Best Audio Interface?

Which Systems?

  • Aardvark Q10

    Votes: 42 6.5%
  • Echo Layla24

    Votes: 42 6.5%
  • M-Audio Delta 1010

    Votes: 146 22.6%
  • Digidesign Digi-001

    Votes: 54 8.4%
  • RME Hammerfall Multiface

    Votes: 99 15.3%
  • Motu 2408mk3

    Votes: 62 9.6%
  • other... please specify

    Votes: 200 31.0%

  • Total voters
    645
Another vote for the RME. I've been using it for over a year without a whisper of trouble. A couple of things worth mentioning:

1. The include software has provides for seemingly endless routing possibilities, "K-system" metering, and a plethera of diagnostic tools.
2. Great support forum. Not that you should ever need "support" but it's fine just to read and learn.
3. Regularly updated and stable drivers.

Worth every penny of the investment if you can stretch to it.
 
Rme!

RME Multiface all the way...

Looking to get the Multiface II PCI bundle...

Either that or Firewire...
the Fireface 400 looks really good (I would get the Fireface 800... but just a little too expensive... need to do a lot more music gigs & save up for that one!).


Cheers!
 
IainDearg said:
Another vote for the RME. I've been using it for over a year without a whisper of trouble. A couple of things worth mentioning:

******Which RME soundcard are you using... the multiface?
 
Aardvark No More

I believe Aardvark went out of business. I wouldn't suggest it to someone looking for an audio interface. I'm getting noise that may be from my audio interfaces soundcard which is powered by my computer.
 
MX3282 said:
I believe Aardvark went out of business. I wouldn't suggest it to someone looking for an audio interface. I'm getting noise that may be from my audio interfaces soundcard which is powered by my computer.
Ya think? It's been almost two years since they went belly-up. And the hell of it is, I keep seeing this forlorn looking Aardvark unit sitting in the discounted bin at a local *big name* retail music store. I wonder if they're telling folks about this fact? Hmmmm...
 
the delta 1010 has always worked great for me. i'm thinking of getting a second. I had a motu 828 before when i had my mac g4 and the screen went out -so did two channels. my delta 1010 and 44 have worked both on my pentium 3 and my amd. i would definitely recommend the delta series. I had also owned a aardvark q10, but since the company closed its doors, driver support has been weak especially on amd model computers. just my two cents.
 
I'd advise against Aardvark too. They did make nice sound interfaces, but the company went "bye-bye" and wasn't even appealing enough for another company to pick it up and go with it.

They do have a support group though:
http://asg.hopto.org/

Not sure what exactly has become of driver development. Saw a petition online trying to gather support for Aardvark to apologize and release the sourcecode for the drivers.
 
I have 2 Motu MK III's and both have worked flawlessly for 3 years. Never an issue with compatability,locking up computer or latency.
 
Creamware and RME all day long!

I have a Creamware Luna II and its the best sounding most stable card I have ever had the pleasure of using. I like M-Audio for alot but Creamware is the dominate one.

RME Though would be the top of em all... I just cant afford one..... :(

Whoever said creamware was the worst didnt give it a chance.

-Blaze
 
Other - MOTU 8pre... Love mine. Warm and transparent pres and A/D converters... Windows driver picked up flawlessly.
 
danico4not said:
the delta 1010 has always worked great for me. i'm thinking of getting a second. I had a motu 828 before when i had my mac g4 and the screen went out -so did two channels. my delta 1010 and 44 have worked both on my pentium 3 and my amd. i would definitely recommend the delta series. I had also owned a aardvark q10, but since the company closed its doors, driver support has been weak especially on amd model computers. just my two cents.


Will the delta 1010 work with adobe audition?
 
