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  #1  
Old 06-02-2022, 11:00 AM
Maripersen Maripersen is offline
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Default Mbox not supported by MacBook pro MacOS Monterey 12.x

I just bought a new Mac book pro, and the mbox will not show up in "playback engine" in Pro Tools 2022 version. I read now that The Mbox or Mbox Pro is not supported with MacOS Monterey 12.x. Is this right? How can I use pro Tools without my mbox ?
Should I return my new Mac Book pro at the store?
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  #2  
Old 06-02-2022, 11:46 AM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Default Re: Mbox not supported by MacBook pro MacOS Monterey 12.x

Uh sorry I misread the version of Pro Tools you are running until I read Ben's reply. So let me correctly my post here. Multiple edits below

For the interface: "Supported by”? To be clear the operating system knows nothing about any Mbox interface. It requires drivers supplied by Avid and Avid stopped providing updates to all the (beyond end of support life) Mbox a while ago. And so there are no new Mbox family drivers compatible with Monterey (on Intel or Apple silicon macs). (Avid recently removed the beyond end of support life Mbox products from the end of support life list. Some genius can explain why they did that. https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...#AudioHardware. Not even caring enough about an end of life product to list it as end of life says a lot about the Mbox, and more about Avid).

And because you have an Apple Silicon mac Mbox interface compatibility is easy: not a single Mbox family product is compatible in any way with an Apple silicon Mac. Apple silicon Macs require any device drivers be compiled for Apple silicon (drivers cannot use Rosetta 2 for compatibility), and Avid has never done that. And if you are looking at any driver from any vendor for any hardware you need to make they explicitly say it's supported on Apple silicon (aka M1 etc.) Macs, not just say that it says "supports Monterey" or similar. Modern drivers may come as separate Intel or Apple silicon installs or may come as one installer package that will contain both Intel and Apple silicon driver components, you need to read the descriptions of that the vendors say.

If you were running an Intel Mac (which you are not), you could see what drivers are available/support older operating systems here for 3rd gen Mbox: https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...d/Mbox-Drivers or for the 3rd gen Mbox Pro here: https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...ox-Pro-Drivers. But again all that is of no use to you as these are all old Intel only drivers and have never supported Apple silicon.

You have Pro Tools 2022 which is great. That is compatible with Monterey, even if it's an Intel binary today... it runs really well under Rosetta 2 on Apple silicon based Macs--but you do need to pay extra attention. e.g. at least one serious bugs that hit Apple Silicon systems in recent Pro Tools releases just got fixed in 2022.5. If you are on Apple Silicon Macs you are at the leading/bleeding edge and you have to look at bit at what's going on there, for example for now you have to run Intel versions of any third party plugins for now and even then may have to upgrade any third party plugins to latest versions to be compatible now. And when an Apple Silicon version of Pro Tools is released there may (likely will?) be some transition pain, especially with third party plugins. Lots of discussion on DUC about all this.

You can go back to what you were running on before or you can purchase a new interface. Avid finally woke up and exited the consumer interface market years ago, the best thing for them and customers in the long term. There are great interface available from (in no particular order): Focusrite, Universal Audio, RME, Apogee, Presonus, etc. Start by looking through the interface section on Thomann Music or similar. If you describe what your needs (esp. connectivity, # preamps etc. you need) and budget are then folks here can suggest some good interface options. And one thing I judge these vendors on is customer support/driver updates, esp. say you can look at when they first offered a Apple silicon drivers for their products, and how many years back to they keep supporting products. I personally like RME because of their deep technical engineering/product support, but they are not the cheapest products.

And if you do plan to roll back your system, be careful, Pro Tools 2022 and similar recent releases won't run on old macOS versions. See https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...tibility-Chart

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 06-02-2022 at 01:46 PM.
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Old 06-02-2022, 12:55 PM
Ben Jenssen's Avatar
Ben Jenssen Ben Jenssen is offline
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Default Re: Mbox not supported by MacBook pro MacOS Monterey 12.x

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maripersen View Post
I just bought a new Mac book pro, and the mbox will not show up in "playback engine" in Pro Tools 2022 version. I read now that The Mbox or Mbox Pro is not supported with MacOS Monterey 12.x. Is this right? How can I use pro Tools without my mbox ?
Should I return my new Mac Book pro at the store?
Hi, Mari, and welcome to the DUC.
You have a great powerful mac, and the latest Protools. The way I see it, you need to get a modern audio interface to replace the old Mbox. In my experience the difference in sound quality between interfaces nowadays, and those designed over ten years ago, is easily heard. And they need not be expensive, though if you put a little more money into it, you can hear it, if you have the speakers and the ears.

But I agree with Darryl, the most important thing to know for any one giving you advice, is the basics; what are you creating/doing, type of music, number of simultaneous inputs, what gear do you have, level of experience, as much info as you can, please.

Also, are you quite shure Pro Tools is the right tool for you?


Added: OK, I just found you on wikipedia, I should have recognized your name, sorry.
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Old 06-02-2022, 01:42 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Default Re: Mbox not supported by MacBook pro MacOS Monterey 12.x

And some more comments esp. since you are considering returning the MacBook Pro...

The current models of MBP are pretty nice, (some new models may be announced at WWDC soon) and what I'd do is play with Pro Tools 2022.5 (make sure you have the .5 release installed). You can do that by setting the playback engine to "built-in output" or "speakers" or whatever it's called on your system.

That way you can play around with Pro Tools and see how it runs on your Mac with some of your existing sessions. Check out any third party plugin compatibility issues etc.

---

I'll also add my general advice on any new Mac... you should max out the size of the internal SSD as much as you can afford and ideally you can run sessions and samples off that internal super-fast NVMe SSD. You do not have to have separate external drives. That can help make your system more reliable (no external drives to fail or accidentally bump/unplug) and more transportable.

And I don't know what config system you upgraded from but the minimum memory required for modern Pro Tools is 16GB, I'd personally not buy a system with less than 32GB (my system actually has 64GB) to allow for future software bloat/new capabilities. There is some incorrect folklore out there that Apple Silicon macs need less memory than Intel systems.

If your system has a small internal SSD or say 16GB memory, you might want to think about leveraging returning it anyhow for an upgrade now or in future when you have other stuff sorted out.

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 06-02-2022 at 01:53 PM.
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Old 09-17-2022, 09:24 AM
Adman44 Adman44 is offline
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Default Re: Mbox not supported by MacBook pro MacOS Monterey 12.x

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maripersen View Post
I just bought a new Mac book pro, and the mbox will not show up in "playback engine" in Pro Tools 2022 version. I read now that The Mbox or Mbox Pro is not supported with MacOS Monterey 12.x. Is this right? How can I use pro Tools without my mbox ?
Should I return my new Mac Book pro at the store?
In the for what its worth department - i recently took the plunge and upgraded my Mac Pro (late 2013) to Monterey. i remember reading somewhere that some guy had the mbox 3 pro running with it. The trick was to have it running with a previous os. I had it running with mojave for years. So when i installed monterey it worked! I used it for a couple of months, happily, because to find another usb interface with the same features would be quite expensive. About two weeks ago it suddenly stopped working... and Avid link stopped booting up if the mbox was on when booting up monterey. i am trying to figure out a fix. it was working fine. nothing changed afain in terms of my system.
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