I would like to hear from other Mac users who work with the MR816X. Is it stable?
I have heard some stories that it does not like to share the firewire bus with other devices?
And has anybody used this with a Motif XS (or other Yamaha FW device) on the same firewire bus?
Thanks.
I like it, works well for me. I don’t have anything else on the firewire bus so I can’t comment on that.
Very stable.
I’ve had mine since last summer and I’m very happy. No problems at all. I do very little live recording, though, so I haven’t tested it in that kind of situation. It’s the only FW equip I have connected at the moment.
MR816X has been working flawlessly on very heavy recording sessions for me
In regards to sharing the FW buss you can get a PCIe Firewire card pretty cheap and use that
Definitely consider the FWI card or not using an external FW hard drive–this is where most (probably all) problems stem from. When I first got mine–few weeks ago, was having drop outs. I put a fw 400-800 adapter on and used an 800 slot. No more dropouts. However, many times after startup, the mr816 hasn’t been recognized. There is a new update that just came out, supposed to fix that. I know these hassles are from my ext HD. We’ll see if it’s gone, otherwise I’ll get a card.
Other than that, amazing! Really delighted with the box, though the GUI mixer is the ugliest I’ve ever seen, ever. Like 1980 Atari style. Lol
Edit–If I don’t use the 400-800 adapter, the mr816 is unusable on my system. I tried without after the “update,” and performance was worse than ever (using fw400 on mac front). Put the adapter on, fw 800 on back–appears to be all good, no droupouts thus far and device was recognized immediately.
Hi Jimmy,
I don’t have this experience so far yet.
I have the mr816 connected on the standard fw port of my Mac Pro and the performance is just great.
I’m thinking of connecting my Motif Rack XS through firewire as well. It is now on usb.
Yesterday, I had a major crash btw. Never had that on Windows before 
(that is, performing the same tasks)
Well that learned me to turn the auto backup feature back on again.
Good luck with your setup.
Alexander.
very smooth here. I Have the 816 hooked up to a MacBook Pro i7 Dual core 2.66GHz with 8 gig RAM. OS 10.6.6.
I’m using a FW 800 to 400 cable and have a second FW drive ( bus powered) plugged into the second FW port of the 816. This holds my sample data, SFX library etc.
My recordings are only 4 to 6 tracks (at once) but run long… Usually 90 mins without stopping. It’s for a radio show. Never had an issue once… No dropouts.
Mixing includeds Instances of Soundsoap Pro, compressors, deessers, EQ … All done in real time smooth a silk.
A couple of times CB 5.5.2 has stopped purporting audio for no reason while i’ve been trimming edits during looping playback of a short phrase… But nothing to do with the 816… It was a case of no output from the CB mixer.
Hope this helps
Lee
The mr816 has been fine, but not showing up in the editor occasionally. Finally, my external FW HD failed last week. 
Since replacing it (was a WD mybook–not recommended!), with a Fantom USB drive, no conflicts/problems with mr816. However, my macpro does boot from the wrong drive sometimes, so I have to turn off the ext. HD until I’m up if I want to make sure to avoid this. No biggie, but strange…
A. I have to boot up my computer with the MR’s powered on.
B. I have to have my firewire hard drives NOT connected to the computer on boot up…
C. The MR’s won’t initialize with other items plugged into the firewire bus.
Took me a few frustrating days to figure this out…
Yeah, the conflicts with other FW devices seem to be pervasive and persistent.
Worst HDD ever. And their drive manager software is even worse. Avoid at all costs.
I run 2 MR816X’s (daisy chained) on a late 2008 iMac that has 1 FW800 port and 1 FW400 port. The setup is as follows:
MR816X(2)—>MR816X(1)—>WD 500GB FW400 Drive—>[FW400 port]iMac[FW800 port]<—Seagate 1TB FW800 Drive(1)<—Seagate 1TB FW800 Drive(2)<—Seagate 2TB FW800 Drive
I haven’t experienced any of the problems people have mentioned here. I record to the first Seagate drive and yes, this iMac model does indeed have the Lucent/Agere FW chipset. I turn my MR’s on and off all the time with the computer booted up. Never had a problem. Cubase mentions the loss of the ASIO device, but as soon as I turn them on, they’re automatically recognized and everything is back to normal without having to change anything in the device settings. I’ve had the units for about 2 months and they run equally as well in live recording setups with a ~2005 Sony Vaio SZ230P laptop (this happens to have a built in TI FW chipset).
In the past, I’ve always had trouble with audio interfaces, but I have to say I’ve been really happy with these units. I’ll be working on some more involved projects in the next couple of months and will be using the iMac with the dual Mr816X setup. If I run into any trouble, I’ll be sure to post an update.
Hi
I use GTechnology Drives exclusively … on a Mac … never had an issue, ever , not once. Oh, not true … had one Dead On Arrival, swapped out quickly.
Best
Lee
Reviving this thread because I never asked, at what buffers does the MR work comfortably with OSX?
Is anybody running this at 64 samples or lower?
what are the latencies @ 128/44.1 and 64/44.1?
Mine runs great on my 6-core. I installed a PCIe firewire card to avoid FW conflicts. My front end is a Yamaha n12 mixer, then the MR816x. I’m planning on installing one more MR816. The Yamaha is essentially the same guts of the MR, only laid out with faders and monitoring section. I keep my buffer mid way, but I don’t record much music, so it’s not that important.
I have a very early 2.0x4 Mac Pro and normally run a MOTU 2408 Mk3. To get no latency monitoring, I aded the MR816x.
So far I have not run the two together but I can switch the ASIO as needed. Rather than reconnect all the hardware lines to the 816, I usually set up simple overdub versions of projects for the 816 and then late move the audio to the main project.
The only repeatable conflict I have noted is that the Mbox 2 I normally leave connected for opening PT projects prior to transferring doesn’t get along well with the 816. Disconnecting the Mbox makes the 816 less subject to losing it’s mind.
Regards,
Mark