C
cycadia
New member
I've narrowed down my audio interface options to these. I've pretty much looked at every available eligible model on the Australian market, and ruled out everything else for being too simple, too expensive, or just not what I'm looking for. Aus dollar doesn't buy you much.
I have a PC laptop. Not too flashy (XP over Celeron M 410 1.46Ghz with soon-to-be 1.5gig ram). Have a PCMCIA slot I could install (unpowered) Firewire adaptor into.
Any opinions? These seem fairly similar feature wise. I only need a couple of inputs at a time, either 1 preamped mic/ 1 Hi-Z instrument or 2 preamped mics. Don't care about MIDI or digital I/O right now.
How do the preamps measure up? I want to use a Shure SM58 so I need some decent gain. What about hums and buzzes? Sound quality?? Latency? Firewire and USB2.0 is a bonus, but do I really need it if I'm rarely recording more than one track at a time? Sounds like the Inspire may not be as good in terms of fending off hums on a PC laptop - the other two have balanced outs and ground-lift switches. What about driver reliability and latency? Can't find many reviews of the UA-25EX as it's a pretty new upgrade on the UA-25, still USB 1.1 though. Preamps are supposed to be quite good quality but I don't know if the gain's okay for a SM58, given it's bus powered. Sounds like the phantom power's decent though.
(xposted to CDN) Thanks if anyone's got any experience/expertise with any of these interfaces they can share.
ETA: ...........24 hours later, leaning towards E-mu, but I've just discovered I can get the NI Audio Kontrol 1 at a reasonable price and reviews sound good... *sigh* too many options! Thanks for the opinions!
I have a PC laptop. Not too flashy (XP over Celeron M 410 1.46Ghz with soon-to-be 1.5gig ram). Have a PCMCIA slot I could install (unpowered) Firewire adaptor into.
Any opinions? These seem fairly similar feature wise. I only need a couple of inputs at a time, either 1 preamped mic/ 1 Hi-Z instrument or 2 preamped mics. Don't care about MIDI or digital I/O right now.
How do the preamps measure up? I want to use a Shure SM58 so I need some decent gain. What about hums and buzzes? Sound quality?? Latency? Firewire and USB2.0 is a bonus, but do I really need it if I'm rarely recording more than one track at a time? Sounds like the Inspire may not be as good in terms of fending off hums on a PC laptop - the other two have balanced outs and ground-lift switches. What about driver reliability and latency? Can't find many reviews of the UA-25EX as it's a pretty new upgrade on the UA-25, still USB 1.1 though. Preamps are supposed to be quite good quality but I don't know if the gain's okay for a SM58, given it's bus powered. Sounds like the phantom power's decent though.
(xposted to CDN) Thanks if anyone's got any experience/expertise with any of these interfaces they can share.
ETA: ...........24 hours later, leaning towards E-mu, but I've just discovered I can get the NI Audio Kontrol 1 at a reasonable price and reviews sound good... *sigh* too many options! Thanks for the opinions!
Last edited:
