Anyone have any experience using this little box or know where I can get some reviews of it. From what I gather it's made by the same guys who make ProTools so it should be good right??.... Mainly interested how it stacks up against the M-Audio Fast Track Pro. Heres a link to the DigiDesign webpage:

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm...114&itemid=4962

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The only reason I would get it is if you actually intend in using Protools LE for recording on your home PC. The learning curve with PT is apparently a bitch, and you need a very decent computer to run it well, most other home guitarists just use Cubase, Ableton, Nuendo, GarageBand, GuitarRig2, or similar.

If you don't plan on using ProTools, don't get the digidesign, that's what it's for really(it will work with Cubase and stuff though) just get a different interface. Eg: Presonus Firebox, Presonus Inspire, Lexicon Omega, M-Audio FT Pro. But I personally suggest a firewire interface like the first 2 I mentioned.

If you don't have firewire, then I guess you can't go wrong with the Mbox 2 mini, it's a bit better than most of the other USB recording interfaces, but will still be prone to some latency unlike firewire..

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Unfortunately I don't have Firewire, so I'm limited to USB connectivity. How would the M-Audio Fast Track stack up against it? I'm really looking for something that is easy to use first and foremost. I haven't got a clue about what program I would use, but again it needs to be easy and not too complex. Providing that I can fiddle with EQ, Comp and reverb settings thats about it. I'd rather get my decent sound by spending a bit more on a mic. I don't have a particularly new computer either. From what I've read it will handle the recording I want though. It will only be single tracks at a time. (Intel Celeron/ 512mb ram/2.8Ghz/ 80GB HD + I think it has USB 2.0...). I'm kind of hoping that whatever bundled software the interface had would be good enough, rather than going out an buying seperate editing/recording stuff.

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umm, EQ/comp/reverb etc. is controlled in your sequencing/recording program(like Cubase).

Find out if you have USB 2.0 or not. If you can't find anywhere on your PC that sais USB2.0 check the Device Manager in My PC's properties, look for USB drivers or something. If it doesn't say 2.0 anywhere then you have 1.1.

Don't buy recording software, download it. My presonus Inspire came with Cubase LE though, and that's pretty good.

I would get the Fasttrack Pro in your position. You'll probably need a better system to run Protools efficiently which was what the Mbox is designed for(and it's rather tough to learn). Plus it's less expensive and it's 1.1(is the Mbox 2.0?). Why would you pay extra for the Protools compatibility when you aren't gonna use it?

Get the FT Pro and a good ol SM57 or 2. Or a DI box with cab simulation like I bought. I think the FT Pro comes with Ableton or Cubase LE or Sonar I forget..

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, yeah I know, thats what I meant, i.e. how basic and simple was Ableton Live Lite (M-Audio FT Pro) to use. I've got at least one USB 2.0 port, but I think its being used by my wireless adaptor. I'll have to investigate further. The Mbox is only USB 1.1 anyway. I'm probably going to pick up the SM57 to go with the FT Pro providing I can get a bit more info on Ableton.

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I've never used ableton but it's probably very simple, and you'll find tutorials for it easily in google. You can always download Cubase and Nuendo too(same shit almost, both are from Steinberg), they're a little more deep and have tons of features, and they're the most popular recording software out there these days.

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if i were you, i'd upgrade my computer/soundcard first and get a cheap preamp like the m-audio 'audiobuddy' after. are you working w a laptop?

if you're having latency issues using usb, try the asio4all driver.

abbleton is geared towards assembling/arranging little loops. if you want a linear multitrack, just get cubase, and learn about vst plug-ins.

No offense, but that's horrible advice. The audiobuddy is cheap junk, they're poorly built, absolutely no comparison to the FT Pro.

Upgrading the soundcard is virtually useless for recording if you're buying a recording interface. Even if you were gonna buy just a soundcard for recording it would be silly, because no reasonably priced soundcard has decent A/D converters and/or mic preamps, you would need to buy them seperately, which = more money. You can record on a computer with NO SOUNDCARD and a Fasttrack Pro(which has speaker outs for monitoring as well as a headphone jack).

Recording interfaces are the way to go these days. Best way to get a mic pre and a kickass A/D converter in 1 package.

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^ speaking from experience. owned a fasttrack and used usb on my laptop. was horrible.

switched to a desktop, ran an audiobuddy through an old soundblaster 64 and was a million times better. last year upgraded to m-audio audiophile 192, and now with my rØde condenser, im getting studio quality recordings.

ymmv

[ps he's using a celeron w 512 ram. he NEEDS an upgrade. to the OP, you'll get a better response re computer recording on KVR]

Ok thanks, I'll try and get some other opinions on various websites. I don't want to screw around with the interanls of my computer, so its USB plug and play or nothing for me. I'm just trying to work out what is the best package. I've also heard about the m-audio mobilepre, whats the difference between this and the FT Pro, apart from seemingly not being Midi compatible? Apparently the mic preamps are poor in the Fast Track...Kleenx is this why your experience was horrible?

