I'm kind of embarrassed to admit to this, even though I know this community is anything if not incredibly helpful and encouraging to people of different skill sets and areas of expertise/and lack there of.
I didn't even know that Multiclient ASIO Soundcards existed or were natively supported by soundcards. I know that there are a lot of different software workarounds showing up that have been use this kind of interfacing especially with so many DAWs ditching rewire slaving completely for their own proprietary solutions, none of which seem to want to play well with the other ones. A few years ago I was fortunate enough that a very dear friend let me hold on to an mbox 2 that he had lying around. I used to really enjoy the simplicity of working with just a standard my 49-key keystudio keyboard and since I never was all that great of a session musician anyway, it allowed me to plug in my old cheapo guitar once in a while and it worked just fine. Before that I just used computer speakers on the ASIO4ALL budled into FL Studio (maybe it was Fruity Loops then) . Well, I have sort of been running into a myrad of limitations lately, not to mention I have been fortunate enough to get some new gear since then and it would just be nice if they played well with each other. I'm fairly certain Sonar doesn't work at all with the mbox2 at all and not to mention the driver for it hasn't been updated in quite some time. I can honestly say I don't know the first thing about soundcards other than how to plug them in. Does it really make that big of a difference for someone who's almost exclusively ever gonna use softsynths? Also how well do the Multiclient Soundcards work with handling Audio from different DAWs? How well do they support routing MIDI in between different clients or is that different all together? Do you still have to use stuff like Jack? The Zoom UAC-2 seems really awesome I can't ever imagine ever needing anymore then 2 inputs ever for production, does any one have any experience with it? I'm running Windows 8.1 64-bit.

Totally off topic but I had spent years browsing through some of the more well known audio forums for tips and I don't think I even ever bothered to join. It was always so intimidating in terms of helpfulness. Sometimes, it seemed like their was the kind of hazing to amatuer producers that I thought only happened at frat initiations just for asking simple questions that someone needs clarification on. Even now, when I'm scowering the web for advice on how to make certain things that work correctly, there are certain avatars that I know whos comments to avoid because they never provide any useful information, just snarky mean-spirited remarks.

Either way, I'm truly really grateful that this forum exists and (usually unless politics gets talked about) that people of all different kinds of skill sets, shared experienes and backgrounds come together to share wisdom on some thing they feel so passionately about instead of trying to bring each other down.

Hope everyone has a great day =)

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the mbox 2 updated to the 64 bit platform? it should work on windows 10/8/7
If that is the case, Sonar should work with it.

I'm also a bit confused what you mean with multi client.
My best guess is that you mean that your daw does not take your audio-card hostage.

this is actually a result of ASIO4ALL taking exclusively use of your sound-card.
If you manage to install the mbox drivers you can select the appropriate driver in ANY Daw

Or did you mean using multiple intefaces/audio cards at the same time?
That is something I would not recommend unless it is well documented for that piece of hardware.
You will need a external clock sync and that defeats its purpose

 

Last edited: Jul 6, 2016

I believe @thethirdperson means having multiple hosts or programs make use of the same ASIO audio interface simultaneously.
For most audio interfaces this isn't a problem as long as they use the same sample rate.
What you will find though is that most interfaces only allow for their master stereo channel to be transferred between clients unless you use a hardware mixer with physical I/O or a virtual emulation with virtual I/O.
The number of physical inputs just depends on how many instruments you want to be able to record simultaneously.
It's the same with MIDI. The more physical MIDI ins and outs your interface has, the more flexible your setup can be. Again, using virtual MIDI cables that work like physical ones remedies this for anyone without physical the I/O they need. With the advent of wireless tech we can now use WIFI to connect basically any Apple device to a PC with virtual MIDI ports.

rtpMIDI is a good virtual MIDI solution that perfectly emulates the OS X IAC drivers that Apple originated and has standard in all their systems.

Using a dedicated audio interface is always going to give you better results with a higher number of tracks with less artifacts than using your internal/stock sound card. Even if you're only using soft synths.

Mbox 2 Drivers:

Windows Releases

• 9.0.2.65 (Mar 8, 2011)
  • Standalone support (Pro Tools 9 – Pro Tools 11 and other apps)
  • Windows 7, 8, 8.1

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Download/Mbox-2-Drivers

 

Last edited: Jul 6, 2016

Don't know if this has any bearing on your situation, but I use Sonar in a Windows 7 64 bit box, with a MOTU HD 192 as the sound interface, and sometimes plugin a Lexicon Omega just to use it's MIDI ports and haven't had any conflicts. Haven't tried using the Lexicon audio and the MOTU audio at the same time. I did use a M-Audio Fast Track Pro and the Lexicon at the same time before I got my hands on the MOTU to record a drum kit with four mics and didn't experience any conflicts with that setup. I can't remember what I did to sync the clocks, though.
I agree with @Kwissbeats that ASIO4ALL takes exclusive control of the soundcard. I try to stay away from it if there are ASIO drivers available for the soundcard I'm using.

 

Dedicated drivers almost always work better. ASIO4ALL is a last resort for those without dedicated or with unsupported soundcards

If you really need multiclient support for ASIO4ALL here's Steinberg's ASIO multiclient driver:
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=48

 

I already have that mbox 2 driver, it's still 5 years old at this point. I do mean multi client as in using several DAWs at the same time, I'm just curious as to how something that has drivers that are more current might work with more stuff.

As for Sonar it's not so much the OS but it's something about how it needs to have full control and Windows sounds sometimes interrupt that process with the mbox2.

 

Use Odeus Asio Link Pro.
http://odeus-audio.com.au/Odeus/AsioLinkPro

 

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Cheers.

 

Afaik ASIO is always exclusive for one client. If you want to have it otherwise, you'll need something like the abovementioned tools.