It was time for something different.

I made the decision that it was worth quite a bit of coin for me to have an interface that worked day in and day out. I did the numbers on the amount of cash I was losing by fighting with an interface that was constantly giving me trouble. It ended being a whole lot more coins than I imagined!

For a guy like me who never has enough time in the day (or coins in my pocket!), this is simply unacceptable.

Is Firewire The Problem?

So, I did a little research. Okay, I did A LOT of research. A part of me wondered if the whole firewire thing was causing the problems. For whatever reason, I will often intentionally go the maybe-wrong route just to make sure it's the wrong route. "Yup, it's broke, alright" is a common phrase of mine. So, I decided to try firewire route one more time.

It was a tossup between the MR816CSX and the RME Fireface 800. Both interfaces received stellar reviews and were supposed to sound "amazing".

"Great Sounding" Interfaces

[Rant]Seriously, what a load of shit! I'm sick of people assuming that all you have to do to make an amazing sounding record is plug into to X piece of gear. If they say an interface sounds "great" it means their recordings made with them sound "great". I don't hear THAT many great recordings!

Neve preamps do not sound "amazing".

Yeah, you heard me.

They just don't suck at all, and lesser preamps do. PERIOD!....or EXCLAMATION!

When I think of an amazing experience, I imagine about 18 naked babes doing bad/good stuff to me while I catch money from the sky, watch monster trucks, and occassionally watch an IRS agent's head explode.. Switching from god's preamps back to cheapo pres is not nearly as bad of experience as using a portapody or going shopping.

So, when people tell me an interface jammed with 8 pres, 8 AD converters, 8 DA converters, and a bunch of other random features at X price point sounds "amazing", I'm more inclined to believe Oliver North........or a female. Yeah, I'm desparate!

The correct phrase would be, "This interface sounds dramatically less shitty than I thought". I'm paraphrasing here, but I seem to remember Garageband, our mean old uncle of the RecordingReview.com community, saying the pres in his Fireface 800 were "usable". Now we are talking! Are the damn pres "usable" for a guy who has better ones? That's what we want to hear.[/Rant]

Both the MR816 and Fireface800 are well known for their reliability. (Although, I know people who have dealt with the ol' firewire-blowing-up-the-gadget dilemma with the Fireface 800, this may be an issue with all Firewire devices)

In th end, The MR816CSX had this so-called "Cubase Intergration", built in DSP plugins, and was getting rave reviews. I jumped on it.

It was a very, very good interface. It just wasn't the right interface for me. When all the goodies were disabled due to me using S/PDIF, I couldn't keep based it on principal alone. Don't charge me for dessert just because I got steak. Only selling dessert to burger-eaters blows! (To clear up my vagaries, read my review of the MR816.) I needed more I/O and way better routing anyway.

Firewire Is Definitely Up To Par

I did learn that firewire can be reliable as hell with ultra-fast latency. The MR816 was like spending a month with Sophie Marceux in Braveheart when you are used to living with Kenny's mom from South Park. I'm not sure if that matters now that Steve Jobs has ditched his little persistent-connection connector in favor of the mass appeal of USB or not.

Back to the drawing board.

Over Rated Portability....For Me

A big draw of the USB and Firewire interfaces is their portability. It's a long story, but lets just say that anytime I have an excuse to turn down a gig, I should. I'm overloaded. I've given up on the idea of a portable studio for a million reasons. That'll probably be a future blog, I guess.

Are My Needs Crazy?

I had trouble finding an interface that met my needs. Really, all I needed was Firestudio features that worked as well as the MR816. That would have done the trick nicely. I just wasn't finding it no matter how much I researched. I was up for firewire, but really I was leaning on PCIe or good ol' PCI.

My (Hopefully) Final Interface

I ended up snagging a RME HDSP 9652 off of Ebay for about $350. This is just a PCI card. It's features are......well.....featureless. It has 3 ADAT I/O which means 24 ins and 24 outs, S/PDIF ins and outs, awesome routing, turbo low latency, MIDI and that's about it. Its best feature: It just freakin' works. I'm still in the honeymoon phase with it, but so far so great.

Being that it has NOTHING in the features department, I guess it's easy for nothing to go wrong with it. This I like! That's my style. I want a race car. We don't need carpet, air conditioning, or even the abilty to play Windows sounds. That's right. I couldn't play Youtube if I wanted to with the RME HDSP 9652. The manual basically says, "Grow Up! If you want to hear Windows sounds, by a NoiseBlaster card." I like that!) So far, my only gripe with the card is its name is a pain in the ass to type. I seem to type it often!

