Korg Forums

princeali · Joined: 17 Jan 2008 Posts: 36

I have some questions.. Do I need to buy the EXB-FW for my Korg M3 to fully use it with Pro Tools LE 7.1?

and what does it changes overall because right now im doing it with the USB 2.0

also when I try to record with my mic when my M3 is plugged it doesnt work but as soon as I unplug it it works.. (I have a Mbox2)

thx for your time !

princeali · Joined: 17 Jan 2008 Posts: 36

Coronado · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 7:24 pm Post subject:

Your Mbox is basically a 2 in/2 out interface. So.. when your Korg is connected, there are no channels for your mic.. seems logical, no? I don't know the software of the Mbox, but it is possible that you can choose which connection to use in the mixer/control panel of the Mbox. But it will not be possible to "hear" all connections at the same time. May be.. your S/Pdif connection may be of use here. It is possible to connect your M3 through S/Pdif. In Protools you can select which audio device to use, probably there will be a separate listing for S/Pdif of your MBox. If that's the case this could be a way to connect all at the same time. Good thing is, you will have a better quality sound, because the M3 is grabbed digitally at 48 khz and no A/D conversion takes place when you record the M3. Bad thing is, your M3 has optical S/Pdif and your MBox has coaxial.. You'll need converters. One for the in-section and one for the out- A good alternative (I use) is the Behringer Utramatch Pro 2496 (approx. 130 dollars). A great tool which let's you connect everything, convert sample rates real time and as a bonus adds a stereo in and out to your set up. For this money.. incredible!
The firewire board, gives you not only an extra midi in/out, but a 6out/2in audio interface. You will be able to have all 6 channels of your korg on your protools, digitally. Besides that, you can send any 2 channels (or stereo) from your computer to the M3. To sample, record, or otherwise process.
If you open the M3 editor plugin, normally the sound will come out of the M3 itself. With the firewire board, it behaves like any plugin and gives you the sound in your protools channel(s).

Hope this helps..
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princeali · Joined: 17 Jan 2008 Posts: 36

rickb · Joined: 13 Aug 2007 Posts: 10 Location: Boston Area

I was surprised my EXB-FW worked with my Digi 002 at all. I fully expected Logic and Live to work with and see 6 channels, but wasn't sure Pro Tools would be OK with another FireWire device on the bus. But it works! I just tried this today, so I haven't finished playing with it.

However, I only see two channels of audio when using Pro Tools LE with my Digi 002 and the M3's EXB-FW. Perhaps the RTAS version of the M3 Plug-In can only handle stereo? Maybe there's a multi-channel (more than stereo) version of the plug-in coming?

I just got my EXB-FW card, so bear with me if I'm missing something obvious.

It would be nice if Korg posted some demo sessions showing off the M3 being used with the EXB-FW card in popular DAWs, such as Pro Tools, Live, Logic, etc. Yamaha does this with some things and it's very helpful.

My first reaction is Korg might need to enable more EXB-FW specific features, or maybe add a specific EXB-FW routing page, or at least expand the documentation & examples.

By far the best investment so far has been the Radias card. The jury is still out, in my case, as to whether or not the EXB-FW is going to be that useful to me. The M3 plug-in editor works fine over USB.

One aggravating issue I ran into: When you ONLY use the FireWire cable, sending & receiving Combis, Progs, SYSEX, etc, is VERY slow. It seems I have to set it to use the USB for that. Anyone else see this happen?

Again, my hope is that Korg release an update to fix some of these things and maybe an example session or document with more detail about the EXB-FW.

Good luck,

Rick
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Korg M3 w/ EXB-Radis, Kurzweil PC3, Yamaha Motif ES6, Roland V-synth, Access Virus TI Snow, Moog LP.

Coronado · Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2008 11:55 pm Post subject:

Coronado

rickb · Joined: 13 Aug 2007 Posts: 10 Location: Boston Area

Coronado,

I think you misunderstood my posting completely. I have no idea why you're talking about IRQs and multiple FW cards, etc. These things have absolutely nothing to do with what I said in my posting.

I merely said I could only get two channels (stereo) from the M3 Plug-In using Pro Tools 7.4.2 and wondered if there was a forthcoming update that would do more then 2 channels.

Also, I'm not sure you have the facts straight on FireWire versus USB. I used the Yamaha MLAN over FireWire and it transmitted MIDI very quickly over FireWire, as do other systems using FireWire. I would need to read the MIDI over FireWire spec to double-check this.

ANYWAY, forget about all that.. Good news, tonight I created a Pro Tools session and got 6 channels (3 stereo pairs) coming from the M3!

I'm still have a bit of trouble with the routing (UI pages could lay this out more straightforward). Also, it seems I can only get 2 of the three stereo pairs at the same time.... But I'm making progress.

I'll keep working on it and see if I can't get that 3rd stereo pair. It's got to be a routing issue or a configuration issue in the M3 I'm missing.

R
_________________
Korg M3 w/ EXB-Radis, Kurzweil PC3, Yamaha Motif ES6, Roland V-synth, Access Virus TI Snow, Moog LP.

Coronado · Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:44 am Post subject:

jg:: · Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 1:04 pm Post subject:

I could be wrong, but I believe that large sysex dumps take just as long on mLan as they do with M3-firewire.

jg::

Coronado · Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 1:02 am Post subject:

jerrythek · Platinum Member Joined: 28 Jan 2002 Posts: 2931