M-Audio Quatro Question

[chrisharris]

Anybody recorded with one of these (or similar device) to capture 4 tracks live through the USB port in CEP/AA? I'm asking b/c I've seen all kinds of issues posted in here about something called "ASIO" drivers and stuff, and I just have no idea if it'll work.

[Strryder]

Chris,

The Quattro will only function as a 2x2 I/O device when using the WDM drivers, and I'm not sure, but they (their WDM drivers), could even be limited to 16 bit operation only, in order to get more I/O from it you would need to use the ASIO drivers, and there are limitations under the ASIO drivers as well, recording at 44.1 or 48 khz you get..

4x4 I/O at 16 bit, and 4x2 or 2x4 at 24 bit

You could get something like Cakewalk HS2 and use it for tracking, then import the tracks into CEP/AA for editing/mixing, I'm not a fan of using usb for audio tho, I have an Edirol UA-20 2x2 usb interface, and the performance of that thing sucks donkey balls, what a waste of money, the newer usb-2 interfaces are supposedly much better because of the increased bandwidth of usb-2.

Have you looked at this yet?

http://www.presonus.com/firebox.html

I'm using a MOTU 828mkII with a laptop as my main rig right now, but I'm thinking about getting one of these for a little more portability.

[chrisharris]

Stryder...you helped a ton. I actually recorded a gig this past weekend (with help) with a Quatro using Sonar...and it was all kinds of fucked up the first night b/c we tried recording in 24Bit, which just did some horrible things. Yeah, I'm hearing that the USB route is a bad thing. Looking at that link, am I reading it wrong, or is the firebox just 2 inputs?

At any rate, you helped...thanks for taking the time to do so.

[Strryder]

The Fire box has 2 instrument/mic inputs on the front (preamps) along with 2 analog line level inputs on the back(plug yer audiobuddy in here), and there's 4 analog inputs, plus 2 spdif inputs that seem to be on a small breakout cable, if you're not using anything with spdif outputs, just disregard those 2 inputs for now, and consider it a 4 analog input box.

It looks pretty cool to me for the money, I think it's about 4 hundred bucks.