Time to retire my EMU 1616m? (and: Motu M4 vs Ultralite Mk3)

Laimon

New member
Hi guys,

so, I have been using my trusted EMU 1616m for a long time now (8 years?) and I hardly ever had complaints, but with the latest Windows updates, and necessary patches of the drivers (which are, of course, no longer supported, as the interface has been discontinued), it has started to misbehave.
I get a lot of crackling even when I am just playing fairly light sound samples.
So first question for the experts here: am I assuming right that this is (most likely) due to the drivers?

So, provided the above is true, I started looking around for a new audio interface.
I don't need a lot of ins/outs, but I would want the converters to be fairly state of the art, and latency to be minimal. Other thing, I love the software mixer I have with the EMU both for routing but most importantly for tweaking the eq of the outputs ever so slightly.
The Motu M4 looks amazing regarding the first requirement, but there's software to eq the outputs.
The Ultralite Mk3, on the other hand, comes with CueMix, which would be perfect, but I don't seem to find really authoritative info on the converters' quality and actual latency of the card.
So I guess the second question is: how are converters and latency in the Ultralite? Are they significantly worse than the M4?

Bonus question: can you recommend any other audio interface that would fit my requirements?

Thanks a lot!


PS: re eq'ing the outputs, I know you should theoretically look for the most flat response speakers and acoustically treat your room. I have already done that, matter of fact. And it's exhausting :D so I'd really prefer to avoid going on such a hunt again - I really don't mind a bit of eq to level things out.
 
My stock answer is...RME. Not the cheapest but by a long way not the most expensive.

Drivers are impeccable, latency lower than anything else on the market AFAIK and whilst converter quality 'might' not be up there with Apollo, Benchmark et al it is said to be very,very good and better than most. Mic pres are fantastic. Best of all RME keep drivers and firmware going for years and years.

Dave.
 
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