M-Audio 410 Firewire Interface

[DARKSHINE]

Hey all. I posted this in newbies section but no one is answering, I thought maybe I'll get answered here.

It's my first purchase of an audio interface and the 410 Firewire Interface was the one I narrowed down to.

- 2 Channels for me is fine, as I'll only be recording 1 track at a time, maybe 2.
- I need the Midi-ins to use with my keyboard.
- I heard the mic-pre's were decent, although i don't know what mic pres are good or bad.

A few questions.
- I've read a lot of reviews and there were a lot of happy users, and a lot of bad users, a lot of people complained about bugs and driver issues. I'm buying this from overseas so I need it to work properly.
- Will I have any latency problems running this on an iMac PowerPC G5 1.7Ghz 1G RAM?
- Will I be able to do midi on a DAW, like drums/pianos/synths using my keyboard?

I have about $450 AUD to spend on an interface, and this seemed the best for my needs.

If anyone can help me with this, thanks a lot, sorry if I sound really dopey.

Cheers
Daniel

 

[TyphoidHippo]

It's an excellent choice for a first interface. I had an 1814 that I used to carry around with me and record live shows with. I used it for years and never had a single problem with it....in fact - I made some pretty damn good recordings with it and made quite a bit of money. So there's a success story for you, .

The 410 is built on the same firewire chipset (as are a ton of other firewire interfaces from various manufacturers), and I'm pretty sure it has exactly the same preamps and converters as the 1814 (just not as many converters, obviously). However - I have never owned a Mac, and all my positive experience was on a PC laptop running Windows XP. I have certainly read quite a few unhappy reports from Mac users about M-Audio having poor Mac support...although it's been a long while since I've read up on it. So, I guess what I can tell you is the hardware is excellent - especially for the price, but as far as Mac drivers go....maybe someone else can chime in here.

 

[DARKSHINE]

alright thanks man.

at least i know the interface itself is good for what I need.

i just need to make sure that it will run well on a Mac without any problems.

mac users on here, help me out.

cheers

 

[aidan_m]

I use a firewire 1814 on an intel macbook pro, running tiger 10.4.8 and pro tools m-powered and have had no issues whatsoever wit this. Installed the driver software, installed protools and away I went!!

 

[DARKSHINE]

so the firewire 1814 is basically the same as the 410.

i just want to make sure it works decently on macs, the 410, because it most certainly will have something different than the 1814.

thanks for the help tho, im pretty close to buying it.

 

[TyphoidHippo]

so the firewire 1814 is basically the same as the 410.

Yes. In fact, the exact same drivers are used for the 410 and the 1814...and the ProjectMix I/O, too. They are all the same device, essentially, just different things are, or are not integrated into each one. They just cut down the number of A/D converters in the 410... They are built on the "Bridgco Enhanced Breakout Box" (BeBob) IEEE1394 (FireWire) platform, and you can check out Bridgeco here: http://www.bridgeco.net/

This is the same platform that nearly every manufacturer builds firewire audio devices on - meaning that if your specific device's manufacturer has figured out how to write good drivers for the BeBob platform on your OS (which MAudio has certainly done for Windows, as I can confirm, and also for Mac, as Aidan M can confirm), then all of their firewire devices should work equally well on those operating systems.

 

[DARKSHINE]

Oh right I see.

Thats heaps cool.
We'll ill probably be buying it, not overseas now, because I won't get factory warranty if I buy it overseas.. so I'll have to save up a bit more to buy it from here in Australia.. everything is so much more expensive.

 

[dmc777]

I had a 410 running on an Ibook G4. Not a bad unit but I found the pres to lack headroom and to be quite noisy. Never really had any latency problems and you can do everything you're wanting with it. My biggest complaint is with the headphone volume. You just can't crank your phones up loud enough! Ironically I ended up selling it on ebay and getting an 1814 cause I needed more inputs and got it at such a good price. If your pretty stuck on the 410 I would search on ebay and go ahead and get the 1814 cause you'll probably want more options in the future.

 

[DARKSHINE]

Yeah I see.

Question.
How do you know when a mic-pre lacks headroom and sounds noisy?

The fire 1814 doesn't have midi in tho, it only has way more inputs, but they are jacks.. so that means I'd have to have all my instruments and extra mics into a mixer or something first before it's put into the inputs on the interface?

correct me if I'm wrong, because I probably am.
Sorry for the dopey questions, I'm still learning.

I just need this interface for home recording, to record some tracks consisting of vocals, guitars and drums/synths done with a keyboard.
I have no where near enough money to afford mixers, monitors or anything like that just yet.

 

[TyphoidHippo]

Yeah I see.

Question.
How do you know when a mic-pre lacks headroom and sounds noisy?

