You'd need some external enclosure for the PCIe or Expresscard HDSP interface...

And Daniel, will a PCI or PCIe card ever work with M1 macs, even if in an external enclosure?
I am asking for the OP, because as far as I remember PCI cards never worked on OSX (hackingtosh) cause there were never any osx machines with PCI only PCIe, so those work on OSX intel. But as long as there are no M1 PCIe machines will the drivers work anyway. Sorry if I am wrong but it would be expensive for the OP if he got an M1 macbook only to find out it will not work with an external enclosure.

…yep, absolutely…i have this enclosure for my hdspe card (+ multiface) and get absolutely mindblowing performance… https://www.sonnettech.com/product/echo … rview.html
a session that i was only able to run safely (for live performance) at 256 samples buffer i‘m now able to run at 64 samples buffer…

Another question is: if you had to choose between the original Multiface in an enclosure vs. a new Babyface or Fireface UCX II, which would you go with?

In other words, is selling the original multiface and buying the new interface worth the performance as opposed to just buying the enclosure and going with the tested interface I've come to love?

…i didn‘t „upgrade“ to a new usb interface since there were (are?) usb driver problems even on macos (eg they switched to a different usb connector company or something like that which resulted in several problems) and pci express (=thunderbolt) always was the most direct and native solution in my opinion…i have my multiface1 now with my 5th computer and for me that‘s a proof how reliable this team is…
you just put the hdspe card (pci express) into the sonnettech enclosure (i also deactivated the fan so that it‘s dead silent), connect your multiface via the firewire cable and the sonnet enclosure via a thunderbolt3 cable direct to the m1…done
i also take the whole team on the road since the sonnet enclosure is absolutely robust…happy rme camper here…✌️
P.S.: i‘m so convinced about this solution that i‘d put a rme aio pro into the sonnet if somehow my hdspe card stopped working…

Hey Scheffkoch, I'm with the same dilemma and about to buy the Sonnet Echo Express SE I TB3 PCIe, Desktop, 1, but when I'm trying to install the latest driver on my M1 it states it's not compatible with my OS version. How did you solve this? Thanks!!

Slot

Hey Daniel, that was FAST!!!!!
I am with an M1 2020, Ventura 13.6 and am trying to install hdspe_272. My card is a HDSPe PCI and my outboard box is a Hammerfall DSP Multiface.

Besides a short period of those widely discussed USB issues some years ago on an older intel Mac, I found both the USB and Firewire drivers to be rock solid with most interfaces I tried (Fireface 400, 800, UC, UCX, UCX II, UFX II, Babyface Pro) on a MacBook M1.
Only on the UFX+ I recently had some playback issues. But that was through USB 3.0, while all the other mentioned interfaces work with USB 2.0. I just connected via Thunderbolt then and the issue disappeared.
According to some posts in this forum, some users currently have dropout issues with the brand new UFX III through USB 3.0.

Long story short:
I would either go with a Babyface Pro FS or UCX II, depending on your channel count / DSP / standalone functionality / portability needs. And if you need the newly announced room correction and crossfeed, I would wait a little until it gets announced which interfaces will support those features.
If you're looking for the cheapest solution which will just work fine: a used Fireface 400 or 800 will still work on an M1 on the Firewire Driver, through FireWire to Thunderbolt, and Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt 3 adapters (might sound dodgy, but is a rock solid connection).
It would probably cost you less money than the Sonnet Echo Express alone. It's just a question how long Apple allows kernel extension drivers on new Macs, as they require to reduce some security standards.