Mbox studio and audient asp880

[danielcordova]

Hello, I want to know if the compatibility between the Mbox Studio and the Audient ASP880 preamplifier is guaranteed

[Darryl Ramm]

Guaranteed by who? Avid or any vendor is unlikely to give you a guarantee that any third party box works with their stuff.

Presumably you mean as an ADAT preamp? The 880 can also operate as an analog preamp.

Incompatibility between ADAT products is virtually unheard of, the main technical issue is wether both sides support the suitable SMUX spec if wanting to run at high sample rates.

The MBox Studio should work with all ADAT preamps, given the limitation it only has one ADAT input...and if you want to run above 48 kHz hopefully it supports SMUX for faster sample rates/reduced channel counts, but Avid does not seem to mention that in the product specs).

Most problems will be user error, improper ADAT cable connections, improper sample rate settings, improper clocking, improper optical format. If you are having problems set stuff up the most simple way to start, everything running at 44.1 kHz or 48kHz, the ADAT preamp set to clock internally and set as the clock source for the Mbox/Pro Tools, the preamp main/first ADAT output connected to the ADAT input on the interface. Make sure the MBox Toslink optical input is set to ADAT not S/PDIF.

[albee1952]

Agree with Darryl. The single make or break thing is clocking. Do it wrong and one of two things will happen; all the ADAT inputs will click and pop when in record, or, none of the ADAT inputs will work at all. Go to Setup>Hardware(in Pro Tools) and set the Clock Source to ADAT or Optical and make certain the sample rate of the external device(Audient ASP880 or whatever it is) matches the sample rate of your session(forgetting this can open a whole can of worms). In the case of Mbox Studio, the clock source is set in the Mbox Control software by clicking the little gear in the upper right corner. BTW, this is also where you select ADAT or SPDIF for the optical IO

[dominicperry]

The OP is in Cuba. I imagine that buying something that doesn't work may be difficult to return, so he's requesting someone to say that they have this setup already and that it definitely works.

Dominic

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

The OP is in Cuba. I imagine that buying something that doesn't work may be difficult to return, so he's requesting someone to say that they have this setup already and that it definitely works.

Dominic

Good point, but until someone can give that exact answer, consider: I have used the following lightpipe preamps:
Presonus Firestudio and D8
Focusrite ISA 428(MK I and MK II) and OctroPre Mk II
Behringer ADA8200
Midas XL-48
With the following interfaces:
DIGI002, DIGI003(non-HD Pro Tools) and HD IO and 192IO on several HD?Native setups

All of the above combinations worked great and its because ADAT Optical is a "standard", which means any device using that protocol meets that standard. Audient follows that same standard. That's why Darryl said what he said, and I agree 100%. I think its extremely unlikely that there will be any issue(IOW, I would feel very confident in success). My comments on clocking are there to help ensure that success (BTW, the Midas XL-48 is absolutely killer on drums)

[JDubz70]

Originally Posted by danielcordova

Hello, I want to know if the compatibility between the Mbox Studio and the Audient ASP880 preamplifier is guaranteed

This should work just fine. The Audient uses standard ADAT optical protocol which the MBOX Studio supports up to 96kHz.

Cheers,
JW