can Mac with Windows have direct monitoring?

Nuendo
1

Background: My work in my studio is nearly all mixing and latency is not an issue. For the occasional overdub, I have an MR816x which works well, but otherwise the interface is a MOTU 2408 mk3 with Apogee converters connected through optical lines. It’s all running on a Mac Pro, and normally when I need to track a session I usually just book into a well equipped studio. Now I’m looking at a couple of projects that could be tracked in my setup and would like to have direct monitoring through the MOTU for more convenience, but Mac somehow doesn’t allow direct monitoring except through the MR816x.

Question: If I create a drive partition on my Mac for Bootcamp/Windows and open N 5.5 in that environment, will I gain PC style direct monitoring?

If so, which Windows version would be best?

Thanks for your help!

Mark

2

Hi Mark,

since a Mac running Windows on a bootcamp partition is actually a PC, it will behave exactly like a PC. So the answer should be yes if the MOTU hardware supports it.
I have personally had some extremely bad experience with Motu and PC (mainly stability problems and CPU load that went through the roof when the MOTU was connected), but I have to admit it was a long time ago and these problems have probably been sorted years ago.

I guess Win7 would be the way to go, but I’m really not an expert on Windows anymore…A couple of clients have it running and seem to be very happy with it.

However it’s probably a really good idea to try out the setup in advance.

Best luck

Ollie

3

Uninformed conjecture here-- but curious: have you tried making an aggregate device with the 2408 and the MR816x? Could the Steinberg unit’s DM still work under those conditions?

Chewy

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Also curious: have you tried monitoring using Motu’s Mac app while you’re recording?

(I’m also on a Mac Pro and 2408, but do my low-latency monitoring through a console. I could however try some tests for you…)

5

Thanks, Ollie, Chewy, and jay. We are at the beach so I can’t try anything this week but I wanted to acknowledge your suggestions.

Ollie, I hope you are correct since that is what I would like to happen. Chewy, I’ll bet you’re right but it looks complicated for my feeble intellect. Jay, I have used the no larceny MOTU monitor mixer over the years but the process seems a bit clunky. That was why I bought the MR816x to be able to operate more smoothly on overdubs.

Thanks for n input and I’ll report my results after some more research.

6

Oops, I meant “no latency” in reference to the MOTU software monitor mixer but spell check made it a more entertaining, “no larceny”.