Windows and Mackie Onyx mixers, weird driver fail fiasco Ok. I have a Windows XP DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), to which is attached a Mackie Onyx 1640 and a Mackie Onyx 1620, both with Firewire cards, and both plugged into the DAW through their Firewire cards. The Mackie Onyx Firewire option has software drivers, which I have installed. At some point, the drivers fail to function, and audio is not heard from existing audio tracks (not talking about MIDI tracks here, just audio), and audio is not recorded to Sonar from the instruments connected to the mixers. If I re-install the drivers before turning the mixers on (and part of installing the drivers is turning on the mixers to let Windows 'recognize' them), it then works. So it always gets to the point where I have to re-install these drivers every.
If I want audio to work through these mixers. Forget contacting Mackie.
They seems to be completely clueless. I've traded enough emails with them about this to fill up a freighter cargo container, to no avail. They're probably sick of hearing about it (although I'd say 'tough!' I was wondering if anyone here might have some insight as to why this happens and what to do about it.
Is there a particular Windows service that I think is useless, that I've disabled, but prevents this fiasco from happening? And other such possible advice. I'm really sick of this crapola.
I waste a small but annoying amount of time each session with this, when I should be able to turn everything on and go. I already plan to just move the hell away from Windows and/or obtain a different DAC interface for my mixers, but I'm just a poor working artist and that will take time to save up for. In the meantime, I'd appreciate the brain juice from folks here.
Other possibly pertinent info: this happens when I just install the factory-shipped Windows XP system, and when I update it from Wonders Update (service packs 2, 3, yadda, etc.). I really have no clue where, when and why the drivers for these mixers just stop working, but I suspect it's Windows, not the drivers. I've posted this here because I think this is a computer issue, not a Mackie mixer issue. It seemed that Mackie was initially having trouble getting multiple cards to run together, so that aspect may be worth looking into. Since that's a less common application, it might explain why Mackie support was clueless. Still, my problems with the Onyx drivers seem to confirm that they aren't well written. My audio periodically cuts out, and I have to jump through hoops to restart it.
Specifically, I have to open the Mackie control panel, change the buffer size, close that window, reopen it, change buffer size back to where I wanted it, then sometimes go back to my DAW and start playback before the sound turns. Apparently any spike in DPC latency then kills the audio again. Additionally, sometimes, upon starting the computer, I have to unplug and replug the FireWire cable before the Onyx driver will load. I don't know if any of these 'techniques' might be helpful in your situation. I have an onyx 1640 running pretty much problem free with Windows 7. In the past I ran into several problems and can tell you a few things.
The most important thing is that your fire controller card should use a TI chipset. One card that I used wouldn't even allow me to load the drivers ( blue screens ).
Another thing is that Windows slowed the firewire speed with SP2 and didn't fix it with SP3. I rolled back the audio drivers to SP1 on my laptop.
As far as running multiple sound cards, Chef Mike already mentioned you can't use ASIO drivers. I've heard of some people using generic drivers like ASIO for all, but I don't know if they will work with multiple cards or not.
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Similarly, office pics are generally considered low-effort fluff, image posts should have some point other than karma and promote discussion Weekly Posts Upcoming AES Events AES@NAMM 2018 January 25-28, 2018 Location: Anaheim, CA Venue: Anaheim Convention Center More info at the. There's no drivers for OSX 10.10. And Mackie hasn't said a thing about it. Onyx owners shouldn't be surprised though, as this is the third time in a row they have screwed Mac+Onyx owners over. They still don't have official support for OSX 10.9. I own a Blackbird, and I loved this product.
I've endorsed it to others on multiple occasions. It's been at the center of my mobile tracking/performance rig for the past five years. That said, I'm totally done with Mackie dicking around on their drivers. What a horrible experience it's been. What does suggest as a replacement for the Blackbird?
EDIT 1: Thanks to for a great workaround for OS X 10.10 (Yosemite): try disabling them with this command: sudo nvram boot-args='kext-dev-mode=1' Then reboot. It might then work. EDIT 2: The workaround above doesn't work reliably for users on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan): With El Capitan comes an ass-covering lawyer feature called System Integrity Protection. Serial number imindmap 8 mac.
Some users are reporting that the boot-args workaround is working fine for them. Others are stuck with borked drivers.
So, if you're planning on upgrading to El Capitan, your mileage may vary.: A kernel extension, or kext, is a bundle that extends the kernel. With System Integrity Protection, kernel extensions must be signed with a Developer ID for Signing Kexts certificate, and installed into the /Library/Extensions directory. As of OS X El Capitan, the kext-dev-mode boot-arg is now obsolete. EDIT 3: You can disable System Integrity Protection at your own risk by following:.
Reboot the Mac and hold down Command + R keys simultaneously after you hear the startup chime, this will boot OS X into Recovery Mode. When the “OS X Utilities” screen appears, pull down the ‘Utilities’ menu at the top of the screen instead, and choose “Terminal”. Type the following command into the terminal then hit return: csrutil disable; reboot This worked for me., but it may not be the right option for you if you're not the kindof person who's comfortable breaking warranty stickers.
There is precedent for Mackies complete inability to cope with software issues. I got a couple of ONYX Blackjacks super cheap on release (like $30-50).
This was because the Windows ASIO drivers were unstable to the point of uselessness. Early purchasers flipped their lemon gear for what they could on eBay. I run a Mac, so they worked perfectly for me at the time. It took about 12-18 months for Mackie to produce an adequate fix for the issue. It took them about 6 months to even make a public statement on the problem when they rolled out a driver that made things worse. Now, Apple have changed the OSX audio subsystem enough to break things, Mackie have months of failure, poorly patched drivers and angry customers to look forward to. Customers have nothing to look forward to.
You can post a link to the appropriate forums. I'd wager a guess that's the problem a lot of folks are experiencing. If unsigned kernal extensions are the problem, it probably won't be long until hardware manufacturers catch up.
We can turn on kext-dev-mode until then. I don't expect I'll ever be able to turn it off, with Mackie's release cycle being what it is. I'm still actively looking for a replacement. I want a UA Apollo 16. But I'll settle for something that does the job, and doesn't dick around their customers.
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I have the same question about the Mackie 400F (the even lesser-known or supported precursor to the 1200F). As far as I know, there are separate FW drivers for the 400F and 1200F; i.e. They don't work with each other.
Also, the Mackie website lists a 400F driver for Win 7 but not 8 (I'm still on Vista so have no experience with the 7 driver); for the 1200F there's only a Vista driver. So if you're using it with Win 7 and it works, maybe it will work with Win 8, and maybe the 400F driver will work with Win 8 too (even though the website says it's for 'Win 7 ONLY'). Or maybe we'll upgrade the OS and have a non-functioning audio interface. What driver version are you using for Win 7? Looks like the latest 1200F driver is version 4.6.0. I agree about the Onyx FW boxes being underrated and under supported.
The 400F was pretty much abandoned as soon as it was released. They contracted the FW driver out and couldn't fix it when it didn't work with OSX. I had to buy a MOTU interface to replace it, but in the end kept it because of the pre's. It was worth the $700 just for the 4 pre's which are better than anything I've used besides my UA 6176 - crazy, surprisingly good. (Interestingly, the box says something like 'preamp with Firewire' as opposed to 'audio interface', suggesting it was designed as a killer preamp box, with FW thrown in for good measure.) And the converters in it sound really nice too.
But I won't be buying anything with a driver from Mackie again. I would say 'nothing' from them again, to protest their jackleg customer support on principle, but they're sadly not exceptional from what I can tell. It's the name of the game for so many prosumer companies - release stuff before it's really ready, hype/market it, then move on to the next thing. Customer/product support costs money, doesn't make money (that seems to be their short-sighted view anyway).
Back on topic, still would like to hear if anyone has any experience with either of these boxes and Win 8. I'm late to this thread but maybe a couple of you are still watching and waiting. I'm one of the handful of Mackie 1200F users and have been running it for many years under WinXP. The last official driver and control panel on the Windows side is 4.6.something. It was released for Vista but not updated for Win7. Do I understand correctly that this driver for the 1200F works with Windows 7? They did release a Windows 7 driver for the 400F.
But decided not to spend the money for a Win7 driver for the 1200F because they sold so few 1200Fs (though quite a decent lot of 400Fs). The 1200F and 400F use the same driver and control panel for Vista (version 4.6), though, at least for the 1200F, there's a firmware update that goes along with the driver update from the last XP driver, version 3.2.8 I have a computer with Vista and a Firewire interface.
I'd like to try the 1200F with that computer and some software that requires at least a dual core CPU and all of my WinXP computers are Pentium 4s. But since the Vista computer isn't my main audio computer, when I get bored playing with the Mixbus software, I'd like to be able to move the 1200F back to the XP computer. So here's my conundrum. I asked Mackie if the firmware upgrade that goes with the Vista driver would 'break' it for working with the XP driver and control panel. They believed that it would still work but that it might be a little buggy. They don't support that configuration, and there's no official record of having tested it. I'd like if anyone here has tried a Vista updated 1200F under Windows XP and can report how well it works, or doesn't.