Well...the "sounds noisy" is pretty self-explanatory. If you hear a bunch of static, hiss, or hum - that's noise that shouldn't be there. I did not find this to be the case with the microphone preamps on my 1814. Not even a little bit...not even at all, in fact. Every other cheap mic preamp (and some expensive ones, too) I've ever used has been noticably noisy - but not the ones in the 1814.

The fire 1814 doesn't have midi in tho,

The 1814 has midi in. Who told you it didn't?

Maybe you've just seen pics of the back without the breakout dongle thingy attached - which is where the midi plugs are.

Look at this big close-up picture:

http://www.m-audio.com/images/global/media_hqpics/firewire1814_back.jpg

See the 15 pin port on the left that says: "MIDI, S/PDIF, Word Clock" ? In the box with your 1814 will come an adapter that you plug into that port, and it breaks out into like...5 or so cables - two of which are the midi in and midi out cables.

it only has way more inputs, but they are jacks.. so that means I'd have to have all my instruments and extra mics into a mixer or something first before it's put into the inputs on the interface?

You can run instruments like bass guitar and keyboards into the line-ins. For microphones beyond the two that you can plug into the preamps on the front of the 1814, however, you will indeed need additional microphone preamps. These do not necessarily have to be on a mixer. There's a TON of people who swear by the M-Audio DMP3, which gives you two additional preamps for like $190 or so, I think...

 

[dgatwood]

This is the same platform that nearly every manufacturer builds firewire audio devices on - meaning that if your specific device's manufacturer has figured out how to write good drivers for the BeBob platform on your OS (which MAudio has certainly done for Windows, as I can confirm, and also for Mac, as Aidan M can confirm), then all of their firewire devices should work equally well on those operating systems.

The difference is that none of the other BeBoB hardware vendors have Mac drivers. The others just use the built-in AppleFWAudio driver to handle their devices. M-Audio has heir own drivers, and they don't work nearly as well as the Apple drivers, IMHO. As long as you never upgrade the OS, things are fine. Sometimes, though, an OS upgrade results in a broken driver that suddenly causes playback to repeat in a loop over and over, getting louder each time. It's really weird. Installing a newer or older driver version tends to fix this until the next OS upgrade, and then you have issues again. I mean minor updates like 10.3.x, not from 10.3 to 10.4....

The M-Audio stuff is also dodgy if it isn't the only device on the FireWire bus. Put it behind even a hub and it completely falls over. I've seen this on a FW1814, and one of my coworkers confirmed that he'd seen it on his 410. This is not a generic BeBoB problem; it's an M-Audio-specific issue....

I concur about the pres. Well, I wouldn't use the word noisy. They really aren't that noisy, IIRC, but they are pretty harsh sounding. It sounds like they used ceramic (or maybe electrolytic) capacitors for the filter caps to get rid of the phantom power, but I'm just guessing here. Basically, it sounds... spitty.

If you're buying an interface for the Mac, I strongly recommend gear by MOTU. Their Mac drivers are top notch, and the audio also sounds significantly better (less brittle) than the M-Audio gear I've used, IMHO. It's a much better value for the money. Of course, they start at a higher price, but you do get what you pay for. Your budget is within about a hundred bucks of what an 8Pre costs (at least in the U.S.). You should also be able to get a used 828MKII within your price range fairly easily, I suspect.

Just my $0.02.

 

[DARKSHINE]

Thanks heaps for that.
It cleared a lot up.

And how noisy can the pre's be? Like will it be too noisy to record a nice clean sound? Because I know just recording into my mac via the inbuilt mic is really crap, because of the fan's noise. I don't want any noise compared to that. Just no noise at all.

I'll be buying the 1814 now, I found one on ebay for $550 brand new, cheapest I've seen it in Australia. In my local music store, it's $550 for the Firewire 410, haha can you believe it.

Cheers everyone
Daniel

 

[DARKSHINE]

The difference is that none of the other BeBoB hardware vendors have Mac drivers. The others just use the built-in AppleFWAudio driver to handle their devices. M-Audio has heir own drivers, and they don't work nearly as well as the Apple drivers, IMHO. As long as you never upgrade the OS, things are fine. Sometimes, though, an OS upgrade results in a broken driver that suddenly causes playback to repeat in a loop over and over, getting louder each time. It's really weird. Installing a newer or older driver version tends to fix this until the next OS upgrade, and then you have issues again. I mean minor updates like 10.3.x, not from 10.3 to 10.4....

The M-Audio stuff is also dodgy if it isn't the only device on the FireWire bus. Put it behind even a hub and it completely falls over. I've seen this on a FW1814, and one of my coworkers confirmed that he'd seen it on his 410. This is not a generic BeBoB problem; it's an M-Audio-specific issue....

