Universal Audio Apollo X8 on Windows 11

So my 4U case arrived a few days ago & I plan to swap the components from the other case this weekend. I'll provide some pics as I go along with the rebuild.

Man, I tell you...it's messed up when you're the answer to other people's problems. I can deal with having to do what I'm advertising to do (small engine repair (ie: "snow throwers" during this time of year). But aside from that, I'm called on sometimes to deal with leaky & busted pipes due to them being frozen which is one of my handyman skills I possess. So if it's not my construction job requiring me to work overtime, along with these other odd & end things to do, I wonder...when will I get a chance to do me...lol.

Hopefully, this will be the weekend I can focus on rebuilding my PC & make some type of progress.

Lampdog wrote:It’s been REALLY cold up there this year. A little worse than last year. I remember it was still snowing in some places all the way to April.

Meanwhile, in San Diego here, there was major flooding this week. My area is fine, but on the way to work I saw so much damage, debris and wrecc’d vehicles.

So yep, playing with your gear early Sunday morn with a small glass of whiskey is a good morning imo.

Yeah, here in the DMV area we're being blessed with a few decent days, albeit we're expecting a lot of rain instead of the bone chilling cold & snow we've been getting the past couple of weeks.

But that's close to what I'll be doing Lamp. Except I'll hit the drink on the backend so I won't end up screwing up the build, lol.

Update: Tried a few things pertaining to getting this interface acknowledged with Win 11. It's being seen in my control panel, but that's about it.

So after putting this aside for awhile, I decided to see if it would work with a Mac, before making the decision to send it back as defective.

Ordered a used 2019 Macbook Pro, i7, 32 GB ram, 1TB storage. Will see it in one or two days. Never owned a Mac, but hopefully it will change my mindset on some things.

Lampdog wrote:Did you check Windows device manager and see if any drivers may be missing?

Yes. It's crazy Lamp because it's showing in the Device Mgr tree. There's two locations within Device Mgr showing it's there. However, it doesn't register within Windows itself...it's crazy. I followed the instructions UA posted on YT & did all I know to do. Sent a help ticket to UA but that's pretty useless at this point. They keep mentioning the TB cable which I've tried three so far.

I understand trying to get this up & running on Windows is a bit of a challenge. So I'll confirm if it's working or not once that Mac gets here Tuesday.

Good luck man!

Barely related... but just in the "I feel your pain space"... I've got two battery powered devices that are USB-C, and when I connect them directly with most USB-C cables there is a terrible grounding hum/noise that randomly comes in. Been living with it for a couple years, or working around it... just happened to try with a *different* USB-C cable the other day and the problem is gone with *that* cable. I know there are different specs for USB-C cable implementations... but these are some pretty basic devices and *ought* to be passing data over the cable digitally and not as an analog device. *Why* this particular cable makes a difference... no idea... it is nothing special... and probably of worse quality than other cables I have tried, but something is different... it works... and I guess that's all that matters.

So long story short... yeah... even though it ought not be a cable issue at this point... I suppose the TB cable might be the issue. Sounds so strange that Windows can see it. I wish you luck that the Mac is happier with it.

Thanks Tao. It very well could be as simple as finding the "right" thunderbolt cable. I need to find out first if it is a cable issue before shelling out $60 - $70 for another USB C/thunderbolt cable.

But I'll see if it's that, or something else. To be continued

Well, the laptop did arrive today. And of course I wasted no time getting it set up and connected.

It was a bit of a learning curve to get through since I've been a Windows user all my life...

Anyhow, the registration & firmware update went pretty smooth compared to the agony I went through with my PC. So after figuring out it wasn't a defective interface, I'll decide how I'm going to use it. I guess since Steinberg allows for the use of their s/w on multiple computers, I'll take that opportunity and utilize two daws and see how things workout.

BTW, the Mac OS is the minimum from what I'm hearing...Monterey 12.

Nice... with the firmware update out of the way... does the Windows PC work better now?

NearTao wrote:Nice... with the firmware update out of the way... does the Windows PC work better now?

Thanks Tao.

The firmware update was part of the registration process with the Mac.

The PC always ran smoothly, it just wouldn't go through the registration process. It got on my nerves for a moment because I kept buying parts such as an extra add on thunderbolt controller card and a couple of USB C/thunderbolt cables.

UA has a YT channel showing how to tweak the PC to make it compatible with the interface. They want you to use the wmd audio format. It just wasn't happening for some unknown reason.

After doing some investigating I found some interesting info. Obviously for anybody experiencing a similar scenario with the use of an external TB card, it's best to get a MB with a thunderbolt port already built in. This is different from one that states "Thunderbolt" ready, which only offers a "header" so you can add a thunderbolt card, like what I'm experiencing.

So after checking out the prices of these types of MB's I see that they're very expensive. I guess I have no other choice but to build another system if I want this to workout.

Oh well, here comes a new a processor & memory to add...