( 26 reviews )
-
Posted: May 1 2009
Great sound card. The best i have used as compared to my creative lab sound blaster live 5.1. Presently using this sound card to do some music, audio editing sound files from USB turntable, mixing and more.Connecting musical instruments such as my keyboard and more is all good. Would like to encourage other individuals that you're always right with M-Audio sound cards. Its the way to go.
-
Posted: Apr 27 2009
I am an amateur home recording engineer. Not wanting to spend 3 or 4 hundred for an audio interface, I when with this sound card. I run Windows XP with Ableton Live and Tracktion. This is a PCI card, so you need to open the computer and plug into a slot, if you have a spare one. The instructions were a little tedious, but I followed them and haven't had any problems since. Depending on your setup you might have to do the driver shuffle. The 24 is for the bit depth and 96 is max sample rate. That means that the card is roughly 4X CD data rate. The card supports ASIO monitoring, which is a must for low latency monitoring if you are using virtual instruments. There are ASIO drivers for the motherboard sound cards, but you will still have the same lower quality if recording analog signals. This card is solid.
-
Posted: Mar 31 2009
Bought this primarily to record vinyl record collection to hard drive, and it's doing an excellent job. What surprised me was the high quality sound coming out of this card - even mp3s and online streaming (e.g. music samples on Amazon or iTunes) sound markedly better through this card than any other sound card I've heard. CD playback on my computer through this card sounds at least as good as on a very decent stereo system. I am planning to build a music server to store all my albums and CDs and plan to use this card as the digital to analog coverter and just connect the card's line outputs to the analog inputs of my amplifiers. Solid drivers, and absolutely no noise or interference at all! As has been mentioned in other reviews, you should visit the m-audio website for the latest drivers. The only drawbacks in my mind are the control panel (not entirely intuitive, but you'll figure it out) and the lack of a bundled simple piece of recording software (for my use) - but there are adequate freeware options available out there. I've not yet used the digital output, nor the midi ports, so cannot comment on those features. Overall, very pleased with this card and good value to boot!
