Yamaha makes USB-based digital mixers. USB doesn't have the same daisy-chain topology, so devices will still present themselves as distinct instances. Mac has the concept of aggregate interfaces which I'm not sure Windows has all the same hooks to deal with multiple audio sources in the same way Mac does. What you can do is mix everything in analog (as many analog channels as your mixer supports) then send the analog data to Montage's A/D Input (in stereo) from the mixer's balanced outputs and only use Montage's single USB connection instead of also having the mixer's digital connection routed to your computer.

You could also get a USB-interface mixer (Like the MG12XU - or anything else) and use it as the audio interface exclusively connected to your computer through USB - then route only analog audio out of Montage to the mixer - and all your other keyboards analog to the mixer as well.

Depends on if you want to "squish" down the Montage to left-and-right channels only and leave all your other keyboards as their own L+R USB feed - or if you want to have all the PARTs of Montage on their own USB "channels" while squishing down all your external gear into a single mix of L+R.

What you have going now you have "both" - I get that. Not sure if the option to pre-mix your external (non-Montage) keyboards and feed into Montage is going to work for you or not.

Thanks Jason,

Although the physical transport mechanism is much different between USB and 1394, it should still be possible for the Steinberg USB driver to surface all audio channels from all compatible devices at once just like the 1394 driver does with the n12 and xs8.

I was hoping someone on here might have some experience with having a Montage and a Steinberg audio interface both active at the same time and if the USB driver can surface all of the audio ports in one aggregate. If the driver is engineered to do so, it should be able to do it.

But therein lies the question!

In the meantime you can still "get by" using the equipment you have and analog feed all non-Montage keyboards into Montage's A/D input and deliver, digitally, that audio content through Montage as an audio interface along with the Montage content.

No need to purchase anything else - just using the N12 purely in the analog domain and leaving the digital conversion to Montage.

This may not accomplish the isolation you want - but you could could also delegate digital conversion to just the N12 and feed in Montage's Main L&R to the N12 if PART-level isolation is not needed with the Montage.

Given feedback from other users concerning the drivers - i do not think they take multiple devices and present a combined audio stream. But it's worth getting a more clear story.

Thanks Jason,

Yeah this one unknown is what gives me pause on the Montage. I want so badly to ditch 1394. And if I get a Montage, I plan on selling the xs8. It would be a bummer to lose functionality in the process.

Rather than mos everything down to 2 channels and feed in through Montage inputs, I'd probably just switch back and forth. That is, record everything from Montage, with potentially one instrument fed to Montage inputs. Then switch over to 1394 and bring in everything else via the n12. Isolation is important to me for mastering purposes, etc.

I forgot to mention, I love the transport controls on the n12.

Yeah, transport controls you're going to be losing until (or if ever) Montage adds some form of transport control mode(s) which it currently lacks. Considering you're already using something else (not the keyboard) this may not matter.

You may not mind losing this:

The XS allows for you to sample and edit keybanks, play mode, loop points, etc.
The XS has a more capable sequencer - although you likely use software for this.
The XS has a knob to turn to change tempo which can be useful for real-time hardware control - although you can use the DAW to do this post-record.

There are a few other "gotchas" of lost functionality I don't have my notes with me.

I think you stand to gain more than lose - certainly from what I understand of your usage model - but it does depend on what's important to you.

I'm looking to upgrade my home studio with a Montage 8. However, I have some questions.

I currently have an XS8 and an n12 both daisy chained on a 1394 bus connected to Win10. The beauty of that is that I can plug in my vintage synths and other analog equipment into the n12 and via ASIO all of the channels from the XS8 and the n12 are presented to Cubase. That's pretty cool because I can have midi tracks driving the tone generator of the XS8 and an Oberheim OB-8 (for example) along with other instruments all at the same time while all of the audio data is arriving in Cubase over ASIO all at once. The magical component making this possible is the n12 mixer.

Ah, the n12 mixing console, one of my favorites. The Sound is unbelievable quality. Both the XS8 and the n12 worked together in a system - used the same FW driver and made it easy to communicate both MIDI and audio to and from your computer fairly hassle free.

However, the downside of my setup is 1394. It's a dying/dead transport and nobody (Microsoft, etc.) want to support it any longer and would just assume it die ASAP. After all, Montage does not have 1394, and who is surprised by that. 🙂

Truth be known FW was always an Apple protocol so it never did have the full (whole-hearted) support of the entire Windows side of things. It was ideal (and the only practical/affordable protocol at the time) to move lots of channels of MIDI and Audio between multiple devices, and it was this way for many, many years.