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Latency will be shitty with an USB interface. Either firewire or internal, and since you don't have firewire, go internal. It's simple to install, just untighten the screw on a filler bracket, pop the card in, tighten the screw.

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Well the Mobilepre says it has 'zero latency direct monitoring' is there any other latency that will affect me??? I'm also only recording one instrument at a time. Max 3 guitar tracks/ 1 Bass/ 1 vocals. Drums will be samples so I'm not sure whether they count. All in all not a huge amount of tracks to slow everything down surely? oh and BTW Whats the difference between direct monitoring and software monitoring?

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sry Gor maybe i missed it, but did you mention whether its a desktop or laptop? if its a laptop, you can't really upgrade the soundcard. which would justify using an external. if you have a desktop, just get a pci card ... its very easy to install don't worry about it.

it sucked for a few reasons ... the sound wasnt great and gain was too low for guitar and bass when DI'd, latency (crippling for live performance and getting things in sync), the construction was faulty (usb jack often shorted and unit had to be reset and redetected by windows), and i had unresolved IRQ conflict probs which m-audio and my comp manufacturer were unable to help me with (resulted in blips of noise at all times).

when it says direct monitoring, you will be able to hear whats going into the box, but not in coordination with whatever other stuff is playing back on the comp. latency will improve with a better processor, more ram, and good drivers.

i understand what soeru is saying, but this is just my experience. what he said about the audiobuddy is completely ridiculous though ... idk wtf he's talking about re that. its a tank and sounds great for the price (60ish for a preamp w lots of gain w clip monitor, dual 1/4 dual xlr, phantom, etc).

anyways if you're gonna be using your computer to record, it's worth learning about the internal workings. unlike the land of guitar gear where you must always pay through the ass for quality, there are a lot of ways to get a good sound on computers for much less than you'd expect. multi-tracking 4 live at once might require some more processing power and memory, so take a look at your computer first before buying the other stuff. if you're planning on doing a lot of post work, and want to have multitracks playing back with effects on them and whatnot for tweaking, you're definitely going to need a powerful system for it all to run smoothly.

Yeah I am using a Desktop. The reason why I'm asking loads of question is that I've seen some posts on HC that absolutely love the FT Pro. Thing is already I didn't understand half your post (not your fault I'm just not particularly computer/ digital literate), and I'm not in a position to spend hours and hours learning how shit works. Its a case of wanting something pretty simple and easy to use. I'm not looking for studio quality results either. This isn't going to be used for live work, and I don't really understand how latency is an issue if it claims to have 'zero latency'; am I missing something? As stubborn as it sounds I'm not going to start changing stuff around in my computer, because I have no knowledge whatsoever in regards that. It's a case of my computer is old, yeah I know but I want to make best use of it. To be honest I'd rather somebody said 'you are going to have more problems than its worth' and then I can just leave it.

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well here's the thing, if you invest in a new computer you can do a lot of things for free and or very cheap (allbeit not legal). so if you're going to use it a lot (not just audio but w/e you feel like doing), it's worth it.

if you're not going to use it much and are set in your old ways, maybe just get a digital multitrack recorder and leave the computer out of it, since an old system that's not up to par won't work very well for audio engineering especially with a monster prog like protools.

Zero Latency Direct Monitoring = no lag when you're listening to yourself playing guitar through the headphone/speaker jacks on the interface.

Btw Kleenx, did you have the FT or the FT Pro? BIG difference there. The original FT is crap. I've heard tons of good recordings done with condenser mics and DI boxes with the FT pro and it sounded amazing and quiet, and the owners had nothing but good things to say about it. My bad, I thought the audiobuddy was something completely different, but to get the best out of the audiobuddy you need it hooked up to a decent A/D converter, which most of the soundcards he's going to be able to afford do not have. Most 200$+ interfaces have better mic pre's than the audiobuddy + better A/D converters than he can afford.

Besides he doesn't want anything internal. It's a hassle too so I advise against getting an external mic pre and new soundcard if he wants user-friendlyness. Plus if he gets an interface he can hook it up to any computer and record anywhere.

You don't really need to upgrade your RAM. I have 512mb too, and that MORE than suffices for recording 2 guitars at once, which I never really do anyways. And if effects are a problem, just don't record with them in real time, apply them to your tracks afterwards duh. I don't know if that will be the case with USB though, I use Firewire.

By the way, a Firewire PCI card costs like 20-30$ these days, they're worth getting if you want to get a Firewire interface, which won't be prone at all to latency/dropouts while recording unlike regular USB.

