High Sierra and MOTU 828Mk3 FW

[HCMarkus]

A phone call to MOTU can be very effective. I've received excellent assistance in this manner.

Speaking from personal experience and my readings on the Interwebs, MOTU's support for legacy products has been top drawer.

[seekir]

They will respond rest assured. My experience with MOTU’s tech support team has been consistently excellent over the years...(This last case was just a few weeks ago.) They don’t support the mk2s anymore unfortunately.

You can still purchase the 828 hybrid at Sweetwater and as long as that is the case, support should continue.

I hope you're correct. My 828 is an "original," not even a MKII. The OP seems to be having a similar (if not the same) issue with his newer MKIII. As I recall my 828 was a $700.00+ purchase, and there are presumably others out there. It's been about 3 weeks since my tech link request was made.

[bakkumd]

Hi - I also have an "original" 828 Firewire interface - worked great through my upgrade to 10.13.X.

I'm using a MacPro (mid 2010). No issues with seeing the 828. I'm using driver version 1.6 73220, which I downloaded from the MOTU legacy area.

The driver was installed and working prior to upgrading to 10.13... some have said that might be necessary.

My question today is whether anyone has successfully had an original 828 work with 10.13.X on a new iMac Pro (or regular iMac) using the firewire adapter dongle...??? (No native FW port)

I've seen two scenarios discussed but none confirmed as working - firewire 400/800 cable to the dongle, then dongle to a Thunderbolt 2 cable, then to a thunderbolt 3 cable - then into the new iMac (reg. or Pro) - OR - firewire to dongle to Thunderbolt 3 cable to iMac.

I'm thinking that my current MacPro is about done and an upgrade is needed to get to 10.14 and beyond.

I would be so grateful for any thoughts/advice/confirmation it works or doesn't work with the dongle, etc...

[seekir]

Hi - I also have an "original" 828 Firewire interface - worked great through my upgrade to 10.13.X.

I'm using a MacPro (mid 2010). No issues with seeing the 828. I'm using driver version 1.6 73220, which I downloaded from the MOTU legacy area.

The driver was installed and working prior to upgrading to 10.13... some have said that might be necessary.

My question today is whether anyone has successfully had an original 828 work with 10.13.X on a new iMac Pro (or regular iMac) using the firewire adapter dongle...??? (No native FW port)

I've seen two scenarios discussed but none confirmed as working - firewire 400/800 cable to the dongle, then dongle to a Thunderbolt 2 cable, then to a thunderbolt 3 cable - then into the new iMac (reg. or Pro) - OR - firewire to dongle to Thunderbolt 3 cable to iMac.

I'm thinking that my current MacPro is about done and an upgrade is needed to get to 10.14 and beyond.

I would be so grateful for any thoughts/advice/confirmation it works or doesn't work with the dongle, etc...

I'm unable to get the original 828 to work using the 400/800 FW adapter—mac FW/TB and the same v1.6 73220 driver with OS 10.13.6 and an early 2015 MacBook Air. Your MacBook is working with OS 10.13.X?

[bakkumd]

No - that's not my setup. I'm currently using a Mac Pro - not a MacBook. My Mac Pro has a firewire card - works fine with the original 828 and High Sierra.

I am afraid of it not working using the cables, dongles, etc... when I upgrade to a machine that doesn't have built in or PCI firewire ports. I'm upgrading to iMac Pros - which, of course, don't have firewire, nor accepts PCI cards.

I'm going to try the following - 400 to 800 cable + firewire to TB dongle + TB 2 cable + TB 2 to TB 3 adaptor + iMac Pro. I'll post it if it works. (I'm not confident)

I did read somewhere on the web (can't find it again - of course...) where the issue was the TB 3 cable - they had used a TB 2 cable in the middle and seemed to have success.

Another issue with the adapter method is that the Mac and any apps will usually see the port as a TB only port - the "firewire" identifier is lost in translation - so if the MOTU driver can't see or acknowledge TB as a communication protocol, it ignores the port regardless of whether the data originated from firewire. So - getting the mac/apps to see the data as coming from a firewire port could be a solution.

Has anyone tried using a multi-port hard drive and connecting the 828 to that via it's firewire port?

Has anyone tried using the OWC Thunderbolt 3 PCI box? it is able to host a firewire pci card.

