Hi all,
Like a lot of you, I was stuck with a Xone:DB4 that stopped working as a USB audio interface once I moved to an Apple Silicon Mac. The last official Mac driver (v3.4.9) is Intel only and relies on a kernel extension, so it can’t run on M-series Macs at all.
So I built an unofficial driver that gets the DB4 working again on current macOS.
This is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Allen & Heath. Please don’t contact A&H support about it. Use at your own risk.
What it is
- A user space CoreAudio driver (the same kind of plug-in many modern interfaces use)
- No kernel extension, no Recovery Mode, no SIP changes
- Native Apple Silicon, universal build (Intel included)
- Standard double-click
.pkginstaller, uninstaller included - The DB4 shows up in Audio MIDI Setup as “Xone:DB4 (Donny HAL)”, 8 in / 8 out at 48 kHz, plus a Xone:DB4 MIDI device
Install
- Run
XoneDB4-Driver.pkg - It isn’t notarized by Apple yet, so the first time: right-click → Open, or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway
- Plug in the DB4 and select it in your DAW / recording app
Credits
This stands on the shoulders of two open source projects, and they deserve the credit for the hard parts:
- MCDShema/xone: the Apple Silicon CoreAudio driver for the Xone:4D, which this is a port of
- mischa85/Ozzy: the reverse engineering of the Ploytec USB protocol used by the DB4/4D
The DB4 specific part was mostly device matching plus one USB setup fix that was stopping macOS from bringing up the DB4’s audio interfaces.
Get it
Prebuilt installer, pay what you want from $25: https://donnydb4.com
Feedback welcome
If you try it, please reply with your Mac model, macOS version and DB4 firmware, and whether everything worked. Reports from Intel Macs and other DB4 firmware versions are especially useful.
And to the mods: could we get a xone:db4 tag? There doesn’t seem to be one yet.
Thanks, and happy mixing!