What’s next for the AXR4?
The AXR4 is no longer listed on the Steinberg homepage under the Interfaces menu
That’s the end of the line for the AXR4T/U, what with all the incompatible Thunderbolt changes made by Apple. It was a pricey unit made to appeal to Apple folks. The USB version might still have some traction, but it was never going to be a major seller at its price point, so it’s gone as well.
What incompatible Thunderbolt changes made by Apple?
Try plugging an AXR4T directly into a current Mac and get back to me…
Pretty sure anyone who can afford to spend several thousand dollars on a recording interface can afford the Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter. Unless they’re also the kind of person who complains about having to purchase an iLok to use a certain plugin.
I’m using the AXR4T fine with the adapter and my Mac Studio. Still my favourite interface to use with Cubase.
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The issues are always the interface between the audio input and computer.
I used the MR816 series and had to use adapters to go from 400 to 800 on firewire then FW to Thunderbolt and all worked OK until the 32 to 64bit change on related software became the final straw. Sad as the Audio was still good.
The AXR4T is Ok TB2 to TB3. Even the Lynx Audio Engineering with their Aurora which were excellent at having a variety of plugin interface boards to take care of the ever changing computer interfacing have now stopped the legacy Auroras from upgrading to their TB3 boards, you have to move to the newer Aurora(n) series for that. I still have two of the old legacy Aurora converters both on TB2 boards along with the AXR4T all daisy chained fine to TB3 computers in the studio. TB2 is OK for both channel throughput with minimal latency. TB3 is overkill for audio as such and is only really needed to simplify interfacing.
Nothing lasts forever though but there’s years of life in the old kit yet.
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Yep. I’m still using FW here, because it’s mature and just works, because PC’s still have PCI buses and you can pick up a new PCI FW interface card for the price of a bag of chips, and the interface has the FW bus all to itself.
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Im Mac and FW is basically switched off now since Ventura. Basically a few lines of code have been removed from the OS which has killed it on current Macs. Not very green of Apple to make FW audio devices obsolete, but could be good news for PC users looking for bargains.
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Do you know if the AES/EBU connector on the Steinberg AXR4T is compatible with the AES connector on the Aurora 8? Normally this shouldn’t be a problem, but I’m asking because I can’t manage to integrate the aurora 8 as a slave to expand the AXR4T. That’s why I ordered a new cable today and sent the other one back because I suspect that something is connected incorrectly. Of course, the AES on Steinberg is active (Out signal on meters via AES channel are visible) and the aurora also on AES IN.
You have to make sure you have the correct wiring for the AES cable. I recall this is the DB25 Yamaha standard on both AXR4T and Lynx Legacy Aurora and not the Tascam standard. I have mine linked. I recall you have to ensure the AXR4T port is switched to AES from SPDif. I did this on Port B. Been a long while since I installed and my cable connections are not easily visible without pulling the inbuilt studio rack apart. But my studio build cabling spreadsheet shows thats how I connected,
Cheers
David