Connecting Multiple Motu Firewire Interfaces - MOTU UltraLite-mk3 Hybrid User Manual

CONNECTING MULTIPLE MOTU FIREWIRE
INTERFACES
You can daisy-chain up to four MOTU FireWire
interfaces on a single FireWire bus, with the
restrictions described in the following sections.
Most computers have only one built-in FireWire
bus (even if it supplies multiple FireWire sockets).
Mac
FireWire
FireWire
FireWire
FireWire
Figure 3-10: Connecting multiple MOTU FireWire audio interfaces.
Multiple interfaces cannot be bus-powered
Do not run the UltraLite-mk3 under bus power
when connecting it with other devices to the same
FireWire bus. See "Power options" and "Bus power
requirements" on page 23.
Multiple interfaces in MOTU Audio Setup
MOTU Audio Setup displays the settings for one
interface at a time. To view the settings for an
interface, click its tab as shown below in
Figure 3-11.
26
Figure 3-11: To view the settings for an interface, click its tab.
Synchronizing multiple interfaces
Mac OS X provides an advanced, flexible driver
model that allows multiple Core Audio drivers to
be active at one time, accessed by multiple
applications simultaneously. For example, you can
run both FireWire and PCI audio interfaces at the
same time, accessing all of their inputs and outputs
from your host audio application — or even
multiple applications — simultaneously. You can
828mk3 or other
even take advantage of Mac OS X's aggregate device
FireWire device
with multiple
driver feature, which allows you to create a unified
FireWire ports
"meta device" out of several different audio
interfaces. The aggregate device presents to your
host software all of the inputs and outputs of the
included devices.
An important feature of this flexible driver model is
that multiple drivers can be synchronized to one
another in order to remain resolved to each
another. Without synchronization, the audio
streams being handled by each interface might
drift with respect to one another. For example, the
audio tracks playing back through the
UltraLite-mk3 might drift out of sync with the
audio tracks playing back through your 2408mk3
PCI interface. Synchronizing them to each other
ensures that they remain as tightly and
continuously phase-locked as if they were
operating as one unified interface.
Resolving to other Core audio drivers
So if you combine the UltraLite-mk3 with other
interfaces for the playback and/or recording of
multiple audio streams (that must remain
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