E-MU 1820m vs...

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rgraves

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Hi everyone. Just hoping for some opinions. I just recently purchased the 1820m for doing some home recording with Cubase. Now that I've figured out how to use it, I am somewhat satisfied with it.

But my question is actually just this: I am wondering if anyone else out there that has more experience than me could tell me what they think is better, or maybe some of the flaws with the 1820m since I'm not familiar with anything else...

I seem to get nice sounds recorded through it, but I wonder what I'm missing out on, hehe. Also, the software interface is a bit crude...

Any suggestions would be appreciated for my future purchases
 
you pretty much answered your own questions.

If you have the 1820m (as do I) and like it (as do I) consider yourself lucky (as do I).

The main points of contention with the unit as I see it is the patchmix software and the drivers.

I don't have a problem with the latter, but would like to have a more intuitive control of it.

However, bang for buck, I don't think it can be beat. There are a lot of haters out there. Most have spent far more for less performance and like to slam the EMU due to their link to Creative.

If you're happy...awesome. It's a great unit if you can get the drivers working for you.
 
I've been eval'ing one and my opinion is that the D/A is the best bang for the buck out there. I haven't gotten to the D/A so far. I haven't gotten to working any projects.

The best thing E-MU could do is hire the driver dude from RME as their drivers are incredible. It's the only thing holding them back from having an amazingly great product for the price.
 
I have a 1212m which is the same architecture as the 1820m, just less channels...

IMO the conversion is about as clean, noiseless, and distortionless as they come. Still, even though it measures better than a Lynx 2, it doesn't have the wide-open high-end that it and other more expensive converters do. This is probably a function of the cheap opamps and caps and possibly design/clock, although the clock is supposed to be even lower jitter than the Lynx one.

So, I'd say the E-mu's are a good deal, but not necessarily all that their specs would lead you to believe. You can still definitely do better by paying more!
 
I've been rather curios as well about the difference with, say, the 1820m and the "brick" or firebox, or all those other ones people use too. I wish someone who has used the 1820m and didn't like it would point out the things they like better about their unit too.

I'm planning to buy one, but I saw it at a friends house and the software seemed rather annoying, I wonder if other brands had better software than the patchmix thing
 
I personally enjoy patchmix. It works great, and I can quickly move and route things with it, even stuff like routing from Sonar to Sound Forge for quick scratch tracks or dual format recording.

The DRIVERS...well, I've been lucky. Zero problems for me. Others have been far less lucky, and some just cannot use the E-mu because of their needs (Gigastudio, multi-channel WDM (Adobe Audition), etc...) Serious issues, that...
 
Here's one of the things I don't like, that I've noticed changed as soon as I upgraded to the EMU 1820m, which maybe I just need some direction on...

Now when using cubase, if I switch to another program, like let's say outlook express, it completely stops cubase. No more audio or recording...it seems to pause cubase, rather annoying...I liked it better before I could multitask if necessary.

The other thing is that the output of the EMU on regular audio (not recording input) is much lower overall. I have to really crank my monitors to get the same volume I did with a stupid sound blaster live, with for example winamp or MIDI sequencing files, or video games. I called EMU about this and they said it is closer to line level and not amplified as the sound blaster live was, but it sounded like a rather half assed answer if you ask me.
For example: if I plug my Yamaha s90 keyboard directly to my monitors, it sounds freakin fantastic. If I plug it into the EMU 1820m and then output it to the monitors the sound is degraded significantly, even if I increase the gain and whatnot through the Patchmix...

And it seems like Patchmix dies every 45 minutes or so if there's inactivity... EMU tech support also said that's a problem they are aware of, that the software gets "out of sync" with windows after long periods of inactivity.

I guess I'm just wondering if other cards have that many problems to where it's still worth it to keep it. the recording aspect sounds great, I get a great clean signal with plenty of room, but money is not as much of an issue...if I would have known that for $300 or $400 dollars more I could have gotten (something, whatever) I would like to know.
 
rgraves said:
Here's one of the things I don't like, that I've noticed changed as soon as I upgraded to the EMU 1820m, which maybe I just need some direction on...

Now when using cubase, if I switch to another program, like let's say outlook express, it completely stops cubase. No more audio or recording...it seems to pause cubase, rather annoying...I liked it better before I could multitask if necessary.

The other thing is that the output of the EMU on regular audio (not recording input) is much lower overall. I have to really crank my monitors to get the same volume I did with a stupid sound blaster live, with for example winamp or MIDI sequencing files, or video games. I called EMU about this and they said it is closer to line level and not amplified as the sound blaster live was, but it sounded like a rather half assed answer if you ask me.
For example: if I plug my Yamaha s90 keyboard directly to my monitors, it sounds freakin fantastic. If I plug it into the EMU 1820m and then output it to the monitors the sound is degraded significantly, even if I increase the gain and whatnot through the Patchmix...

And it seems like Patchmix dies every 45 minutes or so if there's inactivity... EMU tech support also said that's a problem they are aware of, that the software gets "out of sync" with windows after long periods of inactivity.

I guess I'm just wondering if other cards have that many problems to where it's still worth it to keep it. the recording aspect sounds great, I get a great clean signal with plenty of room, but money is not as much of an issue...if I would have known that for $300 or $400 dollars more I could have gotten (something, whatever) I would like to know.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the output did seem lower on the EMU 1820m than usual, although the output for recording was great. That's kind of strange. I've been wondering what the advantage is of using the EMU 1820m over a digital mixer/recording workstation. they've got those yamaha USB mixers (and several other companies) for not much more. I wonder if it would be better to just get a mixer that has a USB output and record that way?
 
i have the 1212m. everything about it has performed flawlessly, no problems with the drivers. patchmix was confusing at first, but it's a snap now.. and it sounds great.
 
ah this is funny...

someone mentioned the difference between these and usb mixers, etc...

i was going for the EMU...then Delta 1010...then grew out of that and opted for motu 1224/314, wich, in itself is a piece of discontinued crap as well, but with better converters... and finally the new korg SIAB D3200...

i realized i dont have time to make something like this work properly and will opt for something that, in its lower class (the D1600 MKII) is producing commercial records, believe it or not.

pay a little extra and get a RME or Lynx...its like everything, the mass production affordable stuff will only get you so far...but i would say that, for a first buy and just tossing a few hundred bucks that will pay off in terms of learning how something like this works and gettin u ready for a higher unit, its great!
 
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