Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Using Mbox 2 with Snow Leopard

As of today, I don't hate Digidesign anymore.

 Ever since I upgraded to the MacBook Pro, I had been extremely frustrated that my Mbox2 with Pro Tools 7 wasn't compatible with my laptop. I tried using a Firewire 800/400 adapter to plug the Mbox to the MacBook Pro's firewire port, but the Mbox wouldn't power on (it only showed the blinking orange light). The consensus online and at Guitar Center (a.ka. Guitar Hell), was that I was SOL and that I needed Pro Tools 8 and new hardware. Since I'm doing mostly demos and recreational recording right now, I'm fine using GarageBand and don't need a newer version of Pro Tools. I was almost ready to sell the Mbox 2 and on craigslist and buy a new basic interface, but today I had a breakthrough. If you've had similar problems and frustrations, there is a standalone driver available here for Leopard and Snow Leopard:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Download/en362883

Now I can at least successfully power up the Mbox, use it for recording in GarageBand, and power my monitors/headphones, etc. For those that need Pro Tools, to my knowledge, the Mbox 2 -> Firewire 800/400 adapter configuration can run Pro Tools 9. If you'd had similar problems using the Mbox 2 with Snow Leopard, I hope this gets you up and running!


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