Sonar 4 , motu and mackie..is three a crowd?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JasonBird
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JasonBird

Average Member
ok, i've had a motu 828 for a while and have been recording with it no problem. Had an old mackie mixer cfx 16, used it for years as well no issues. The i started doing live gigs for people, and the mixer had only two aux sends for stage monitors.The motu unit only could do 10 channels of analog at once, for recording, etc. SO, to get to the point already!!, i bought a onyx 1640 with the firewire interface to solve all my problems! installed the mixer and firewire card no problem, install went smooth. I left the MOTU unit hooked to the computer, and hooked the mixer to a second input on the firewire card. I created a template in Sonar with 16 tracks and directed the inputs to the mixer channells, and the output to the main outs on the motu since thats what my monitors are hooked up to. So i set up some mics, adjusted the gains etc. arm the tracks and i get nothing. No meter movement at all in Sonar. I ran the waver profiler and it profiled both the motu and the mackie....still nothing when i arm tracks, it tries to record, but just a straight line...no signal. So, anybody know what could cause that? can I us use both units, or should i hook up the monitors to the mackie as well? Any help/advice is much appreciated, thanks in advance!

JasonBird
 
I think the issue is that you're trying to use two different audio path through Windows. Sonat doesn't care what hardware you have, and your hardware devices are happy as long as they have their own little IRQ's, but Windows may be the blockade here. I've tried using different hardware devices together to get more ins and outs and have always run into problems. In fact, I had three different sound devices installed at one time and started getting Windows alerts about that fact. I believe you'll have to choose either/or to get Windows internal clock timing to work. However, if you can get one device to clock to the other, it may still be possible to drive both.
 
I just re-read your comments. You are driving two different units from two different firewire ports, right? I think you may have to use just one at a time for test purposes. Your 1640 may not even be working correctly yet from it's initial install.

Get the mackie working like it should first. Then install the Motu and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't get better, see if Sonar can sync the two using one of their clock formats, does that make sense?
 
i got it working

Thanks for the replies Mike, I figured that there might be a conflict behind the scenes so to speak. And i really don't need that many devices and inputs. So i went ahead and uninstalled and disconected the MOTu unit. Now the mackie is working fine, and i successfully recorded 16 tracks at the same time! Sounds good, i'm impressed with the preamps on this board. I also found/read instructions where the control room monitors can hook up, so got them swtched over from the Motu to the board. All is well!

JAsonBird
 
forget the motu ,let the onyx firewire be your soundcard, conflicks with motu. I too have motu(2408mk3) and an onyx. I use the motu for mixing back at the studio with my main computer but just go with the onyx on live gigs.
 
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