Being that it relies entirely on external converters, I had to go shopping. Before I say what I ended up getting, I want to go ahead and mention a certain thread of a certain recording forum where they did a blind comparison between a ultra-expensive Lynx 8 channel converter and a Behringer ADA8000 (converters only, for anyone "serious" I'm not advocating that these pres are up to usable in the high end setting). They tossed up a poll and NO ONE could pick the superior sounding unit. These are guys who've drank up all your kool aid and went out for another run to get more when it comes to gear hype. All of them desparately NEEDED the Lynx to smoke the Behringer. It didn't happen. You can see the results here.

I do feel obligated to explain any Behringer purchase. First off, I'm not sure if I would recommend a Behringer product to anyone (with one exception, the headphone amp I purchased in 2001 is still going strong and has been used literally every day). It's not so much that Behringer is a bad company, I'm just not willing to risk my reputation on them. Sometimes their stuff is great. Sometimes it ain't. The latter happens a little more than it should, unfortunately.

Secondly, when Behringer items suck, they usually really suck. I know based on personal usage that the ADA8000 sounds fine and if it holds up to a Lynx (which I've never used) than even better. I needed 16 ins and outs and going with the next step up from Behringer was going to get real expensive in a hurry.

So, I decided to take a chance. I found a deal on Ebay for $330 for 2 Behringer ADA8000s, 2 ADAT cables (worth $50 right there), and 2 8-channel snakes (worth 2 movies worth of soldiering to me + parts). So, for just over $700 I have a full blown RME setup with 18 in, 18 out (counting my Mytek converters via S/PDIF).

I've snagged a hardware reverb on the way that I can permanently setup in my RME routing matrix for zero latency vocal mixes so at the moment I can't think of one feature I'm missing in this setup.

I'm confident I've got an extremely reliable rig. I've got a gun on my holster in case the Behringers give me any trouble, but so far so good. (Note: My experience is that if Behringers aren't dead on arrival, they are pretty solid.) I've got zero latency monitoring when needed, ultra-flexible routing, and plenty of I/O. So far, they've sounded and performed just fine.

Future Scalability

I also love the fact that I can scale this setup as I want to. If I decide I want to go with super high end converters later, I have that option. It won't be happening anytime soon as I'm building a studio SOME TIME! However, I like having that option.

I also like the fact that if any piece of the puzzle dies on me, I don't have to throw out the interface.

I just need to make sure my future computers have 2 PCI slots. I'm not too worried about that right now.

Conclusion

It's taken some time, but it appears I finally figured out what I needed for my home recording needs. A modular setup based on a high-performance no-frills interface seems to have been the right way for me and it didn't cost me an arm and a leg.

If the Firestudio would have been more reliable, it would have been a fine interface and I probably would never have switched. The folks at Presonus who saw my review (and were THRILLED by it) believe I may have a fluke, dud interface and they will be sending me a new one. So, the Presonus will get a second chance. I don't feel that ANY product is perfect all the time so I think it is fair to give Presonus a second chance. I would have preferred the original have simply caught on fire so I wouldn't have had to dabble with intermittent problems.

Again, if you are eyeing the MR816, I do recommend it if you don't have any plans of blowing big cash on a couple little converters. It has features that are not-so-common in recording land and the thing was absolutely bulletproof in the reliability department.

I think I have shown that finding the right interface is a personal journey. No interface is perfect and all have features and limitations that may not work for your needs.

Good luck!

I had the opportunity to use the MR816 for the entire Musician's Friend grace period as my main interface in a period where I was in the studio 8 days a week. Let's see what I thought of it.

Super Fast Latency

The first thing I noticed about the Steinberg MR816 was it's ability to handle to turbo low latencies. For a majority of the tracking, I kept the MR816 fixed at 64 samples. Only under extreme loads of sample usage and/or plugin-intense mixing did I find the need to switch to higher latencies. I really liked how quickly I was able to change latencies. There was none of this 15 seconds of goofing around that I'm used to on the Firestudio.

Low CPU Usage

Compared to other interfaces I've used, the MR816 gave me the ability to use more plugins and more VST instruments. How much more? It's hard to say, but on some complex movie score work with tons and tons of orchestral samples going, I had a hard time switching back to my Presonus Firestudio.

