Why would you want to use a USB device for your system soundcard when a PCI card (i.e. Soundblaster) would give much better results?

right now i only have onboard audio for my machine. i thought that since the mbox is already my sound card for when im mixing, etc, i might as well ditch the onboard and use the mbox for everything. plus the mbox plugs straight to my monitors.

Firewire/USB units such as the MBox and Firepod ARE your computer's soundcard. Having both is redundant and can cause problems in some cases. When your MBox is connected, you are bypassing your soundcard.

Understand that a "soundcard" is an A/D D/A converter, most having some collection of analog and digital i/o. "Soundcards" come in several forms including PCI cards and external firewire/USB boxes. You don't need both a firewire unit (i.e. MOTU 828) and a PCI soundcard (i.e. M-Audio 24/96).

Don't be confused by something like the MOTU 2408 which is an external box connected to an installed PCI card. Though the cable connecting the box and card looks like firewire, it's not. There are many units like this which incorporate a PCI card connected to a stand alone breakout box.

Hope that helps.

AG

that makes sense, thank you. if then, the mbox automatically overrides the onboard sound card, is there a way to view this in the computer settings somewhere? i looked in control panel settings and it kept showing that the primary device was the onboard audio.

I use my mbox for system audio on my laptop all the time, since it's hooked to my monitors.

You need to get the ASIO driver for windows

http://www.digidesign.com/download/asio/
or the wave driver
http://www.digidesign.com/download/wave/
(Never used it on windows, so not sure which one you need)

For Mac get the CoreAudio driver

http://www.digidesign.com/download/coreaudio/panther/

NOTE: on mac at least, when you want to use protools, you have to turn the driver off (by quitting the coreaudio manager app) first, or you get the "hardware is in use by another application" message.

perfect, that was just what i needed to know! thank you!

Yay, I won the thread!

OH S***!!

I was going to bring up the ASIO issue in my original response and then ditched it!

Damn my second thoughts!

I have been CHEESED! :shock:

sound blaster card verses m bx

roguescout wrote: Why would you want to use a USB device for your system soundcard when a PCI card (i.e. Soundblaster) would give much better results?

im wondering whot are u reasons iv just switched from creative audigy 2 with sound blaster plat card to m bx as my rec in hard ware and the sound is so noticably better its got better sonics converter+card sound . believe me i did heaps of test rec using both m bx allways better . all orig guitsr key boards etc no pinched pre rec loops .and i run vst 32 5.1 for my soft ware . but iwant to go to sx couse i notice on the 32 when i cut the audio wave it jumps for ward a fraction this realy anoys me does the sx do that. whot are u thouts on that .im not using pro tools dont like it :!:

im pretty sure you cant use the mbox unless youre running pro tools - is that what you were asking? i think the only way would be to record the tracks to pro tools, bounce them as .wav files, and import them into sonar to mix with that, which would be all too much work for what its worth imo. but maybe theres a way around it, im not sure. best of luck figuring it out!

With those drivers you should be able to use the mbox with any software.

really? wow, i didnt know that was possible. thanks for the tip!

The ASIO driver is what you install if you want to use your mbox as a front end for recording into non protools software i.e. Cubase, Sonar, etc.
The wave driver is what you would install to make your mbox the computer's "soundcard".
INstall it and all your internet stuff/cd's/mp3's, etc on your computer will play through your mbox.