Avid Pro Audio Community - MBox Bouncing mystery, a solution?

Hey!

I've had the MBox and a iBook (700Mhz/384Mb) for a couple of months now and I'm getting a bit annoyed with it's flaws.

The biggest issue for me is the mysterious bouncing problem. Anytime when I'm trying to bounce a song with CPU-usage over 40-50% it crashes. "CPU usage is holding of USB audio".

I suppose that other people have also had experiences like this.

The issue turned into a mystery for me when I was mixing a fairly simple song with 8 monotracks. I was unable to bounce it at all, although playback run through the session smoothly.

So I decided to try a work-around. I bussed outputs from all channels that were previously routed to Analog 1-2 to a free stereobus, made a stereochannel with that bus as input and pressed rec.

What happened?

I had "bounced" the song. All I had to do (outside the PT) was to combine the two monofiles into a stereofile.

This is when I became really interested. Why couldn't I bounce it in the first place?

So, I added seven (7) more stereochannels (totaling 24) and L1 Ultramaximizer (which takes a LOT of CPU time).

And?

Again, the machine did what it was supposed to do.
(Recorded 16 monotracks with all the plugins active.)

The question is:

Why does CPU usage hold off USB-audio while bouncing, but it doesn't seem to do it while recording?

My logic tells me that there is a mysterious (and fundamental) bug in the software.

Or maybe it's just my system. I've updated all drivers, minimized extensions, turned off TCP/IP etc. I have tried every trick I have found, but haven't been able to make it functional.

Can anybody give me advice on this?

Hannu Oskala
Helsinki, Finland