d8b Forum

Hello everyone,

My name is Eddos and im from the netherlands.
Yesterday i bought a mackie d8b and for me this is my first mixer.
I have a lot of questions and i don't know where to start.
I always made music with a computer, some genelec speakers and a rme fireface. My Daw is Ableton.

I try to figure out if its possible to hook the d8b on my fireface card and use its converters.
I also want to use the d8b as a big controller in ableton.
My d8b has 4 cards in the back 3 apogee digital I/O and 1 AES/EBU Card.

Thank you.

Does your D8B have an Apogee Sync Card? If you intend to hook the D8B into the Fireface and use the ADAT lightpipe connectors, you're going to need the Word Clock connected between the two units. Either could be the master. If there is no Apogee Sync card, it is going to make digital I/O between the D8B>RME>Computer running Ableton, problematic.

You don't tell what kind of Fireface. 400? 800? Big difference on how many channels you can pass back and forth, digitally. You can use the analog I/O between the units with nothing more than the proper cables. Did your D8B come with a MIDI connector adapter on the CPU? You're going to need one of those to get the D8B to follow MIDI Time Code from the Computer>RME>D8B chain and to send MMC back to the D8B>RME>Computer chain.

Does the D8B fire up? If so, what software version did it come with? You're going to want V5.1. There is a thread here on the subject of upgrading from v3 to 5.1. Mackie stopped giving out codes and Munk finally cracked it, so it is possible to upgrade without Mackie's complete lack of help. Read this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=928&start=410

Go to page 41 and look for Munkustrap's post.

Can you use it as a big controller for Ableton? Yes. By itself, the D8B is capable of mapping 128 MIDI controls either in or out. If you just want it to be a controller only, read the ProBox forum: viewforum.php?f=7

Munkustrap can give you help there.

Thanks for the feedback Frankh!

It has 3 apogee cards in the back of the mixer
The RME is the fireface 400
On the back of the computer from the d8b i see 3 cards:
1: a vga card
2: Internet (utp connection)
3: Big plastic block with two midi connections

Hey starts up normal and it says i have v3 installed, the faders don't move.
The guy who sold me the mixer had some problems with it. He had the common "fader problem" he told me. Hey used the d8b bridge.
I guess i purchased a broken mixer but im aware from this issue.
I want to bring it back to life if it's possible