Sounds Pretty Good

The MR816 doesn't sound half bad. I'm used to using high end preamps and converters (even though I'm rarely as wound up about their effect as most), but for a wild weekend of movie scoring and fast-paced songwriting using the MR816 exclusively, I was able to stand the results.

I do think there is a TON of hype as to this thing sounding like a million bucks. Let's just say I'm not giving up my Manley TNT or Mytek converters any time soon. I guess it's a bit ridiculous to expect the MR816 to be in this league. However, with such extreme hype about the sound of the unit and then guys like myself who don't use exclamation points at the end of sentences describing the sound of ANY preamp or converter, it's easy to lose context. This thing sounds slightly better than other interfaces I've heard, but this whole preamp thing is always subtle.. There is less 2k emphasis and smear with it than other cheapo pres I've dealt with, but this thing is definitely not top of the line.

I guess the guys who are really happy with the sound of this thing were used to a really cheap interfaces. That, and I think the “new and shiny” effect probably had something to do with it.

Ultra Reliability

I couldn't be more thrilled about the reliability of this thing. I demand gear that won't screw up on me. I've been on a massive journey to find an interface that will deliver day in and day out and meet various other random, ridiculous criteria I've concocted over the years. Without a doubt, the MR816 gets my approval in that department. I had zero problems with the interface. (I did bitch a bit about an S/PDIF input issue that ended up being a cable that died in a 10-second period.)

Even killing the power mid-session caused no major issues (which was often a 30-minute setback with the Firestudio). Simply giving the MR816 it's juice back allowed it to re-sync in just a few seconds. I gave it a 10 in this department. Very impressive!

Cubase Integration

I couldn't find one freakin' guy on the planet who could give me a straight answer about Cubase integration. This was before I invented my ultra-revolutionary theory of reading the manual before I buy (only to be nudged out for the Nobel Prize by the guy who invented the ketchup bottles you keep upside down all the time).

The manual clearly lays out exactly what Cubase Integration is all about. For those who are interested, I will spell it out here.

Cubase Integration means that if you have certain versions of Cubase (which ones? You got me. I can't keep up with all the freakin' versions. I know it works in Cubase 5), you can highlight a new track, press a little button on the front of the interface, and instantly the corresponding input will be routed to that track. So if I decided to toss a room mic on input #8, I could create a new track, highlight it, and click the button above input #8. Done.

IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THIS, this is a very handy feature. I'll be ranting about this “access” in a minute. Let's just say that certain users of the MR816 have to go to the back of the bus.

Back to this feature. Does it save hours? Definitely not. It saves a few seconds, but when you are being creative, nothing sucks worse than opening menus. So there is some real value to this thing particularly if you are the kind of guy that keeps all your instruments plugged in at once and kinda sorta use your interface as a patchbay. I've been flexing my muscle that switches from creative stuff to technical stuff and back to creative stuff for a long time. For people who get frustrated when making this jump, this button means practically zero interruption from creative time.

Cubase integration also means you can setup multiple zero-latency mixes (or at least ultra-ultra low latencies....more likely in the 1ms department) using the Control Room sends functionality in Cubase. Direct monitoring did come in handy, but I never needed the use of multiple mixes in Cubase. Just one direct monitoring bus was enough for me (which I've become a huge fan of on vocals). If you need more than one mix at zero latency, this is a great feature.

They've moved several of the menus used to control the MR816 (such as master volume, headphone volume, and effects) in to Cubase menus, but I can't say I was thrilled with their implementation. I found it easier to deal with the front of the rack, which was actually pretty handy.

In short, these Cubase Integration features are nice, and they certainly make this unit stand out in its catalog ads, but don't get your panties in a wad over any of them. They are not a revolution. I'm not sure why anyone else couldn't just come out and say the Cubase Integration features weren't going to solve the world population crises. I guess I just did. Vote for Brando on Tuesday.

To keep things in perspective, as I've moved on to a new interface that's decidedly stripped down everywhere it needs to be, I've not missed any of these features.

This guy would have fought to make sure S/PDIF converter users were not discriminated against.

The Back Of The Bus

I use my Mytek AD96 via S/PDIF for pretty much all of my overdubbing using one or two channels. For anything I listen to through my Focal Solo 6BE monitors , I use a Mytek DA96 via S/PDIF out. This puts me in the minority. I'm guessing most home recorders are relying on the interface for AD and DA conversion.

If you are in this minority, those fancy features of Cubase Integration, DSP Effects, etc go out the window. You can't use them completely.

