Motu 896 firewire multichannel interface

[MrSansui]

Hi Everyone,
I'm trying to get Audacity to work with my Motu 896 AD/DA interface via FireWire, but it keeps warning me there is an error with the input settings. In 'preferences' i have set the number of input channels to 8 and both the Motu as well as the recording quality menu in Audacity are set to 24bit/96K. On the Motu I can see the level meters working, but there is no response in Audacity. On playback of stereo material it works fine to get it via the Motu main out channels. I have also found that Audacity 1.3.12 Beta does not allow for multichannel setting, whilst 1.2 does! At first I had 1.3.12 installed since I have W7pro/64bit, but 1.2 appears to work better! I also have Adobe Audition 1.5 installed and there I have similar problems; stereo works ok, but no multichannel functionality. Can anyone tell me wether I should have bought a different AD/DA interface or if there is a way to make it work. A friend of mine has used my Motu sucessfully with his MacBook Pro and Audiodesk installed, which is, as I understand, Mac supported software.
Thanks!

[Gale Andrews]

I'm trying to get Audacity to work with my Motu 896 AD/DA interface via FireWire, but it keeps warning me there is an error with the input settings. In 'preferences' i have set the number of input channels to 8 and both the Motu as well as the recording quality menu in Audacity are set to 24bit/96K. On the Motu I can see the level meters working, but there is no response in Audacity. On playback of stereo material it works fine to get it via the Motu main out channels. I have also found that Audacity 1.3.12 Beta does not allow for multichannel setting, whilst 1.2 does! At first I had 1.3.12 installed since I have W7pro/64bit, but 1.2 appears to work better! I also have Adobe Audition 1.5 installed and there I have similar problems; stereo works ok, but no multichannel functionality.

There are certainly some reports with external devices that 1.2 offers stereo and mono but recent Betas only offer mono, or 1.2 offers multiple channels but recent Betas only offer stereo. You should try changing host in the 1.3.12 Devices Preferences. For MME host (or in 1.2 where you have no choice of host) you must set the Default Format in Windows to match with the same number of channels/sample rate/bit rate that you have in Audacity and set those identically on the MOTU too. For Windows DirectSound host in 1.3.12, make sure both Exclusive Mode boxes are checked in Windows. More explanation here.

I don't think there is much you can do otherwise but try mixing different drivers (if you have options to go back to older versions or get later ones) with different versions of Audacity. Very likely the observed differences above between different Audacity versions are to do with the different versions of the PortAudio audio I/O interface that was available to us at the time. 1.3.13 alpha has a later PortAudio version that you could try:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nightly_Builds

If you try 1.3.13 alpha, note that Devices Preferences has been removed so you need to select devices and recording channels in Device Toolbar instead. These changes are still being worked on so you may get see other oddities like duplication of inputs. If 1.3.13 lets you record multi-channel where 1.3.12 doesn't please let us know.



Gale

[MrSansui]

Thanks for your informative reply, I'll try again this weekend, I'll keep you informed.