Mbox Pro 3rd Gen firmware 1.03 and driver 1.0.16 update

[lancemcv]

After two and a half years of owning the Mbox Pro 3rd gen I am happy to report
my preliminary findings on the new firmware and driver updates.
This is only from one day of use so again it's preliminary and I will update my findings as I put it to the test over the next few weeks.
I did everything that use to make my Pro Tools system get a -6085 firewire related error when the Mbox was connected to my mac pro and I have not gotten any since installing the new update... not one. This tells me that it was the firmware and driver all along which is not a surprise to me, but thought it would have been fixed in the last firmware update, it was not. This was a major never ending problem for me and many times I just wanted to buy something else and throw the mbox out the window. The last six months I worked on a film score and only used the mbox for occasional recording and midi interface as 90 percent of the score was done with virtual instruments and almost no live audio except for guitar overdubs, so I ran pro tools natively sans the Mbox pro most of the time. I almost never get errors and never ever got the dreaded -6085 error that would make audio stop playing back until I did a reboot or reset the playback engine, running PT without the Mbox involved just worked, which made me realize that my system with PT 10 is pretty dang rock solid.
Now I know there are other people who have not had this issue with the mbox pro that I have had, but some have had others like the headphone output working then not working, tracks in input not passing through audio when in low latency recording mode, and some others. I have owned three mbox pros to try and get one that worked but they all still got the -6085 error and all were and were early models gotten in November 2010. I also got the error with my macbookpro but it seemed to happen less, why I don't know, but it still happened with a stripped down, Avid only plugins running on the macbookpro.
Avid's list of fixes for the updates include "improved audio streaming"
Well hip hip hurray! Isn't that what the box was made to do, stream audio... or only part of the time That fix may be the winner to my past issues with -6085. The mbox use to get disconnects while just sitting connected to PT doing nothing after a few minutes of not hitting the spacebar, leave the room for a cup of joe and - 6085 error or mbox has lost connection... upon m return.

A little background of my current setup:
Mac Pro 2008 8 core 16 gigs ram
PT 10.0.2 OSX 10.7.4
I almost always record to my internal sata drives that are dedicated for audio.
There is one screen saver of Apple's "Arabesque" that always triggered the --6085 error and yes I always had the screesaver disabled because of that
and also all the other Avid recommended settings for my system, but still got the 6085 errors. Tried a new user account, re installing, permissions, plugins, deleting prefs and databases etc etc.... Trust me I have been through the mill on this one.
Today I did stuff as a test to see if I could make it error and I could not...
Launched email, ran screen saver, used expose to clear desktop, ran an 88.2 24 bit session with lots of virtual instruments. any of the above would normally cause it to get the error and I was doing this as a stress test, not in daily practice. But now PT 10 seems as rock solid using the Mbox pro as it is when running PT 10 with my mac as the clock at least so far...
I was just going to try and find some other interface as my film is complete and I need to get back to more audio recording sessions but if it continues to behave I may just keep it after two years of agony.
I'm very happy if it is fixed via this update but I am not happy about the past two years of endless errors and waisted hours.
I will be testing all of it's functions and get back here after a week or so of working with it. Keeping my fingers very crossed...
Would love to hear from other Mbox pro users, I have been using Pro Tools since it came to market and was an audio engineer for many years before Digidesign and pro tools existed, I have tons of experience with building Pro Tools systems from scratch, but this one error kept me scratching and scratching, perhaps I may save some of my hair after all. Thanks for the fix Avid! My hairline thanks you as well....

[jryser]

I like this as well but my tuner stopped working. If u run across this let me know. I have a support code that I am using to see if this is a bug or what...the rest of the Mbox is running perfectly. I don't really need the tuner but I like things to work as they should. I'll let u know of anything that comes my way.


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[lancemcv]

Great thanks, I will check the tuner in a it and get back.

[lancemcv]

My tuner is working for me when i use the mbox standalone mixer, make sure your faders are up on channels one and two on the mbox mixer and that you have sound coming in. I did not know until today that meters three and four on the mbox work as tuner meter guides... pretty neat.

[jryser]

Yep - I got that but the tuner acts as if it can't see the signal. Bummer but just a little bummer - I have my strobe on my phone that works great.


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[lancemcv]

Did you delete the old driver with the included utility before installing the new driver?

[jryser]

Yep. I will keep u updated once I hear from avid. I even went back to my old driver to see if the new one wasn't right and the tuner no longer works with the old one. It's like it died! Very odd.


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[serio]

I have also found that the new drivers improved actual performance. While I didn't have the same extremely poor performance that the OP did, the Mbox Pro would spit errors faster than my 003R would in the same situation. This is in scenarios where I would be down at a buffer of 32. So, I do feel I get a little better performance down in the lower buffers than I did before the driver update.

[nedorama]

Works fine in my system, however the odd issue of multiple Mboxes showing up in Audio MIDI setup which means my MIDI out still doesn't work... I checked in on a studio that just upgraded from 5 002R's to Mbox Pro 3's and they all had the same problem.

Anyone left at AVID to fix this?

[jryser]

They do have someone working on a fix. Ur problems and mine were replicated by the fella I was working with, and he was awesome. They have a few gems left over there - I don't think our issue will be number one on the list but I will post when a solution shows up.


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