[Rwp] A soundcard accessible?

[Patrick Perdue]

Yeah, the hardware is accessible, however, you still need the software 
for a few things, like changing clock, sample rate, buffer size, 
headphone routing, etc. The Audio Express is one of those interfaces you 
can't override the asio block size with Reaper as you can with most. 
Fortunately, these things are all accessible in the MOTU Audio Console, 
the basic control panel for the device, though the MOTU Cue-Mix FX 
software is not. With the Audio Express, the only things I've not really 
been able to do are invert the phase of channels, and making channel 
pairs link their volume controls, neither of which are a big deal to me, 
personally.

The MOTU MicroBook 2, which is a smaller interface based on the same 
idea, however, is more of a challenge, as it has far less hardware 
controls than the Audio Express. For example, the AE can be used as a 
small 4x4 (technically 4x6, I suppose,) stand-alone mixer away from a 
computer. Thus, you can route any input to any output all from the front 
panel, as well as creating submixes for each output within the hardware 
itself. The only two controls on the MicroBook 2 are input gain 
(controls either mic or line input, depending on which is selected, also 
toggles phantom power for the single XLR input,) and another knob that 
controls either the main or headphone out, depending on which has been 
toggled. If you want to do any routing, you have to use the inaccessible 
Cue-Mix FX.

I eventually resorted to having a sighted friend make some templates for 
me, as one of the few accessible parts of the software is switching presets.
The presets are all XML-based, so perhaps with a little time and effort, 
I could figure out the tags and change what I want.

For example, by default, with the MicroBook 2, the headphone out is it's 
own mix and routable output, meaning if you route something to main, it 
doesn't come across the headphone out. Maybe this is fine if you want 
two discrete mixes, but in a simple situation where you just want to 
plug in and go, it's annoying, since you have to change your DAW's 
output routing. There is an easy (if you can see) way to route things to 
the headphone mix, of course.
This is even possible accessibly with the same software and the AE 
through a menu bar option, but, while the AE and MicroBook 2 use the 
same software, those options are greyed out, and you have to go to 
another part of the mixer to accomplish this. I'm not sure why they 
didn't leave that well enough alone.

There is also no accessible way to control the dynamics processing in 
the MicroBook 2. Each channel and mix can have it's own dynamic 
compressor and parametric EQ. I actually don't think the Audio Express 
has this, but it's more flexible in every other respect.

On 2/4/2016 11:43 AM, Chris Smart wrote:
> At 11:30 AM 2/4/2016, you wrote:
>> The mark of the unicorn audio express. The hardware is totally
>> accessible. Get that, and you won't go back.
>
> Great to know this!
>
> Chris
>
>
>
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