Cubase Integration
Just a minute ago I explained the push button routing on the front of the interface. This finger routing only works on the eight analog inputs. If you use S/PDIF or ADAT, you are out of luck. So this features was useless to me.

DSP Effects
I've been looking for some better effects, particularly in the reverb department. I was excited to see the MR816 CSX had reverb powered by it's on board DSP chip. Great! Then I got to the part where if I'm using a DA converter via S/PDIF, then I'm just shit out of luck. This sucked! I hadn't expected this one, at all. The reverb was off-limits to me both in mixing and during zero-latency monitoring. (No reverb for singers when using my fancy converters. Yuck!)

I did rig up a headphones option and the reverbs did sound nice and dense, but it's hard for me to give it a fair review unless I've gotten to actually use it in a real mix. I wasn't willing to take my rig apart and downgrade some gear to hear the reverb. So you'll have to go elsewhere for that review, unfortunately.

75% of ADAT Inputs
When S/PDIF is in use, you must give up two ADAT inputs. Fro those of us who don't start counting on our fingers when buying an interface, they really are taking the “16” part in the MR816 literally. (It makes a person wonder what the 8 means.)

This isn't the end of the world, but it certainly gives me a bad taste in my mouth. There should have been asterisk or something next to the S/PDIF mention in the ads.

Lackluster Routing

I was viciously disappointed when I wasn't able to route the stereo out from Cubase to both my DA converters (to my studio monitors) and to outputs ½ (to my headphone amp). This is something that I depend on. The Firestudio had excellent routing options and being able to send any signal to whatever I gadget, was a big deal for me. It came in handy way more than I had realized.

I was able to scrape up a workaround in Cubase 5's control room, but it had its drawbacks, for sure.

Again, this is something most people aren't going to deal with too much. The fact that Cubase 5 (and presumably other software makers) have created fancy options for routing signals via the software, this is less of an issue. Regardless, for an interface of this caliber, it was downer that I had to scrape up such a solution.

Conclusion

I purchased the Steinberg MR816 CSX though Musiciansfriend, gave it hell, and ended up sending it back. My needs are a little more advanced than most. I need more than 16 inputs and I need full use of S/PDIF and ADAT. I'm sure they realized I'm not the only dude on the planet and they chose to cater to people who are debatebly more sane.

For a dude who doesn't plan on dumping a dumb wad on fancy converters, needs 8 good inputs and maybe the option to add 8 more channels via ADAT later, I can't think of a better interface. This thing is rocksolid,bulletproof, and does give a slight sound quality boost over other interfaces I've heard.

I had a hard time letting this one go. With better routing and full access to the features I THOUGHT it had, I'm not sure there is a better interface out there. I have no problem recommending this interface over less expensive interfaces in a heartbeat. If you are thinking of spending $600, I think you should take a look at the MR816 CSX and it's cheaper little brother.

Good luck!

Latency
Latency is the time it takes for your computer to process stuff. In our case, this is usually associated with the amount of delay it takes for sound to go in and out of your computer's soundcard.

Let's assume we are going to play a MIDI Controller / MIDI keyboard by running MIDI into the computer. This MIDI will trigger a synth or sample. In this example, let's say we fire up some piano samples. When we strike a key, there should be no noticeable lag in time. In other words, we should hear the note immediately just like we are playing it through a standard keyboard. Your stock soundcard is probably going to take a while to process this note. It is slow and cheap by design and will have to sit around and think about the note that needs to be played. I've seen stock soundcards take as long as 250ms to play a note. This means every note you strike will be behind 250ms. At 60 beats per minute, this is a full quarter note! The solution is to use a low latency audio interface that can process this piano note in just a few milliseconds where the delay is not even audible by the person playing.

The issue of low latency isn't limited to the playback of virtual instruments (synths and samples) on your computer. It becomes an issue anytime you want to monitor from within your recording software. I monitor through my recording software every step of the way from the drummer to the vocalist, all headphone or studio monitor mixes are done through the recording software (The exception to this is when I need more than one mix for individual players. In that case my audio interface uses a DSP mixer to give individual mixes to each player.) I prefer to use the recording software for monitoring because it gives me ready access to compression and reverb. I couldn't imagine going back to the days when my vocal headphone mixes did not have compression. This would be impossible without a low latency audio interface.

