Re: Drivers Mackie Onyx Satellite For Windows 10 64-bit
Anastacia Iacono
I've got a feeling that it's something silly like, if I plug in just using the pod, then it will only recognise that particular part of the interface and then when you revert back to the station it doesn't.... like some sort of memory problem?
I have been using my Mackie Onyx Satellite since 2006 with great success and few problems on Windows XP sp2 with Adobe Audition. There were minor ASIO problems on earlier versions of Audition that required "ASIO-4-All" to solve but AA 3.0 does just fine with Mackie's ASIO drivers on their own.
One of the first things I wanted to do was re-install Adobe Audition 3.0 and the Mackie Onyx Satellite. Audition reinstalled just fine and I installed the new v 1.7 Mackie drivers that support Win 7. I fired everything up but the interface wasn't connecting to the Firewire card although the computer could see both of them and the the respective drivers were reporting that the hardware was functioning normally.
After searching the net and finding a number of people complaining that they couldn't get their Mackies to work properly on Win 7 64-bit (with the same symptoms I had) I was starting to lose faith. Then I dug a little deeper and started finding people who were able to make their systems work fine on 64-bit Vista and Win 7!
In my case (and other cases), the "secret" was to get to the place in Win 7 that allows you to "Load an Updated Driver" for the Firewire card. Then select that you want to NOT search for a new driver but manually select your driver from a list. Windows presents you with a list of Firewire drivers. The first one on the list is the driver you are already using (or similar to it). The second one on the list is the same description, but with the tag "(Legacy)" at the end. This is the one you want because the Satellite itself is considered to be "Legacy" hardware.
Everything instantly started to work properly and all that was left was configuring the software for what I needed. I recorded Stereo music off the internet, mono microphone audio from my console "voice-over" microphone, guitar tracks through the instrument input and mixed a 16-track live band recorded on a Mackie 1604. Everything work as I had hoped and I have yet to run into any glitches and have even better latency performance (although I haven't measured it yet to know how much better).
I just wanted to update this thread as the Mackie Onyx Satellite is STILL a viable piece of hardware and I was ecstatic that I could continue my satisfying and fruitful association with this wonderful example of audio engineering. I have never used the "pod" to do portable recording and the unit has been the hub of my computer's sound and recording system ever since I bought it. To fend off Mr. Murphy ("Murphy's Law"), I bought a second Satellite as a back-up some years back just before it was discontinued and this insurance policy has allowed my first unit to play for 5+ years without a single problem!
I am a happy long-term customer posting a continuing positive outcome to help offset the negative postings of those who were never able to get things working correctly. I am here to say it CAN be done!
Steve, I greatly appreciate the update!! Thanks so much for taking the time to post and help out other Satellite users. The only question: You say "In my case (and other cases), the 'secret' was to get to the place in Win 7 that allows you to 'Load an Updated Driver' for the Firewire card." So...how do you get "the place" in Windows 7?
FYI the "legacy firewire" driver option can often restore compatibility with older units like the Satellite. Some manufacturers are more forthcoming about this, and recommend specifically using the legacy driver.
This is the "magic bullet" that allowed my Mackie Onyx Satellite to work with my IEEE1394b (Texas Instrument chipset) card under Windows Home Premium 64-bit. I hope this helps someone. I found enough raw info on a Mackie forum to do this but it wasn't prominent, it was buried!
The legacy driver seems to be pretty inconsistent for people. It absolutely did NOT work with my system. I'm running Windows Home 64-bit with a TI-chipset (I also tried other chipsets). Ultimately, the satellite just wasn't consistently compatible with my system. It would drop the connection for any number of reasons no matter which driver I was using. Buyer beware if you're using Win 7.
One extra note: It just occurred to me that I saw that someone had problems with the Aero Graphic interface in Win 7 (and in Windows Vista apparently). To be on the safe side, I selected a "Classic" user-interface that bypasses the resource-hogging Aero interface. It isn't as pretty (and looks more like XP) but it is a low resource-drag design that might have helped stability in this matter on my system.
FWIW...I was installing Arturia's 32-bit Analog Factory with 64-bit Windows 7, and could not get it to work with any program. I asked Arturia and they said it wouldn't work with a 64-bit OS and host, and Cakewalk said the same thing when I inquired about getting it to show up in Sonar. But, then I installed it as an administrator and went for compatibility mode with XP SP3 - and it works perfectly. The mysteries of Windows 7...some programs just want to pretend they're not running under Windows 7
LOL! I am becoming even more convinced that all these Windows versions are simply DOS 6.22 with an elaborate security program to prevent you from finding out and they simply change the user interface occasionally in order to harvest our money!
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