Anyone have questions about DAW's or Audio? Post here...

I'm sure it would work fine since it isn't an outrageous amount of I/O and M-audio does generally write drivers that are more solid than most.

the m-audio pres aren't too bad and the conversion is decent. I would still see if you can't dig up someone who will let you try it out on your machine and see how the latency is when monitoring while triggering midi. That is the only place where I could see a downside, but it also depends on how picky you are and how you use it.

also, make sure your computer isn't set to save power on the USB hubs. This works for laptops with other kinds of devices, but will cause havic with audio stuff. The computer thinks the usb port needs to go to sleep just because nothing has happened in a bit, you press play and have lost communication between the device and the driver.

And last, if you do get this device - make sure and use the seperate power supply when possible (not included). Unless you have limited devices on your computer and a serious power supply.

Also be aware of two things. If you use gigastudio at all there are no gsif drivers for this device. Also, the way they got around the limitations of USB to get the I/O they have on this device is by limiting the bit and sample rate in certain configurations. 4 in and 4 out are limited to 16 bit 44.1 or 48khz. 2 in and 4 out are limited to 24bit 44.1 or 48 khz. 2 in OR 2 out allows full 24 bit and higher sample rates. Kind of misleading to say that it is 24 bit if you can only input 2 tracks or output 2 tracks at that bit rate. Many a great recording has been made at 16bit and then there were the Beatles and so on...

also, if using class compliant drivers on Mac you are limited to 2 in and 4 out at 16bit 44.1 or 48khz.

Regards,
Brock

 

Cool stuff (other than the inherint finickiness of audio and firewire chipsets - I feel your pain). USB midi is fine and works low latency just fine. It's when you try piping auido through USB that the trouble with latency and monitoring (as well as limitations on bit rate, sample rate and I/O) occur. Since you are laptop based you do have other options. They aren't cheap, but have you explored any pcmcia based hardware?

so basically what you are looking for is:
stereo mic pres
stereo output with possibly a headphone jack

you need midi I/O or no? If so, how many ports?

 

I like the Delta 1010 a lot. Much better than the 1010LT in many respects, not the least is just getting to the I/O. Good conversion, solid drivers. Excellent ability to combine several M-audio interfaces for more I/O without having to wait for your application to incorporate ASIO ver. 3.

For your needs, though, probably not the best route. I would look for something (again, I'm a fan of PCI over firewire but people work with firewire devices all the time) that has a couple of mic inputs, a headphone jack, and a couple of balanced outs and a midi port as minimum requirements. This will cover most of your needs from monitoring to tracking.

when it comes to speakers, it is more important where you put yourself in your room, the design of your room and most importantly to simply know how the speakers will translate your mix to the outside world. People mix(ed) on NS-10's forever as a standard and they really do kind of suck. Know thy speakers.

The best cheap preamp I've run across is the little Electro Harmonix 12ay7
http://www.ehx.com/ehx2/Default.asp...udio_Performance_Products/29_12AY7_Mic_Preamp

There are lots of things out there these days. keep in mind that having the option of variable impedence will you get quite a bit of milage out of a mic pre if you have to start out with just one. The EH pre I mentioned above doesn't have this feature and there are some good lower priced options that do. You can do amazing recordings just having an SM-57 as your only mic if you are able to adjust the impedence of the pre to the load the 57 likes to see.

the firepod looks alright. Just do a search on their forums to see what firewire chipset it likes to see and make sure the firewire card you buy uses that chipset. I think SIIG has a firewire PCIe card out now. I'm going to be checking into one of those. If you have PCIe that would get your firewire device on its own path through your computer so that you aren't worring about pci bus mastering or bandwidth on the pci bus.

Regards,
Brock

 

a couple of things just so I understand...

I guess you are talking about the usb version of the 828 instead of the firewire version? Man, be careful...

I know that you said that you tried an external TI based firewire card and it was still no go with the ultralight. A couple of questions about that...

was the firewire a pcmcia card?
did you have the latest drivers for the motu - and if so, have you tried again with a current driver if they have released another since then?
Did you say it was a Del laptop?
Have you tried a pcmcia card with a Lucent chipset? I know it nickel and dimes ya to death, but it certainly might be worth a try since you already own the ultralight.

I also know that it is an expensive solution and would require carrying around pres as well, but have you considered an RME pcmcia card in conjunction with a Multiface? Pretty solid setup and will be lower latency, but it would be expensive and would require seperate mic pres

in your situation I would explore all possibilities of getting the ultralight going. That's a cool device and I like the Cuemix software. That piece is also pretty new, so I would imagine there is at least one driver update since you tried it last.

*edit* reread your post and saw it was an express card. The first things I would do before ditching the Ultralight is to try the latest drivers with a Lucent chipset based express card. See if that helps.

Good luck!
Brock

 

sorry, i don't communicate with facists... just kidding...

if the edirol has spdif out you really won't see any advantage to having some stand alone spdif device. The only issue will be clock jitter and that really has a negligible effect on audio once the audio is actually reproduced in the analog world (I know it sounds weird, but it's true. See Bob Katz book on mastering for lots more info on this subject).

to explain a bit more, the audio is remaining in the digital world when you transfer through spdif so as long as no conversion is taking place to analog the edirol is simply passing the information on. All numbers at this point. Clocking can be an issue, but with just two devices like this it won't be.

Cheers,
Brock

 

I've heard about these issues with Dell laptops and firewire. That sucks man. Are you saying the Dell doesn't support express firewire cards at all? that kills the Lucent chipset suggestion.

That ultralight looks cool too... that's too bad.

Read through some of that thread now. You might hold on to slight hope that Dell releases a bios update that addresses these issues. They do release updates every so often. There seems to be other devices other than just audio interfaces having trouble, so there is hope. Doesn't help you now though. Good luck...

in other words, you're screwed... next!