When I fire up an electric guitar, the first thing I do is move the amp to an isolated area so I don't have to listen to it. Then I slap up a mic and start listening to the guitar through the studio monitors. This allows me to hear exactly what the mic is picking up and make adjustments as necessary. This would not be possible without a low latency audio interface.

From what I hear, stock Mac soundcards tend to be a little better in terms of latency, but I do not know this from my own personal experience. I know of very few Mac users who are using the stock soundcard as their recording audio interface simple because there are other desirable features that the stock soundcard simply won't have.

You may get lucky and find that your current soundcard is adequate for low latency recording. Go ahead and try cranking the latency down to the point that latency is acceptable for monitoring. If you can reduce the latency low enough without static, clicks, pops, and the infamous “blue screen of death” you may actually be able to get away with using your computers stock soundcard.

Analog To Digital (A/D) Conversion –
The device that converts an analog wave to a bunch of numbers is known as an AD converter. We have to convert signal from analog to digital so that computers and other digital devices can store and manipulate the “data”. AD converters are not created equal. The higher the quality of conversion, the more accurate the sound. Generally speaking, A/D converters are usually not as prone to subjectivity as other links in the recording chain. In other words, there really isn't a case I know of where a person wanted poor A/D conversion as a cool “effect”. I'm guessing that the guy singing through guitar pickups on a major label recording is still being routed through high end AD converters. Poor A/D converters tend to sound harsh and not as smooth as high end analog to digital converters. If you are using an audio interface specifically designed for music recording, you probably won't notice much of a difference between the converters in your audio interface and the ultra high end converters made by Mytek, Lavry, Lucid, or Apogee. (I've never had a client notice when I switched from my Myteks to my stock Delta 1010 converters). However, it's possible that the converters in your stock soundcard are so bad that the difference should be quite noticeable between your stock soundcard and a real audio interface. The converters in the stock soundcard that came with your computer were simply not designed for audio recording. They may sound okay at first, but I'm confident that you will notice a difference when you switch to a real audio interface.

Features
Audio recording has it's own unique demands that few other people outside the recording realm face. I'll break down all possible audio interface features in the Home Recording Soundcard Wizard.

What Is The Home Recording Soundcard Wizard?
The Home Recording Soundcard Wizard was designed to take job that normally takes hours and hours and hours of frustration and guessing take a matter of minutes. A laymen with little or no prior knowledge or experience of recording can hop on the Home Recording Soundcard Wizard and find exactly the right audio interface for their needs in a matter of minutes. For advanced users who already know exactly the features they are looking for, finding the right audio interface will only take seconds.

Today on the forum a dude asked how many simultaneous inputs the Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire mixer / audio interface could send to the computer at once. In other words, how many tracks can he record simultaneously?

I head over to Musicians Friend and read the description. Of course, it's all useless marketing hype with no clear indication of the features. (This is normal, UNFORTUNATELY!).

So, I head over to the Alesis website.

_Compact, affordable 16-channel analog mixer and Multi-channel FireWire Audio Computer

Compact? Really? WOW! (highest form of sarcasm possible). Thanks!

Affordable? Really? WOW! (like I can't see the damn price is $500 at Musiciansfriend) Thank!

16-channel analog mixer? Okay, that's useful. That means it probably has X amount of mic preamps and X amount of line level inputs, but that tells me something.

Here is the part that pissed me off so badly, that I actively refuse to EVER recommend another Alesis product again for the rest of my life. You have not only lost me as a customer for life, you have completely lost all of my recommendations.

“Multi-channel Firewire”

Let me say that again.

“Multi-channel Firewire”

On their own website they leave out the single most important piece of information possible for an audio interface. Are they out of their damn minds?????? How is it that a manufacturer of an audio interface can't see the worth in being clear enough to illustrate the most important feature in an audio interface? I'm positive that there are some extremely intelligent electrical engineer and software engineers have designed this audio interface. I surely can't do it! I tip my hat on my bald head to them.

However, what incompetent moron is in charge of writing the product descriptions for the Alesis website and Musiciansfriend? Fire them immediately! They are costing you money! Fire them. Go a step further. Put a hit out on them! This is so big of a mistake that it had to be on purpose. No one with any understanding of the product would possible leave out the number of simultaneous inputs. This has to be part of some bigger New World Order conspiracy or something. It makes no logical sense.

