I’ve been reading all the posts regarding direct monitoring and nothing seems to work… It used to be enabled but somewhere along the way (recently),
it will not be enabled. I am using an RME FF802 interface with a mac mini running 10.13.6 OS X. I have been using this setup for over a year now without this problem, then noticed when I record - I’m always late (behind the beat) no matter what I do. I looked at the Direct Monitoring setting first since I’ve run into this before. I can’t seem to change it from greyed out whereas I had no trouble before. I reloaded the RME driver (3.08) restarted - no luck. This is driving me insane! Nothing I do seems to help.
Could it be because OSX was updated to 10.13.6 recently? I checked the RME forums as well.
I seriously need this work again! Please help.
Are you saying you were previously able to use Direct Monitoring with your Fireface on a Mac? Because I understood that DM has never been available with RME products on Mac, only Windows.
and confirmed on the same thread in 2016, as far as I know nothing’s changed. See the RME response ‘There is no ASIO in OSX, therefore no ASIO Direct Monitoring’
Of course what is very much available is Totalmix, RME’s onboard low latency mixing engine. I believe that on Cubase on Windows, with DM enabled, the DM routing and levels in Totalmix are controlled from within Cubase, but this isn’t possible on Mac, so we just use Totalmix itself for monitoring.
Can anyone say they have Cubase running with RME on Mac and the Direct Monitoring option at Studio Setup>VST Audio System>RME xxx>Direct Monitoring ISNT greyed out? Mine certainly is greyed out, and always has been…
Well – I just tried using Totalmix for monitoring to record a track and seems to work ok. I didn’t do much to get this to work in Tm - just listen to my instrument via Tm while recording the track in C9.5 - I guess this will work fine. I just haven’t used Tm that way… Guess I’ll need to watch some RME videos to see if I’m doing it correctly.
If you haven’t used Totalmix much for monitoring it’s definitely worth the (fairly steep) learning curve. It’s incredibly powerful - I can send up to 8 different stereo headphone mixes to the talent, including effects, at the same time routing to the Control Room monitors and talkback, all with zero latency.
Although it would be elegant to control all this in Cubase, now that I’m used to it I don’t really miss that.
OK, so as I said above, for Mac users with RME hardware, direct monitoring has to be controlled by Totalmix, because the Direct Monitoring (ASIO DM) box is always greyed out. Windows users with RME can tick the DM box and control Totalmix from within Cubase.
I don’t think anyone is likely to say otherwise…My understanding is that OSX is not using ASIO therefore ASIO direct monitoring is not possible.
Steinberg do provide the integrated DM option with their own interfaces on Mac but while it may still be referred to as ASIO direct monitoring, in this case I would say it has nothing to do with ASIO.