I have a Western Digital drive with USB 3, USB 2, and firewire 800 ports. The mac sees the firewire port as firewire 800 in the system information report. It's plugged into a TB display via the regular USB port then into the MBPro via the all knowing mini display/Thunderbolt port. I will have to take it all to that studio to check it out - it just might work...

In the end - I suppose an audio interface upgrade is in my future - very frustrating though, when perfectly good gear is forced aside due to "planned obsolescence" decisions by the hardware manufacturers.

[HCMarkus]

I recently went from 828mkII to 828es... the es was an exact i/o replacement (plus one bank of additional optical i/o) for the mkII including the punch in/out footswitch. The new routing matrix is super powerful and the conversion is top-drawer. You might want to consider it; the 828es works great with my cheesgrater 5,1 Mac Pro via USB but also provides Thunderbolt connectivity for use with newer Macs.

Sound quality aside, the biggest advantage of the new interface in my usage has been the routing capability the matrix provides for the 828es AVB Mixer (built-in hardware mixer); in addition to my monitor speakers and external hardware tracking reverb, I am feeding six independent monitor mixes. Musicians in-studio can fine-tune their individual mixes from any mobile device running a browser. I keep a couple of old tablets on hand for just this purpose. When not tracking multiple players, I keep an iPad on my desk to allow independent access to the 828es AVB Mixer so I don't have to re-focus my computer to and from DP. The iPad allow silent muting and level adjustment. No mouse noise as I adjust or mute click track when tracking quiet instruments in the control room.

[ronjams]

I never knew that about the newer generation of Motu interfaces and have resisted upgrading my 828mk3. The matrix routing looks very complicated compared to cuemix and I didn’t want that headache but having the musician being able to control their own mix can save me a lot of time in tracking music and setup time

[seekir]

Another issue with the adapter method is that the Mac and any apps will usually see the port as a TB only port - the "firewire" identifier is lost in translation.

My MacBook sees my FW CD burner with the 800/400 FW>TB adapters fine. So, the problem seems to be specific to the 828 interface, and in my case seems to have nothing to do with the adapters.

[HCMarkus]

I never knew that about the newer generation of Motu interfaces and have resisted upgrading my 828mk3. The matrix routing looks very complicated compared to cuemix and I didn’t want that headache but having the musician being able to control their own mix can save me a lot of time in tracking music and setup time

Although grokking the matrix takes some thought, it is pretty much a set it up once and forget about it thing. One of the presets should get you fairly close to your desired routing.

[bakkumd]

Success - I unpacked a brand new iMac Pro (picked it up today) and the first thing I did was try to get the 828 original to work.

I can report that my 828 (original) does indeed work with High Sierra and the new iMac Pro.

Here are the cable and adapters that worked for me:

1. Apple brand Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 adaptor ($49)
2. Apple brand Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire 800 adaptor ($29 - I think - I've had mine a long time)
3. An IEEE1394B Bilingual Firewire Cable 9pin (FW800) to 6pin (FW400) Cable. Mine was made by QVS - might be the "house" brand from MicroCenter stores (microcenter.com). This one was $40 - it is 15 feet long. There are cheaper ones online, but I wanted it today and live near a Microcenter superstore - so I just drove over and picked one up.

Anyway - I powered down the 828 and plugged in the cable and adapters - then downloaded the installer from MOTU.com.

During the install, the High Sierra security will ask that you approve the install via the security control preference pane - the installer adds some files pretty deep in the system. The button is in the lower right of the pane. It will just ask for permission - click the allow button - the installer continues and the iMac Pro restarts as expected.

I powered up the 828 before the restart progress bar appeared - and it loaded the first time. The 828 clock locked to 44.1, and the MOTU 828 device appeared in the Input and Output tabs of the Sound preference pane.

I opened the MOTU Audio Setup app, set my default channels and it just worked. All channels, all LEDs, all options in the app work as they should.

If I knew how to add an image to this post, it would show a screen shot of the MOTU Audio Setup app with the 828 tab active and the MOTU 828 Device listed in the Input and Output tabs of the Sound preference pane.

The MOTU Audio Setup app is only 32 bit - so unless MOTU updates it to 64 bit, there may be only one or two OS versions left before the 32 bit app simply won't run. Also - the Apple store rep indicated that 32 bit apps should still run on OS X 10.14. We might see a warning at startup, but that's about it.

A good day!

