them together and then run into the computer? Not just the mobile pre's though. with any kind of interface?


mobilepre------(usb cord)------mobilepre------(usb cord)------macbook computer.

i guess thats what it would look like...
 
Depends on the driver. If you're using ASIO4ALL, which is very common and works with everything I've ever touched, then you CAN run multiple interfaces, with one condition - The interfaces have to use the same driver. You can run a rack full of firepods, but a firepod + a motu, not so much.. If you can connect your interfaces via lightpipe or whatever, you can chain them together before it touches your PC. Then your PC would only see the one you plug into it, but all channels from both interfaces would be available.

The setup you describe above would work on a windows pc with asio4all. A Mac, I have no idea..
 
With this AI I think the answer will be no. Fire Wire interfaces you can daisy chain and lightpipe too I think. but since this only has a USB out I think you are out of luck
 
I don't think that's true

for example:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackUltra.html

fast track ultra. USB 2.0, 4 simultaneous inputs can be routed to 4 separte tracks not just a stereo in

That said I wouldn't want to use USB for more than 2 tracks unless I knew the resource allocation on the computer was perfect as USB 2.0 gets very slow very easilly if the computer is not superbly well executed for audio streaming over the USB Bus (and most of them aren't)
 
Plug each one into a different USB port on the mac, then go to Applications -> Utilities -> Audio MIDI Setup and... um... it looks different now that I'm using Snow Leopard - anyway, you create a new "composite device" and you should be able to add both the actual devices to the profile. Then, in your audio software, you select the composite device as the one you're using, and the inputs and outputs line up sequentially, depending on which of the two was the first one you selected. One of the few boo-yahs that macs actually have over windows in this area, imo.

It pretty much works for me with two different firewire devices (MOTU Traveler + Echo Audiofire 12), but I haven't done it for a while. I can't remember if the devices clocked together through firewire (doesn't seem likely) or whether I had to use an external word clock and slave the devices to it (seems more likely) - the clocking thing may be less of a problem if the devices are the same - but who knows. If the clocks aren't synched, everything works, but you get static/clicks/pops.
 
I don't think that's true

It's not. There are a few, alesis multimix 8 sends 10 tracks to your daw over usb up to 96k/24, so you could theoretically get 20+ tracks at 44.1k/24. USB works your CPU a lot harder than firewire, which is prolly why most multichannel interfaces use it.
 
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