Question when using 2 different MOTU 828MKII FW

[Ken K]

Hello,

I tried this question with MOTU Support and they couldn't think of an answer to this question...I do appreciate their help and anyone else that may have something to suggest with this situation :

I've been using the Motu 828MKII Firewire for a couple of years now and I like it a lot. I use it for both recording and mixdown in my home studio and also when I play Live because it really makes my playback and loading of files, etc. more stable. That's another story though.

Rather than always having to disconnect and pack away the Motu for gigs, I decided to purchase a second one just for gigs. I do this with some other MIDI Interfaces as well and never had any issues with those. The other devices just recognize that the same model is plugged in and work fine.

The Motu units are both identical for software, etc. However, whenever I try to only use one or the other, it looks for 2 units instead of being interchangeable. If I do use the 2nd unit without plugging in the first one as well I have crashes, etc.

If I uninstall the Drivers for the first unit and install the second unit (same drivers) it will work on its own, but if I switch back to the first unit again I have to Uninstall those same Drivers and re-install them for the first unit. In other words, there must be something in the Motu that distinguishes that they are both different units,even though technically they are the same model and software version,even when only wanting to use one or the other, one at a time. I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this and if so how they got around it?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Mark S]

My experience also. Motu's drivers see multiple instances of the same thing. If you are in ASIO try WDM and see if the same thing happens.

Caveat: since I am using dissimilar Motu firewire units I was not altogether surprised when the driver wanted to install itself again for each unit. Asio only supports one instance at a time but should support hardware that USES the same driver.

This is why I suggest trying WDM.