[seekir]

SuccessHere are the cable and adapters that worked for me:

1. Apple brand Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 adaptor ($49)
2. Apple brand Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire 800 adaptor ($29 - I think - I've had mine a long time)
3. An IEEE1394B Bilingual Firewire Cable 9pin (FW800) to 6pin (FW400) Cable. Mine was made by QVS - might be the "house" brand from MicroCenter stores (microcenter.com). This one was $40 - it is 15 feet long. There are cheaper ones online, but I wanted it today and live near a Microcenter superstore - so I just drove over and picked one up.

My 400/800 FW adapter is an Elago brand from China, and my FW>TB adapter is an Apple model 1463, also Chinese. So the two differences between your setup and mine would seem to be the 400/800 FW adapter brand, and the MacBook (mine is an early 2015 "Air"). I'm not sure what the purpose of your USB-C>TB adapter is? Are you just mentioning it in passing, or are you using it somehow with your 828? I also find it odd that my 828 doesn't seem to work with this rig, though my FW CD burner works fine with it. I used the FW cable that came with the 828 for both devices.

[bakkumd]

USB-C is Thunderbolt three.

What I mean is: Apple has this nasty habit of implementing new port designs and assigning multiple protocols to the same port almost every time they release a refreshed hardware design - making the ports auto sensing/switching based on what gets plugged in to the port - so on a new 2017 iMac Pro (or any newly released Mac), Thunderbolt 3 is served through a USB-C style port. This same port will also drive 4K monitors with yet another adapter. All are USB-C on the small end and whatever the conversion protocol is on the large end. Also, USB-C and USB 3.0 are completely different port designs and are not interchangeable.

So I only have two adapters and the cable in my system...

From the iMac to the 828:
1. iMac Pro running 10.13.6
2. Apple brand USB-C style/Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter. (TB 3 and TB 2 use different style ports - thanks Apple!)
3. Apple brand Thunderbolt 2 to FW800 adapter.
Note: a direct TB 3 to FW800 does not exist (yet...) as TB 3 is very new.
4. The FW800 to FW400 cable (Not an adapter)
5. The 828.

I was quite surprised it actually worked... given I had read so many posts about attempts and frustrations.

I've never used non-Apple adapters so I don't have one to test with my setup.

I think your issue is your FW400 cable and the 800/400 adapter.

For your Thunderbolt 2 mac, I would suggest you try an Apple TB 2 to Firewire 800 adapter connected to a quality FW800 to FW400 cable (not adapter) and then plug the FW400 end of that cable into your 828.

Turn on the 828 before you restart the Mac so the device is seen during the port ping routine of the startup process.

If it works, all is good - if it doesn't, you could always return the adapter or try another cable...?

When I was searching for a FW cable, I read a lot of posts about how inexpensive FW800 to FW400 "adapters" (not cables) were the problem when folks were trying to connect pretty much everything FW to modern Macs. Video cameras, old iPods, older hard drives, other audio/video interfaces, scanners, etc. The common idea stated when people were reviewing the FW800 to 400 cables was that the cable worked when the FW800/400 adapter did not.

[seekir]

Interesting. I'll see if I can find a 800/400 cable to try. Thanks for the information.

[seekir]

bakkumd:

The common idea stated when people were reviewing the FW800 to 400 cables was that the cable worked when the FW800/400 adapter did not.

I ordered and received a cable to try instead of the adapter, but MOTU Audio setup still doesn't see my 828, nor does it show in the mac's sound input menu.

[mikehalloran]

USB-C is Thunderbolt three

No, it is not. The current MacBook Pro and iMacs do carry TB3 through the USB C port. Other Macs with USB C, including the MacBook Air, do not (Apple just says TB—probably TB1).

I just checked and the entry MacBook has no Thunderbolt at all over its USB C port. USB C equipped Macs with Thunderbolt do need the cable chain that you described.

High Sierra installs have path corruption issues (I've done over 30). If you see alias icons that have taken on a generic shape, don't wonder, you're affected, too. A Safe Boot fixes this. Boot with the Shift key down, release the key and log into your User account when prompted, reboot after your desktop icons have refreshed. This takes awhile so be patient. This has fixed this issue for some users. If the procedure sounds familiar, it was called rebuilding the desktop on my Mac+.

In AudioMidi Setup, my 828mkII was greyed out. I deleted the icon and it came back as it should. This is also the path issue but I had done it before I had noticed the generic icons.