It's Not Just Alesis – It's M-Audio, Presonus, Mackie, Digidesign and Every Other Manufacturer Of Audio Interfaces
I've been planning on updating the Home Recording Soundcard Wizard to include the latest audio interfaces that have came out recently. Every time I start to go through each audio interface and deduce what features it has (yes, I have to use some kind of deductive reasoning to figure out the stupid features of a given product) I end angry. I'm angry because I want the information on my Soundcard Wizard to be accurate. I owe that to the visitors of RecordingReview.com. However, when they simply do not tell you ANYWHERE the number of simultaneous inputs and other features on the description of an audio interface, I don't know what to do!

I believe in capitalism. (Don't get started on another anti-socialist rant). I believe that the market caters to the demands of the customer. If a business does something in a strange way, it's probably due to the fact that customers want it that way. What possible customer would have any interest in pulling out their credit card for a product that they have absolutely zero idea even does what they think it does?
This blows my mind!

Misleading Input Figures
Another problem which is almost as huge as not stating the number of inputs at all is the problem of over-inflating the number of inputs. Digital inputs should not count as the number of inputs in an audio interface! Why can't the ad for the Presonus Firestudio (which I happily own) say “Featuring 8 analog inputs out of the box, but expandable to 26 simultaneous inputs with ADAT Lightpipe”. Instead, they just say “24 inputs”. Then they say “26 inputs”. (I guess they forgot to count S/PDIF the first time!) There is absolutely nothing on the Musiciansfriend Firestudio ad to suggest that without buying a bunch more stuff, you can only record 8 inputs at once. NOTHING! A beginner is completely screwed. You are going to pay $500-600 minimum for an 8 channel preamp / analog to digital converter with Lightpipe. Nowhere does the Firestudio say that it's going to cost an additional $1000 to get up to 24 simultaneous inputs. Why keep this a secret? Since no one is being up front and honest about their audio interface products, it seems that if there was one company who laid it all out there, the buying public would be shocked by the straight forward nature of the company and the company would explode with sales!

I remember when I first bought my M-Audio Delta 1010 back in 2001. I was shocked to see that it did not have 10 inputs. It had 8 analog inputs and 2 S/PDIF, but no one told me that I would need to buy more stuff to take advantage of the other 2 inputs. If this wasn't fraud, it was flat out intentional deception. (I think that is fraud!).

A Picture Is Worth A Million Trillion Words
I'm the kind of guy who likes to read. I LIKE books. (As long as they involve Nazis, the Cold War, or socialism.) I don't mind reading a description of an audio interface. However, because the ad for the typical audio interface is so disgustingly uninformative, I have to look at the damn picture! Why! Am I 4 years old? I can color in the lines now. I should not have to recourse to looking at the back of the unit to figure out what an audio interface can and can't do. The ad says “4,000 inputs made of gold for pristine fidelity” and the back of the unit has 8 holes for XLR mics and an ADAT input.

The bigger problem arises when the USB and Firewire mixers don't specify how many ins and outs their audio interface portion contains. There is no back of the unit to look at! Obviously, the text in the ad and the website is going to be useless. It's a guessing game as to whether the unit has 2 inputs or 16 inputs!

So, in this case a picture is not worth 1,000 words. Not when the words are useless! In fact, a picture is worth an infinite amount of words in this case, but I'd rather sound like a mafia dude who says "million trillion".

Make It Easy On Beginners!
I'm curious just how many people start to consider jumping into home recording and then get confused by the unnecessary complications of audio interface ad writers that they say “Screw it!”. I bet the audio interface world is losing millions of dollars each year because they don't accurately describe their products.

So, I've stolen the following data from Presonus. You can find all of this info on the Presonus Firestudio Hardware Compatibility page but if you are like me you won't find it until you've wasted an entire night diagnosing the problem. In fact, I almost found out that I needed an entirely different motherboard. (I have a GeForce3. The Firestudio will not function properly with a Geforce4.). When I finally found this page, I was scared to death that I needed to build a brand new computer. I was NOT happy!

What hardware is incompatible with my PreSonus Interface?
- ATI RADEON 9000/9001 IGP video chipset. Symptoms are consistent click and pops during audio playback. This video chipset is only found in PC laptops and is entirely integrated as the computer’s only video controller. We strongly recommend that you do not get a system with this chipset, as there is currently no workaround for this incompatibility.

-USB/firewire and s400/s800 combo cards are not compatible. Symptoms are usually no audio recording/playback but device will install and sync, erratic audio performance and rarely will not allow the device to install or sync. We recommend a firewire card that ONLY has s400 firewire connections and preferably with a Texas Instruments or VIA chipset.