I concur about the pres. Well, I wouldn't use the word noisy. They really aren't that noisy, IIRC, but they are pretty harsh sounding. It sounds like they used ceramic (or maybe electrolytic) capacitors for the filter caps to get rid of the phantom power, but I'm just guessing here. Basically, it sounds... spitty.

If you're buying an interface for the Mac, I strongly recommend gear by MOTU. Their Mac drivers are top notch, and the audio also sounds significantly better (less brittle) than the M-Audio gear I've used, IMHO. It's a much better value for the money. Of course, they start at a higher price, but you do get what you pay for. Your budget is within about a hundred bucks of what an 8Pre costs (at least in the U.S.). You should also be able to get a used 828MKII within your price range fairly easily, I suspect.

Just my $0.02.

Damn, negative review. lol

Okay, well around $900 is the cheapest ill find a MOTU 8pre here in Aus.
So that's out of my budget anyway.

So how come some people say that the 1814 is really nice sounding, great pres, drivers were fine... and then some say the complete opposite. I really don't get it sometimes, plus this type of money I don't see oftern, so I really can't afford to buy something, then if i don't like it, buy another one. I only work part-time so my income is rubbish.

 

[TyphoidHippo]

The M-Audio stuff is also dodgy if it isn't the only device on the FireWire bus. Put it behind even a hub and it completely falls over. I've seen this on a FW1814, and one of my coworkers confirmed that he'd seen it on his 410. This is not a generic BeBoB problem; it's an M-Audio-specific issue....

Ok, well....add my projectmix I/O to that list. It doesn't really "completely fall over" when it shares a bus - but I get all these horrible artifacts when recording directly to a firewire hard drive on the same bus, and absolutely nothing will fix it. (I have tried EVERYTHING!)

I concur about the pres. Well, I wouldn't use the word noisy. They really aren't that noisy, IIRC, but they are pretty harsh sounding. It sounds like they used ceramic (or maybe electrolytic) capacitors for the filter caps to get rid of the phantom power, but I'm just guessing here. Basically, it sounds... spitty.

Yea...they're not noisy at all, really. However, whenever I actually used any of the preamps on my 1814, I almost always had to EQ out a few notches between 1900 and 2600 hertz by anywhere from 3 to 21 (!!!!) db, because there would be nasty resonances there (that were NOT there when using external preamps, like the ones in my Allen & Heath GL2432, or the ones in a FocusRite Red I had to part with a while back) - is this the harshness you are talking about? If I had to describe the sound of those resonances, I think harsh would be the most appropriate word....I'm just wondering if you are talking about the same thing that I remember having to deal with.

The nasty resonance thing is also an issue with my ProjectMix. Mind you...it's easily EQ'd out with a notch filter, and the remaining audio sounds great - but still....it shouldn't be there to begin with.

 

[DARKSHINE]

I honestly don't know what to do.
hmmm

I'll probably buy a MOTU 8pre from the US. I can find them almost anywhere for around $450 - $550. I won't get factory warranty I don't think, but i'll get hopefully a 90 day return. But something for that much money shouldn't really stuff up... I hope. What are the chances that it would break anyway.

 

[dgatwood]

Yea...they're not noisy at all, really. However, whenever I actually used any of the preamps on my 1814, I almost always had to EQ out a few notches between 1900 and 2600 hertz by anywhere from 3 to 21 (!!!!) db, because there would be nasty resonances there (that were NOT there when using external preamps, like the ones in my Allen & Heath GL2432, or the ones in a FocusRite Red I had to part with a while back) - is this the harshness you are talking about? If I had to describe the sound of those resonances, I think harsh would be the most appropriate word....I'm just wondering if you are talking about the same thing that I remember having to deal with.

I haven't analyzed it that carefully. I just hear with my ears a sort of brittle sound like the highs have dips and peaks that I don't hear with even my dirt cheap Peavey PV8 pres. But yeah, that sounds like you're hearing the same thing.

 

[DARKSHINE]

So the MOTU 8pre is all good then yeah?
Because i'll be buying that in 2 weeks.

 

[TyphoidHippo]

So the MOTU 8pre is all good then yeah?
Because i'll be buying that in 2 weeks.

I've never actually used any MOTU stuff - but the general consensus is usually that it is pretty damn good, although I have heard a few times over on gearslutz about the "MOTU veil" which is apparently a term coined because their preamps and/or converters kind of muffle high frequencies....but like I said, that's just other opinions I've read...I've never used any of it myself.

 

[DARKSHINE]

Oh right I see.

Well most opinions and reviews are pretty damn sweet, so yeah, I'll be buying this.

I mean I won't need all these In/outs at the moment, but I matter as well get something like this now, because it has everything I need for now, and it'll have everything I need in say 4 years.

Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it.
Daniel