No sound from Mbox 3 Pro after updating drivers

[Kanosan]

Hi. I recently updated my drivers and am now unable to use my mbox 3 pro to record or listen to audio. The interface currently does not recognize any signals coming in through the preamps or line inputs. My 2011 i7 iMac with 16 gb of ram does recognize the interface as well as pro tools, but no audio can be heard from either the headphones or speaker output. I have tried reverting to previous drivers but none of them will now work. I can run pro tools 10.3.7 just fine and audio can be heard by using the imac headphone output so this is to the best of my knowledge not an internal routing problem as I set all buss and output paths to default. When playing a session I can see the signal inside of the mbox control panel and everything appears to be routed correctly. After installing several versions of the drivers I was worried that I may have not deleted the unused drivers so I even went through the trouble of swiping the boot drive clean and reinstalling everything. No dice. Then I reverted back to Lion and repeated this process with PT 10.2 and the drivers that were released just prior to the mountain lion supported version. Still nothing. I am currently back on mountain lion with the most current PT 10.3.7 and latest drivers. If anyone knows what I should do PLEASE let me know.

Thanks so much
Mark Kano

[Southsidemusic]

Hi. I recently updated my drivers and am now unable to use my mbox 3 pro to record or listen to audio. The interface currently does not recognize any signals coming in through the preamps or line inputs. My 2011 i7 iMac with 16 gb of ram does recognize the interface as well as pro tools, but no audio can be heard from either the headphones or speaker output. I have tried reverting to previous drivers but none of them will now work. I can run pro tools 10.3.7 just fine and audio can be heard by using the imac headphone output so this is to the best of my knowledge not an internal routing problem as I set all buss and output paths to default. When playing a session I can see the signal inside of the mbox control panel and everything appears to be routed correctly. After installing several versions of the drivers I was worried that I may have not deleted the unused drivers so I even went through the trouble of swiping the boot drive clean and reinstalling everything. No dice. Then I reverted back to Lion and repeated this process with PT 10.2 and the drivers that were released just prior to the mountain lion supported version. Still nothing. I am currently back on mountain lion with the most current PT 10.3.7 and latest drivers. If anyone knows what I should do PLEASE let me know.

Thanks so much
Mark Kano

Hey Mark

Have you tried to set ALL i/o's to Default?
Also Try holding down the "N" key while loading up PT and choose the Mbox3 as the interface. Also trash the preferences and DAE folders and restart.

See of that does anything.

Best
Chris

[Kanosan]

Thanks Chris. I'll try trashing the prefs but I just reinstalled the software so I don't think I have any yet:) I just got off the phone with Sweetwater tech support and it looks like something may have happened to my hardware while updating the drivers.

[dscheidt]

Before you trash everything, try this… go to the MBox control panel, go to Setup, and change the clock source from Internal, to SPDIF, back to Internal. That should cause your MBox to reset itself, and then play sounds back.

I have the exact same problem with almost the exact same system (Macbook Pro, 2011, 16 gigs of RAM). I've finally given up on waiting for a driver fix, called tech support, and am RMA'ing the interface back to them.

[Kanosan]

Thanks. Amazingly after working with this all day I'm back in business. I reverted back to PT 10.3.5 and installed the 1.1.3.drivers. I'm not sure why but this combo works. I cant imagine the software/driver combination has anything to do with it... I will keep your suggestion handy in the event that it happens again, but I'm kind of terrified to change anything right now! Thanks for the suggestions guys.

[Kanosan]

Before you trash everything, try this… go to the MBox control panel, go to Setup, and change the clock source from Internal, to SPDIF, back to Internal. That should cause your MBox to reset itself, and then play sounds back.

I have the exact same problem with almost the exact same system (Macbook Pro, 2011, 16 gigs of RAM). I've finally given up on waiting for a driver fix, called tech support, and am RMA'ing the interface back to them.

Dude you're a lifesaver!!! Thank you. I ended up needing to go back to Lion from Mountain Lion as it was just a little too glitchy for me. I was hoping this would work and it did! You da man:)

[dscheidt]

Glad it worked! I'm beginning to think this isn't a hardware issue. This is the third or fourth person that's had this issue. I'm wondering if it is something about the Macbook Pro. Do you run an eSata connector card or anything?

I just wish Avid would take notice of this issue. Like I said, I've called, and am going to have the hardware swapped out...

[Kanosan]

No I sure don't. Just plugging the mbox 3 pro into my iMac. No funny business. How did you figure that out btw? I never would have though to look at the clock source.

I was online with a Sweetwater tech yesterday for at least 30 minutes and he didn't try this either although he take a look in my control panel. I didn't know this but they have the ability to take over your computer (with permission) to have a look around at your settings. It was pretty neat

[dscheidt]

I'm a software developer who has also done a fair share of hardware troubleshooting.

I had noticed that on a previous driver version, the box didn't even start up until you ran a sound through it. What I found just seemed like something to try to get the device to reset itself without unplugging and replugging the device.

I'm hoping a drive update comes out soon!

[Kanosan]

Well I'm very happy that you were around to suggest this. I was literally inches away from sending my unit off for repair.. so I owe ya! Cheers!

[dscheidt]

Kanosan…
I just updated to 10.8.5… and I'll be dipped if the interface isn't working correctly. Give that a try, and see if that helps.

[dscheidt]

Nevermind, 10.8.5 did NOT fix the problem.

[Kanosan]

I am most likely going to hang with Lion until I upgrade to PT 11... which may be a long while. Mountain Lion caused a few issues for me that I did not experience in Lion. 10.7.5 has been rock solid and PT is stable and quite zippy! My fans were running just a bit louder, and heavy sessions that I mixed while on 10.7.5 were not able to playback when I upgraded to ML. I kept seeing "cannot get audio from drive fast enough". This was the first time I had ever reverted to a previous OS but so far it has been worth it for me.

[dscheidt]

See my other threads, but I think that there is a solution.

First off, I did install Mavericks. Since I don't run Pro Tools that much, it's not a huge issue if it doesn't work 100% for me, but the drivers seem to be stable.

The solution is to turn the device on first, wait about 20 seconds, THEN power on your computer. Apparently the device has a long boot time, and if the driver on the computer starts to talk to the device before it's finished booting, the clock doesn't sync. Since I started doing that, everything works correctly.