-Firewire cards with NEC chipsets are not compatible. Symptoms are similar or the same as combo cards.

-Motherboards with nForce4 chipsets. Symptoms include reduced to very poor performance especially if using the onboard firewire connection. A PCIe (not PCI) FW400 only card with a Texas Instruments chipset is a known workaround, but may not allow full performance.

-SoundBlaster Audigy cards. Symprtoms include pops and clicks and loss of sync. If your PC has one of these cards installed, it is recommended to uninstall it before installing a PreSonus interface

As I mentioned in the previous M-Audio Delta 1010 article, I need the following features:

• Stereo headphone mixes
• Portability
• Less cables
• More simultaneous inputs

On top of that I want to add:

• Don't want to spend a zillion dollars

Finding The Right Audio Interfaces
I put quite a bit of research into finding the right audio interface for me. It was very important that I had the ability to fire up as many headphone mixes as necessary. I'm not big on giving out headphone mixes to each and every band member, but in the end the customer / client is always right. If they want fancy headphone mixes, I'm all for it. If I can make them feel more comfortable when they play, they will probably play better. They will probably end up coming out of my studio feeling happier about the entire experience. As outlined in my previous blog, it was very important for me to setup a stereo headphone mix(s) as I think it makes it easier to hear what is really going on. So my first goal was to find an audio interface that had a powerful headphone mixing system with zero latency. (That's another thing. I feel very strange sending drummers a mix from Cubase even if it is only 2ms behind. Then again, no one seems to complain.)

I was delighted to see that many manufacturers have powerful solutions for the headphone mixing thing. RME, MOTU, Presonus, M-Audio, and probably many others all had solutions.

After that, I had to make sure I found a Firewire unit. This really didn't knock the selection down too much. Most of the audio interfaces that had the headphone routing system also had Firewire. I'm not exactly sure why. I guess Firewire is more popular than PCI these days. (Forgive me, while I've helped a million trillion people select audio interfaces on the recording forum, I haven't bought one for myself in almost 7 years. Most of the people I help are usually going for simpler setups than I require.)

So from there, it was just an issue of price. I immediately ruled out any sound quality differences. When it comes to the sound quality of an audio interface, the main factors are the built in preamps (if applicable), the analog to digital conversion when sending signal into the audio interface, and the digital to analog conversion when sending signal out of the audio interface. That's pretty much it. There are guys who are big on modding power supplies and things of that sort, but I usually don't dig that far. I'm more worried about the plywood I have nailed up all over the place in my live room. I have my Mytek converters which are extremely expensive and the difference between them and my M-Audio Delta 1010s was very subtle. I'm positive that dumping the extra cash on RME wouldn't result in an improvement that would justify it's expense to my clients and therefor it doesn't justify it's expense to me either. Maybe the RME would last longer and be more durable, but you never really know with this stuff. The way my luck has been, anything I use is going to break!

I ended up selecting the Presonus Firestudio. It has just about everything I need for $700. I really wish it had dual S/PDIF inputs so I could use all four channels of Mytek conversion. I guess my second Mytek AD96 is going to be taking a break for a while.

I like the fact that I can add 16 additional channels via ADAT Lightpipe. I really don't have any need for 26 simultaneous inputs today, you never know what the future will hold. I like the idea that I can borrow an 8 channel preamp with ADAT outputs and immediately expand my rig when necessary.

Now the hard part: Finding an 8 channel ADAT converter.
Brandon

I can go a zillion routes. First I want to talk about what I didn't like about the Delta 1010s.

Delta 1010 Is Not Portable
First of all, they were very unportable due to them being PCI cards instead of Firewire, which I would prefer. I have had to turn down a few “on location” gigs because it took such an outstanding amount of time to move my rig around. So, it's worth a few extra bucks for the ability to grab a laptop, a 6 space rack, and a few mics for a live recording.

No Fancy Headphone Monitoring Matrix
The Delta 1010s offered no headphone mixing matrix. I used my Mackie 1604 for the longest time for monitoring in a live band situation. I could get 4 mono and 1 stereo mix out of the Mackie, but I really hate mono headphone mixes. I think it's much more difficult to hear with a mono headphone mix and I think this effects recordings in a negative way. So, this time around I really want the ability to setup stereo headphone mixes.

I always felt a little weird when I knew the guitar players in the band really couldn't hear what was going on. While I could continue to wing it with the current mono setup, it would be preferred to have the ability to do anything I wanted in terms of headphone mixes.

