Well, I updated my mac mini to catalina, and now my two MR816s don’t work anymore. And on top of that I screwed up my backup so I can’t get mojave back. So I have a gigantic amount of work ahead of me recreating everything. Steinberg will not update the FWdrivers anymore. I’m pissed. And as long as I am using the MR816s I will never be able to use an M1 or M2 computer! To hell with it!!!
We have known that Mojave was the end of the line for our MR816s for a LONG time.
I feel ya pain but now you will have to make an install for Mojave on a usb stick or hd to re install it.
As far as M1 and M2, time to sell your MR and get something that will work with those new Macs
Rock and hardplace. Dont buy another Steinberg interface though
Apologies as a Windows (captive) user butting in here, but isn’t the cause of the issue the fact that Apple have decided to move to an entirely different hardware architecture, for the second time in recent times?
I will give you this though … Steinberg are not a hardware company, at least not yet. We’ll see how long-lived the latest devices are, now that there are Yamaha resources backing them. I’m just hoping they don’t buy RME 
Firewire has been all but discontinued for quite a while now and even before that the handwriting was on the wall. I get it, I have literal stacks of audio interfaces on shelves in my basement that are essentially worthless except to the occasional tinkerer that likes to play with antique computers. But it’s just how the audio interface game is played. If I get 5 years of use of any one interface I consider that a win. My experience with Steinberg interfaces has been good. But I also only bought USB based ones. At least almost all interfaces now last longer than when I first got into computer audio and DAWs. In the old days, some were essentially worthless right out of the box. The drivers never worked properly.
I kept my trusty MR 816 as a pre amp and ADAT converter and bought an RME Digiface USB to put between my computer and the MR 816.
That way I got to keep the very nice Yamaha pre-amps and AD/DA converters in the MR 816 combined with the driver goodness from RME.
That ended up being a relatively affordable and rock solid post firewire upgrade path for me.
That RME device can handle up to 4 devices with up to 8 ADAT channels each.
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I’m doing something similar with a MOTU 828MkII attached to an RME RayDAT, and I’m looking at the the Digiface USB for the next build!
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Here is the issue with that here:
- IF I need to change the sample rate on the MR you have to do that from the MR console which requires you to have a FW capable Mac to do that. UNLESS you want to set it to a certain sample rate and leave it. That doesn’t work when you need to change sample rate and the clocking has to come from the MR like in my case going to the Apollo Twin which has ADAT IN only.
No , the issue is Steinberg would not update the drivers for the MR t 64 bit on Intel systems.
Im not even talking about M1 or M2
Yeah - I always keep the same sampling rate and bit depth. So if that needs to be changed, things get messy - and may not be workable for you.
Not sure, if it might be of any use for your situation, but there’s a YouTube creator who’s experimented with a Firewire audio interface on systems without Firewire.
Firewire’s demise is indeed painful when migrating to new systems. And Apple has always been more aggressive in dumping older technologies. So the MR816 series will probably be useful for a bit longer on Windows boxes than on Macs.
I haven’t tested this myself, but the Steinberg download page seems to list the most recent MacOS drivers (November 2019) as 32/64-Bit:
@Nico 5. The main issue is the drivers will NOT WORK on anything past Mojave. Mojave is the end of the road for drivers. Past mojave the driver has to be 64 bit ONLY
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wow - that is sad indeed … 