Oh, USB was always plenty fast enough, but it did not have the bandwidth to handle multiple streams of data going in different directions to meet musical demands. That is, not until recently, in the scheme of things it's recent: (within the time between the XS8 being discontinued and now).

So now that USB has the bandwidth to be more useful for musical purposes, the final nail in the coffin for FW is being put in place. It was about 3 or 4 years ago Yamaha introduced our first multiple channel USB audio interface in a product: the 01v96i... We now have "Live" Mixing Consoles that move 34 audio channels to and from a computer (but as you noted, we do not make a recording console (desk) for this purpose at this time).

When I get a Montage 8, it would appear that I'm screwed until a successor to the n12 mixer which uses a compatible USB transport to the Montage arrives on the scene. I won't be able to have multiple midi track in Cubase drive both the Montage and other external instruments and have them all arrive via the same ASIO driver to cubase all at once. It seems I will have to flip back and forth between ASIO drivers (USB for Montage and 1394 for n12) to record all instruments.

The Montage is capable of 32 audio bus outputs and 6 audio bus returns via a single USB cable and utilizes the same USB connection for MIDI. (So very much, as you will understand, Yamaha is doing much the same thing we did via FW now through USB... with the small difference that USB does not daisy chain devices) and computer protocol for audio went the direction of peer-to-peer rather than networking (at least at musician friendly price-points).

I suppose an alternative is to get one of the Steinberg USB audio interfaces available. If I do, will the Steinberg/Yamaha USB driver present the channels from the Montage and the Steinberg audio interface to Cubase all at once through the same ASIO source?

Nope. You could certainly create a new workflow that would allow you to function close to what you were used to ... there will be the differences in how USB does things and how today's computers deal with incoming audio.

Both the Steinberg USB audio interfaces, like the UR824, and the Montage use the same Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver... the current situation with Windows is you will need to select one device that is going to act as the main (principal) audio interface (which will route signals Out to your monitor speakers).

Rather than mos everything down to 2 channels and feed in through Montage inputs, I'd probably just switch back and forth. That is, record everything from Montage, with potentially one instrument fed to Montage inputs. Then switch over to 1394 and bring in everything else via the n12. Isolation is important to me for mastering purposes, etc.

This will work (switching back and forth) and is not difficult (a few clicks) because Cubase does allow you to SWITCH ASIO devices (hot-swap) mid-Project without even having to shut down or close anything.

While you still have the FW (n12) and you still have a way to get FW into your Windows computer... you are good to go. But as we started this post... going forward you may want to consider what's changed since 2007....

But just some recommendations (take them into consideration):
You are correct, going forward, you will not be able to adapt future computer hardware back to FW (eventually that will go completely away for all practical purposes), so the handwriting is clearly visible on that wall. However, consider how many times you've updated your computer hardware in the last 10 years (using 2007 as the base year since it is when the XS hit the market). If you are like most of us, several times.

So in your next upgrade of computer hardware you might want to take into account where audio systems for the computer has evolved and how that will impact your workflow. Current, peer-to-peer interaction between external devices and the computer, in general, means that each device connected to the computer is addressed by the computer as a separate device. There is an exception...

Depending on the computer type your options vary: Macintosh computers allow for you to build an "Aggregate Audio Device" which then is addressed as a single entity - (which is what you are basically after)... With a Windows computer you will not be able to access and record from multiple devices simultaneously in the manner you were doing via FW. You will need to hot swap devices, and again that is a viable workflow (in use everyday in studios all over the world).

On a Windows computer, while the Montage and the UR units (from Steinberg), use the same Yamaha Steinberg USB ASIO Driver, you will still need to choose just one of them to be the principal Audio Device (the one that is connected to your speakers). The Driver will ask you to select either one or the other.

Fortunately, switching devices will not be difficult...

On the Mac, you would create an Aggregate Audio Device that included the 32 audio channels of the Montage and as many channels as you want from your other audio device - if the UR824 for example you could have 8 analog inputs simultaneously coming from that device... so your Aggregate audio device would be 40 simultaneous Inputs to Cubase. This is generally used when recording multiple musicians simultaneously... if it is just you... then the practical thing is to probably swap devices.

The UR824 is built from the same components you are already familiar with from the n-series mixers... The same Mic Pre-amps, pristine audio path, and effect processing, so it will be very much be like having a rack mounted n-series mixer (albeit 8 analog inputs instead of 12). And there's the lack of transport controls - (the best transport device for controlling Cubase is the Steinberg CC121 - just FYI...)

