Using REW with a DigiDesign Mbox

**BardOfBlasphemy** · **11-18-08, 07:24 AM**

Hi... I'm totally new to testing the acoustic response of a room but I really want to learn!

I use my laptop to record music. I'm currently planning on treating a room with bass traps etc and would like to compare a graph of before/after in terms of the dips and peaks in the range.

I own an Mbox2 by Digidesign. Can anyone tell me: has anyone had success using REW with that card?

Sorry if this has been asked before... i did a Search using the forum tools and couldn't find any references to this particular card.

If you have had success using it I would LOVE any help/tips!

**brucek** · **11-18-08, 08:23 AM**

Quote:

has anyone had success using REW with that card?

It will work fine with REW, given that it has all the features required.

Quote:

I'm currently planning on treating a room with bass traps etc and would like to compare a graph of before/after in terms of the dips and peaks in the range.

Waterfall and ETC will be the tools in REW to best evaluate the room treatment....

brucek

**BardOfBlasphemy** · **11-28-08, 02:06 AM**

Quote:

brucek wrote:

It will work fine with REW, given that it has all the features required.

hmmm... not so sure now... certainly the Mbox has the right number of inputs and outputs but REW isn't registering the MBox as an option for input or output. I probably should done a forum search first... it looks like a couple of people have had this problem.

I'm not sure what it means, but I think those DigiDesign products all use ASIO and, from what I can tell, REW doesn't support that.

Is there any way around this, anyone?

Quote:

brucek wrote:

Waterfall and ETC will be the tools in REW to best evaluate the room treatment....

brucek

Yes they sure will! Thanks for that advice. I've got myself an ECM8000 and nothing to run it through, at the moment... so frustrating!

**brucek** · **11-28-08, 08:34 AM**

Aren't you able to switch to WDM drivers?

Can you see the Mbox in your Windows Sounds and Audio devices properties?

**BardOfBlasphemy** · **11-28-08, 05:03 PM**

Thanks for the quick response

The Mbox appears as an option for sound output through the Control Panel. Even then there's a few hoops to jump through to get a program like REW to work with it. So with some buggering around I could probably get REW to play the sweep through my control room speakers. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, WDM only allows for sound output, not input. There's no Mbox option in the "recording" part of Control Panel. I don't think there's anything I can do to get it to record through the Mbox inputs.

It's a DigiDesign thing, not REW... by restricting access to recording through ASIO they're making sure that you're only going to record using their software, ProTools (plus a few affiliates like Reason). Well, that's my conspiracy theory anyhow

Unless anyone's got a golden ray of inspiration for me I think I'll have to buy something like the Behringer UCA202 and use either the MBox or my Korg TP2 as a preamp for the ECM8000. It just seems daft to have a $700 card and then need a $50 card to finish the job!

**JohnM** · **11-28-08, 07:31 PM**

Maybe there are tricks similar to those people have used with Emu 0404? See this post and this one.

**BardOfBlasphemy** · **11-29-08, 10:12 PM**

Thanks for the extra tips

Didn't help though... the output options for ProTools are either straight to the monitor speakers or to the internal Bus (for effects sends etc)... there's no option to send output to an external source like there was for the Emu404.

It makes me wonder, if/when I upgrade, whether I should be looking into another brand to get the job done.

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