Here are a few posts of many that turned me off:

The new HD MOTU stuff looks real nice, but I've had my doubts about their interfaces due to so many people complaining about their compatibility issues. I'm going to stay with my Layla and just get the Layla EXP to add on to it.

hiya, welcome to the wonderful world of MOTU. motu stuff is a pain in the ass and what I've heard about customer support and driver support is atrocious. Now mind you thank god I don't own any motu products but a friend of mine a few months back was having problems installing a 1224 expansion on a pci-324 card with a 2408. He asked for the assistance of the nubmeister since I'm quite familiar with troubleshooting DAW's. Now he did have a 2408 running under xp with the most current drivers at the time (i think wdm v.2.0) but once the 1224 was installed the 2408's audio was FUBAR'd but the 1224 would work fine. Nubs tried in vain for several hours to correct the problem to no avail. I finally had to say the most hated phrase in the audio engineers vernacular "call tech support" I guess I took him several days to get through and they finally figured out the 1224 with rom versions 1.1 and below would not work on a pci-324 card with any other breakout box attached! Now what really stuck in his craw is he bought it as an expansion box. The whole point of motu products is the ability to add breakout boxes through the firewire jacks on the pci-324 card. This of course means they didn't even test the units to see if they were compatible. So the fix finally was is they had to ship him a new ROM chip which he had to install. NUBS suggestion: at this point in time I am getting really sick of PC based DAWS. Save up and buy a stand alone unit or better yet a RADAR. Nubs his now setting his eyes on the RADAR. (IZ not OTARI) P.s. the Motu stuff doesn't sound so hot anyways, if you are looking at a mkII I suggest RME in the similar price range.

anybody else have one of these cards? i have windows me and cannot get it to see the drivers. i have tried installing several times. i downloaded the latest drivers from their website and trying installing them after copying them to the harddrive. anybody know what is going on?

Motu installation Locks up the Computer
When I try to install the pci-324 card, windows Xp recognizes the hardware, installs the gsif driver, then recognizes hardware again and trys to install the wave driver (which I need). Just as the progress bar finishes up the system locks up, and I mean dead stop, the mouse wont move, not the XP type of freeze where it only happens in the program.

What kind of problem does that sound like, once I know I could start troubleshooting with some direction (I dont expect a definitive answer). Could this be an IRQ conflict, or will IRQ conflicts allow you to install the hardware?
out of those choicesi'd get the delta 1010. the omni if you need ok preamps. with the delta i'd just buy a nice preamp. the only motu i'd get over the delta is the 896, but its like $1200 and motu's support is up there with digidesign, Close to none

i have heard ALL motu gear doesn't play nice with windows.

dude, i installed the 4-in-1's. i downloaded the latest BIOS, the latest drivers for everything in my system, i followed the MOTU installation instructions to a tee (strange as they are... install drivers BEFORE the card), i tried different PCI slots, i even tried reformatting and reinstalling Windows XP... all with no luck.

MOTU support SUCKS for Windows. I will never buy anything from them again.

Contacting MOTU via Email has yielded zero results.


But then again, someone is going to bitch about every piece of equipment out there.

If you really want to know....Ask Track Rat...He seems to have success with it and maybe its just user error. I have come to the conclusion though, that there support sucks.
Hum?:confused:I have 2 motu 2408 mk3's,windows xp. Had them for about 5 years.Flawless operation.When I first got them I spoke a lot with motu with regards to setup etc, always great..at least for me. I run it with sonar 5 and can pile up the track, up to 50 with good amount of plugins and it works great.
 
The second I saw 324, I immediately stopped reading.

As I understand it, the 324 card is electrically incompatible with most (all?) modern machines. That's why MOTU sells the cards separately. Chances are, if that poster upgrades to a 424, all his/her problems will go away.

http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technotes/will-my-windows-pc-work-with-the-motu-pci-324-audio-system

So apparently that person's computer is a fossil if it worked with the 324 at all, which is probably part of the problem as well.... :D

BTW, M-Audio is now owned by Digi, one of the other companies the person complaining about MOTU support was also complaining about, making their support likely not significantly better.
 
Thanks to dgatwood, blazingstrings, pipelineaudio, and the other members for the excellent discussion on these interfaces. Reps are enhanced, thanks again.

After digesting all the information, it looks to me like the MOTU 8pre is the interface of choice for our needs. It appears to be rugged, well made, good electronics, and DICE free.

I will make sure to use a quality FW interface card with a TI chipset.
 
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