You can use either one as your principal Audio Device... just realize for monitoring purposes you will need to have the analog output of one device connected to analog inputs of the other. Recording will always be digital direct from the device.

Summary: Windows does not offer the ability to have multiple audio interfaces simultaneously (at this time).
Macintosh does have a solution (Aggregate Audio Device).

It is a difficult thing to switch platforms and I do not put that among the recommendations without knowledge of how huge a thing that is... but this is reality in today's computer situation. Not knowing much about the details of your workflow, you seem to have a very good handle on the changes you would need to make. Switching ASIO devices is not untenable. It is doable. It is not ideal... What you are 'losing' (for the half-empty view) is the ability to print all your audio tracks at one time... which is not necessarily a big deal - versus losing the ability to keep recorded items SEPARATE.

(Just FYI) the small format (2 channel USB) audio mixers are for "live" you are just capturing the gig as a stereo file. Not for what you are doing. The TF (Touch Flow) 34 channel in/out USB consoles are again "live" consoles... not for what you are doing.

With the 32 bus outputs of the Montage, you will be busy enough (living in routing heaven -seriously, its awesome take the 16 bus of the FW and add another 16!!!) sending items were you need. If you are also recording MIDI then of course, repeatability is not an issue... so recording or rending to AUDIO in several passes becomes a part of your workflow.

If you have questions, please post back here. There are no "Gotchas" if you go in with your eyes wide open and informed!

Thanks Bad Mister for the thorough reply!

That helps confirm my assumptions and also, I think this post will be very helpful for answering these types of questions for other folks. This level of detail is generally not published anywhere else. It would be cool if Yamaha had some information available in official documentation somewhere.

Even though USB cannot be daisy chained as 1394 can, there is nothing preventing the Steinberg Yamaha USB driver from allowing the option of presenting all compatible devices' channels in one aggregated collection via a single ASIO device. After all, it's just software at that point. Perhaps we could feed that request back to the driver developers as a possible future feature. It sure would be nice! 🙂

As a software developer myself (day job at a very, very large software company 🙂 ), I've been bouncing around the idea of creating a VST plug-in that is effectively an ASIO pass-thru plug-in. The purpose would be to surface an ASIO device's channels via VST into the DAW. I'll speak from a Cubase perspective, since that's what I use. But basically it would allow Cubase to aggregate ASIO devices. Cubase would be setup to use whatever primary ASIO device is desired. Then the VST would be used to aggregate any other ASIO devices. This would not come without its own set of challenges though.

One question about the Mac ASIO device aggregation capabilities...... are there any gotchas when it comes to syncing clocks across the aggregated ASIO devices? Or does the Mac handle that smoothly?

Thanks!

PS -- I did bite the bullet and acquired my very own shiny new Montage 8!

First, congrats on the Montage! Enjoy! And you are very welcome, we try to get information out - as you can imagine it's a challenge.

You're the software engineer here, whether it is an easy or hard thing to do, all I can offer is, if it's so easy, how come... 🙂

Yamaha has attempted over the years to create systems that interfaced with computers when connected, but could stand alone when not connected. The amount of resistance received from the computer makers side of things was significant. They did not want to commit resources in developing systems that used the computer to configure but then could run either with or without the computer attached. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but let's just say, I probably could understand that it was the thought that something could actually take place in the absence of the computer, that was a scary thought for them. But that was a totally different thing...

It is very helpful to have all of your instruments connected and available as audio sources, it takes a worry off your shoulders when being 'the musician' (and refuses the time spent playing 'the technician'). While MIDI as a protocol works among multiple devices from various manufacturers, audio has had no such single protocol... but not from a lack of effort is what I guess I'm trying to say...

Whether or not the Aggregate thing can be done at the driver... hey, I'm a geek but a music gear geek, but not a software-coding geek. If you do find a way to make your idea a reality, that would be great - as the options now are what they are. I always understood it to be a limitation on the computer side, not the driver side, but then if you've got a way to do what you say... that'd be cool.

On the Mac side, you build the Aggregate audio device by including all the potential inputs. All clock sync issues are handled by the Mac. You may want to contact Steinberg via your MySteinberg Account concerning ASIO and your idea for Cubase. They would at least be able to give you some better feedback about your idea.

Speaking of conspiracy theories: ... maybe disclose the idea to Steinberg under NDA.