I'm willing to be a guinea pig, but I'd like to be able to 'downgrade' it back to its present firmware if I find problems with the new firmware and the XP driver. Mackie doesn't have a stand-alone utility to read and save the existing firmware so that it can be re-installed. I'm sure one exists (they are, too) but, again, they don't support the interface any longer, not even for old friends like me, so they can't be of any further help. My next step is to try to find someone cooperative at Echo, since they did the drivers for the 1200F, and see if they can either send me a flash loader or tell me where to go to get it, but I don't have a lot of hope for it. This forum is the only place where I've found any 1200F users, so I thought I'd inquire here first. Smallstonefan I have the driver working fine in 64bit Windows 7, but I haven't had the guts to move to Windows 8. Sorry I can't be of more help.
My Win7 setup is 32-bit but since my 1200F is working with 32-bit XP and yours is working with 64-bit Win7, there's a pretty good chance that it'll work under 32-bit Win7. As for Windows 8, well, Mackie is pretty adamant that they don't really know anything about the 1200F beyond the last update for Vista, and that they don't have the time or resources to dig back into their old software stuff to see if they can find the flash memory loaded program that would allow me to 'downgrade' to the earlier firmware version in case I'm not happy with how it works under XP with the new firmware. They were pretty encouraging, but they were also clear that they had never tested the new firmware under either XP or Win7 and that they had no intent on doing so, or supporting a downgrade if I wanted one. And this is from folks at Mackie who I consider friends, so I guess that's all they have to say and do for us. In most cases, Windows 7 drivers work for Windows 8.
There have been a few (not many) issues with some device drivers and Windows 8.1 that required Windows 8.1 specific drivers. Otherwise if it works in Win 7 it 'should' work OK in Win 8. Firewire devices, whether in Vista/Win7/Win8 should use the 'legacy FW driver' (for the FW controller) rather than the default driver that Windows uses. Many devices work better (or even work) with the legacy FW driver.
I do support on some computer forums, including the Windows 8 forum, and there has been very little problems with devices. If they work in Win 7, with a Vista/Win7 driver, they work in Win 8.
Mackie Onyx 1620i Driver Windows 8
I only have USB devices, now, but all my devices work in Win 8 as they did in Win 7. Including a Roland Octa-Capture, MAudio Fastrack Ultra 8R, Behringer BCF 2000 (it was plug and play), Korg Nanocontroller. The only exception is my Frontier Tranzport, I had to install it in a Vista compatibility mode (it does not have Win 7 specific drivers, only XP and Vista). Solaceten I have a Onyx400f too Will soon be upgrading to Win7 from XP - Curious to know did you use the Win 7 driver on the mackie site, or the vista driver? I don't see any reason to use the Vista driver with Windows 7 when there's a Windows 7 driver (the last gasp for the F series). However, the Vista installer includes a firmware update to the 400F and I don't know if the Win7 installer includes the same update.
You might want to e-mail Mackie Tech Support about this. Would also love to know if anyone knows of a linux driver. No, nobody's written one, not Mackie, not Echo, not some smart Linux user who has a 400F (or a 1200F for that matter). The FFADO Project (Free Firewire Audio Driver Organization) for Linux reports it as 'Unknown' which means that someone things it's important enough to put on the 'someone should write a driver for this' but nobody has done it yet.
The problem is that without some documentation for an existing driver it's nearly impossible to reverse engineer a driver from the hardware. And before you rag on Mackie for not releasing the driver documentation for a product that's no longer supported, understand that Mackie didn't write the driver, Echo did. It's Echo's intellectual property, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of what's in that driver is still part of some of their current products, or that a competitor would like to get hold of it. That's the way it goes with Software. It may be possible that some day an audio I/O driver for Linux might appear, but the real value of the Mackie Fs is with the built-in mixer and control panel, and nobody's going to write Linux software for that.
If you want to use a Mackie Firewire device with Linux, the original Onyx mixer with the Firewire option is 'fully supported.' But the i series isn't. Smallstonefan Just an update - I finally took the plunge and moved to Windows 8.1 this week. I am very happy to report my Mackie drivers seem to be working just fine.
The touch is so much better in win 8 than 7 I am now going to sell my Mackie Control Universal Pro.:) What driver are you using? The 4.6 Vista version which includes a firmware update? (SetupOnyxFSeries4.6.exe on the Mackie web site)? Welcome to our house. I've been skittish about doing that update because the primary computer that I use the 400F with is still running Windows XP and will continue to do so until it decays into a pile of rust. Mackie never tested it with XP and doesn't want to bother.
They said it might work. I suppose I could just use the 1200F with one of the Vista or Win7 computers.
The only exception is my Frontier Tranzport, I had to install it in a Vista compatibility mode (it does not have Win 7 specific drivers, only XP and Vista). I just thought I'd mention, I have two Frontier Tranzport's both working on Windows 7 64bit - I did not have to load anything on my systems, just plugged them in and they both worked perfectly! I just keep my fingers crossed that both my Tranzports's keep working - I find them indispensable and why they stopped making them I'll never know!