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I've got an original Digidesign MBox that I haven't used in a couple years. I just discovered that Avid has discontinued support for the original MBox.

I don't want to use ProTools; I just want to use the MBox as a simple USB audio interface for Audacity/Garageband. The last standalone driver Digidesign produced was for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Is there any way I can get this device working with OS X 10.7 Lion?

It just seems like a waste to have perfectly good hardware without even open source driver support.

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  • Have you tried it without installing the driver? Some such devices seem to work with generic drivers. I've got a Presonus Firepod at home that connects with Snow Leopard quite nicely. I have never installed a driver for it.
    – Warrior Bob
    Oct 25, 2011 at 21:44
  • Yeah. It doesn't show up as an interface in GarageBand or Audacity. PreSonus could be a nice alternative for me.
    – jkooker
    Oct 27, 2011 at 16:20
  • That's too bad, but it was worth a shot. I usually advise people to stay a year or so behind the technology curve for audio, just so that all of the drivers can catch up. Audio companies always seem slow about updates to me. My favorite DAW had all kinds of problems when Lion came out so I stuck with Snow Leopard.
    – Warrior Bob
    Oct 27, 2011 at 17:26
  • Good advice, @WarriorBob. In the meantime, this guy claims to have the MBox working with Pd and Soundflower. I might investigate that, before I ditch the MBox and grab a PreSonus AudioBox USB.
    – jkooker
    Oct 27, 2011 at 17:46
  • Choosing an interface to match your software is an adventure in and of itself but is beyond the scope of this question. Hit me up in chat sometime if you want to talk interfaces, I've done that a couple of times. :)
    – Warrior Bob
    Oct 27, 2011 at 17:56

3 Answers 3

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I haven't tried it, but folks on the Avid forums say Ploytec offers a paid, working driver. They offer a free demo version.

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    The paid version is approximately $57 US, instead I followed the directions in this video youtube.com/watch?v=rDrREyYzYo4, and was able to get the drivers to work on OS X 10.8.2 with Garageband 5.1 and Ableton. The only catch is that once you install the driver from CNET, launch GB and wait... you'll be prompted to go to PACE, download the DRMware and before you launch GB or Ableton you need to start Digi CoreAudio Manager first, otherwise GB or Ableton will take a really long time to startup.
    – snarkyname77
    Apr 19, 2013 at 10:32
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I'm posting this because I just went through the same issue with OS X 10.7.5 on my macbook pro and my original MBox.

DoktorHauser above is correct. I was able to use the generic driver for original MBox on OS X Lion. download it from http://www.usb-audio.com/usb-audio_2.1.7.dmg and install.

I was then able to choose "MBox Demo" from System applet > Audio > Input and am now able to use my original MBox with Garageband which ships with OS x for free instead of laying out hundreds of dollars for a new MBox and Pro Tools 10.

Hope this helps someone.

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  • I've tried that twice. Both times I get a beep. I change my audio preferences to Mbox Demo and it beeps about every 30 seconds. Any idea how to fix that? I'm running 10.6.8. At the moment it's just iTunes but I switched all of my sound to the Mbox instead of the built-in. So it'll be for my Logic and Garageband also.
    – user3225
    Nov 30, 2012 at 2:22
  • usb-audio.com/download.html this will break down where the beep in coming from
    – user20204
    Jan 22, 2017 at 8:33
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As far as i know the MBox is not an CoreAudio device, so first try this driver: Download

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