Recently I bought this great mixer. Apparently Ploytec, the manufacturer of the audio interface used, has not been keeping their drivers up to date. After blood, sweat and tears I was able to reverse engineer Ploytecs weird but clever PCM communication and cobble together a driver.
The driver is made for efficiency and allows for incredibly low latency (< 2 ms).
Currently only Linux, but now we have something working in open-source land I should be able to cobble something together for macOS and Windows, too.
Have you managed to set up a driver for Windows as well? I’m running Windows 11 with Rekordbox. The Xone driver works but it’s not very stable. It’s a shame, because the mixer is still the best out there in my humble opinion.
This is great news! If this ends in a stable updated Windows driver I’d be willing to throw in a big cup of coffee with chocolate on top. I’m still running on Windows 10 to increase the chances to keep that old driver halfway stable. On my machine it reserves a constant portion on the cpu as soon as it is connected. So I have to give it quite a bit of Buffer headroom to avoid clicks and pops. Running okay with Virtual DJ which itself is pretty cpu friendly.
The DB4 is a forgotten masterpiece for which there are unfortunately very little chances to see similar concept bravery again in the DJ tech market these days. Everything has to look and feel club standard
The DB4 is one of the best mixers I have ever owned (and I’ve owned a few - some were crap }. To say it’s amazing is an understatement.
it’s downfall is the crap drivers.
Its great that someone has the time and patience to develop a new driver that might even fool Serato?
Look forward to trying it on Windows :-}
Many Thanks
Very impressive work, I don’t know how you managed to do this?? You must have put in some serious blood, sweat and tears to get this functional. Shame A&H didn’t put in the same effort…
Wondering if this will work on the new Mac M1, M2 chip laptops and their latest OS??
Any update on Windows 11 driver progression? Can you install the old Windows 10 version on Windows 11??
Looking to update my PC desktop and Mac Laptop, but don’t want loose my beloved DB4 mixer, in the process!
Well, the Linux driver was fun and easy to develop. Having access to all the source code really makes a difference.
The macOS driver was unpleasant to develop to say the least. Blood, sweat and tears indeed. I did a writeup on Reddit about it: Reddit - Dive into anything. It still needs working on streaming stability and still needs MIDI. As it’s DriverKit it needs at least macOS 11 (Big Sur). It might also work on macOS 10.15 (Catalina) but I have not tested it yet. It works on M-series Mac’s and should even in theory even work on iOS devices.
The Linux driver is the most stable, possibly better than the original drivers.
I will start on a Windows driver once Linux and macOS are finished.
Thanks so much for creating this driver. I’m wondering if you’re planning to release a version that can run without disabling SIP. I tried installing it but couldn’t get it running, and I would also like to avoid lowering my system’s security if possible. I imagine it might be pretty involved to get the driver properly signed so that it runs natively.
Pretty involved indeed, but for all the wrong reasons. To get any application signed in the Apple ecosystem I would need to join the Apple Developer program which would cost me $99/year. Even if I would be willing to spent that, I would also need to beg for the proper DriverKit entitlements at Apple. This involves them allowing me to release signed drivers for a device I don’t manufacture. The USB Vendor ID belongs to Ploytec or possibly Allen&Heath, so maybe they are interested in this proof of concept and to get this codesigned.
I’m struggling to make it work on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Doesn’t anybody success to work? I made every steps, Ubuntu recognize XONE DB4, but on all channel output sound is terrible aka ultra distorsioned.
mischa85 please help! I pay you if i get to work properly on Ubuntu.
Is the DB4 audio interface still running on old firmware (pre < 1.3.9)? I might have botched up something in the BULK transfer mode on the Linux driver. I’ll take a look into it, but I need to downgrade my device to an older firmware then. In the meantime: Allen&Heath released an firmware update for the audio interface to address the issues on older Macbooks. The Ploytec updater is part of the device drivers, look for FWUpdater_XONE_DB4_v1.4.1.zip.
In case people aren’t aware, Ploytec have also just released a USB interface device that offers compatibility with these legacy devices - you can find out more here: https://www.ploytec.com/revival/
Yes, it was a coincidence to see this appear on Kickstarter right around the time I put the project on github. Markus from Ploytec has been very helpful answering my questions about how to speak to the interface and had some good tips too. So now we’re in the fortunate situation there’s multiple ways to get these legendary mixers to work again.
Sorry for delay, mean while, i must to find a windows computer to flash audio firmware. Yes, that’s was the problem. When I bought the mixer, was audio firmware 1.4.1. But unfortunately doesn’t work on AMD Ryzen 5. So i flashed back to 1.3.9. Now i flashed back to 1.4.1 to work perfectly on Intel i7, Ubuntu Studio! Thank you, payment was made.
Thank you so much for the coffee! Firmware 1.3.9 does BULK and 1.4.1 does INTERRUPT modes. I downgraded my DB4 to check and BULK mode now works fine on both Linux and macOS.
