It's taken me a bit of time to post my comments on the U42S but here they are.
First of all, Supercreep, in what way was my post the best ever? Or was that some newbie bashing? Lol i can take it on the chin
Comments
Anyway, I have so far recorded a few very rough demos for my band using the U42S. All I can say is that I have expereinced none of the problems that other users have reported. I am operating Vista 32 Bit and I made sure I followed all the installation instructions properly and downloaded the latest drivers and I was able to start recording with Cubase almost straight away.
The level monitors on the U42S are helpful and are more accurate than I had been led to believe. The fact that you can press a button to link inputs 1 and 2 or inputs 3 and 4 so that they can be monitored directly in stereo is extremely handy and I would hate to have an interface without this feature as I am monitoring my inputs directly.
The knob to slide from direct monitoring and playback is also useful and is great when overdubbing tracks. I would say that the recording loudness is totally ample for my needs and if you listen to some of the recordings on the below link you will get an idea of the level you can get without clipping.
Software
There doesn't seem to much in the way of latency when overdubbing tracks. I have been swithing between Cubase and Reaper and have yet to decide which I prefer. The instructions for using Cubase with the U42S are to set up a mono recording project, but the problem with this is that I am recording a stereo output instrument - my keyboard - so I find myself having to create two tracks and pan one 100% left and the other 100% right or else it sounds really muddy. There is decent editing of individual tracks or segments of tracks. The effects are decent and I have made a bit of use of the reverb and I have tried to use the compressor with limited success, but that's down to my inexperience.
Reaper is handy in that it allows me to select inputs 1 and 2 on my U42S as a single stereo source so I can record and edit my keyboard in one track. However, there is no way to open a single track in a separate editing window to, for example, silence parts of that track etc. The reverb seems decent too for vocals but it is slightly harder to get it to sound good than on Cubase.
I posted some recordings on my new band's myspace so if anyone is interested they can have a listen. If possible though, try to avoid using myspace comments to tell me how poor the recordings are
Anyway, thanks again for the help in choosing the interface and I hope this review helps someone else.
I would definitely recommend the U42S.
(I`m a noob too)
lol