Note: I will still be monitoring through Cubase when doing any overdubs. All of this headphone monitoring matrix stuff is there exclusively for the recording of live bands. I like adding compression, adding reverb, and controlling levels real time through Cubase in almost all cases. However, I'm limited to a single mix in Cubase. While theoretically, I could use aux sends within Cubase, these add significant latency to the signal.

It seems silly to pay $600 for an audio interface that does not have extensive headphone options.

No Built In Mic Preamps
The Delta 1010s had no mic preamps built in. This led me to buy external mic preamps and a mixer. I really don't need built in mic preamps these days, but I do have to admit that I like the idea of simplicity with the built in mic preamps. While I do have a few high end and middle of the road mic pres which always get used first, there were times when I would end up resorting to my Mackie pres if I ran out of channels. I would use built in mic pres in the the audio interface as a last resort as well. Going back to live recording and such, I like the idea of being able to plug in one single cable into an audio interface and being done with it.

TONS of Cables
I've had hell with cables since I started recording. I think this is common. When I have 16 mics in use, I have 16 mic cables that go to my preamps, 16 cables that go from my preamps, cables that go to the mixer for headphone mixes, cables that go from the preamps to my Mytek converters, cables that go from my Mytek converters to my audio interfaces. This may not sound too complicated, but my floor ends up looking like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I just happen to hate snakes, too! The problem is most of my cables are 8 feet long for various reasons and this means I have 8 feet of cable whether I need 1ft or 20ft. This really makes a huge mess, makes it hard to troubleshoot bad cables, and causes big problems with cables getting accidentally yanked out. I would much rather forgo this complexity, if possible.

If I'm recording 16 mics, there is no way of getting around those initial 16 XLR cables. However, I've got a feeling that if I can take the Mackie out of the equation entirely for monitoring, I will not only have a cleaner looking rack that is MUCH easier to deal with and troubleshoot, I'll also totally reduce the number of problems that occur in the first place. I can't think of a live session (or even a session where we were just recording drums) where every cable and connection worked perfectly. I'm always playing around with my rack. Note: Some of that is do to the fact that I have to hook/unhook my snake on my Neve preamps when I switch from tracking in the control room vs the live room. Way too much of this is due to some random cable causing problems. The fact that I have wasted the bands time dealing with my issues so much usually compels me to knock time off the recording bill. These hours add up!

It may seem like I'm putting too much emphasis on simplicity, but I find that when I'm trying to get great tones for a live band, I usually have anxiety x 2,000. Everything goes wrong. There are cables everywhere. The band is tripping over them. The guys in the band will start telling jokes and yelling and hollering. (This isn't a bad thing except when I'm trying to find a bad cable in a stack of 4 billion wires and cables). In the end, every little incremental improvement I could make for this sort of thing is an enormous blessing!

Not Enough Simultaneous Inputs With One Card
The M-Audio Delta 1010s allowed 8 analog inputs and then 2 more inputs via S/PDIF. This is a fairly normal configuration for a multi-channel audio interface. At least, it was a fairly normal configuration. I used 2 Delta 1010s to get enough inputs. While this wasn't a bad way of handling the situation, when you double the amount of components in a rig, you double the changes of something going wrong. So here I sit with a dead PCI card, but 2 breakout boxes that work fine. If the Delta 1010 had ADAT Lightpipe inputs, I could continued using my one audio interface and simply run a single cable into the back of the Delta 1010 for an additional 8 inputs.

Required features:

• Stereo headphone mixes
• Portability
• Less cables
• More simultaneous inputs

So, I'm looking for an audio interface that can take care of all these requirements. I have to admit. The Delta 1010s were very reliable. I got over 6 very reliable years out of the Delta 1010s and I even squeezed a few great recordings out of them here and there. However, the Delta 1010s were just little short on features. At $600, I'm of the opinion that the Delta 1010s can not compete with other model audio interfaces. I had thought at one time that the price was dropped down to $400. This seemed a bit more reasonable.

Some may wonder about the sound quality of the M-Audio Delta 1010. I'd say it's as good as anything else out there in home recording land. Of course, I upgraded my converters to the very expensive Mytek converters, but no client has been able to tell the difference.

Conclusion
This article isn't really meant to deter or encourage anyone to use a Delta 1010. I'm simply describing my own personal experiences and thoughts. If your needs are similar, you may save yourself a little bit a of trouble by learning from my mistakes when choosing an audio interface.