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You need to find out how the "Zero Latency" thing works - latency is an issue when you have recorded a click track and recorded guitar on that with so-and-so much latency, then one more with more latency, then one more track with more latency, and then the final drum track (not click track) with even more latency etc. so in the end everything sounds misaligned

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Which can be easily fixed in cubase by dragging the tracks and shit. I always record to an actual drum track not a click though, has more of a "band" feel even though I record my shit Bathory style.

The Zero Latency is only for monitoring, as for actual recording you will have some actual latency. So long as you don't use a ton of realtime effects and record only 1 guitar at 44.1 or 44.8khz it should be so minimal that you won't have much latency/dropouts.

I have never used a USB interface but everyone with experience with em seems to hate them because they're very prone to lag/latency. Getting ASIO4ALL(google it) is certainly a must if you're gonna use USB.

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I've done the majority of my old band recordings through a Tascam US-122 USB recording interface on a computer with 256 MB of RAM and a 2 gigahertz processor with Cubase SX 2 & 3 and I never had any latency problems unless I started unreasonably pushing the system with crazy shit like recording with realtime effects, having 32 MIDI channels AND about 8 integrated audio tracks going on at once while trying to record, etc. It's all about how you configure the ASIO driver. Usually an ASIO driver for the card/interface will come from the manufacturer of whatever recording interface/recording soundcard you'll buy. The term "Zero Second Latency" is a bit of a misomner, as Soeru said, they're talking about PLAYBACK and not RECORDING. Your soundcard/interface's ASIO buffer will not even let you set it up for zero milleseconds latency, setting it too low causes a weird phenomenom where playing your guitar through the computer sounds like your original signal with a flanger added on with all the knobs maxed out. However, I was able to get an ASIO buffer setting of 356 milliseconds - SUFFICIENT enough to easily and comfortably do realtime recording without having to deal with lags, hangups, moving tracks around, etc. Any lower setting and "flanger freakouts" would occur during recording times when the CPU usage is over 70%. Keep in mind this was all 4 years ago, and with computers nowadays this shouldn't be as big of an issue.

BTW it's prime to get a FireWire card as the technology's been out a couple of years and updated. The first FireWire soundcard I got was in the beginning of 2003 (M-Audio FireWire Solo) and it was a disaster, however it was really the laptop I was recording stuff on that was at fault, the FireWire drivers were fucked up.

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Yeah I have been thinking about maybe just getting a ?PCI Slot Firewire Port? I think thats right, they seem pretty cheap and real easy to install. Then I could get a Presonus Inspire. Am I right in thinking that Firewire is overall a much better interface to use because of lack of latency issues, i.e. constant unwavering data transition? Um and this is what I need I think (seems like a crazy deal!)

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...8205&tabIndex=1

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Correct dude, Firewire is a superior technology and it can actually handle loads more (I don't know the exact number but it sure is alot more) data than USB 2.0 ever could. It's actually supposed to usurp USB in a couple years I believe. Latency issues can come from a couple sources but with FireWire the problem sure won't be data transition related unless you have an abysmally slow computer and low RAM.
That FireWire PCI card is what you need. How much is that in American dollars I have no clue but it sure looks like a hell of a deal to me.

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Its around $6! Ok so now the only other problem might be whether my system can support such a large and complex program as Cubase LE. I'm guessing that it takes up a lot of RAM to operate, so would increasing that help? Currently running 512mb, could take it up to around 750mb. Thanks for all your help guys!

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Holy crap that's inexpensive! Make sure it's a 6-pin FW type, those have bus power, so the interface will feed off of the FW port and won't require an AC adaptor(which actually create noise in recordings). The 4-pin one connectors are smaller, usually found on laptops, they'll work with the inspire/firebox but they need power from an AC.

I think that one's 6-pin though.

Firewire works at like continuous 400 or 500mbps, that's faster than any home LAN network! I think USB 1.1 is only like 100 or 200.

Cubase LE doesn't take up that much memory less you have 40 tracks with a dozen realtime effects(haven't tried this yet), and I have 512mb. It's a good idea to upgrade but it's not really expressly necessary unless you do some serious multitracking for techno and stuff. Just run tweak Windows for better performance and run only the minimal stuff in the background when recording and you'll be fine.

you're welcome.

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Awesome, muchos thanks! Sorted! I'll pick up that Firewire card, the Inspire and a Shure SM57. I'll probably take a load of crap off my computer before installing it all anyway so I'll see how 512mb does before considering more.

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Cool you're welcome man. Btw, for improving PC performance, read this thoroughly:

http://www.schoolkit.com/kb/article.aspx?id=10016

There's also a handful of useless windows services you can safely deactivate to use less resources. I run my comp on almost it's bare bones except for all the necessary audio/drivers and my Firewall, I only have like 160mb used up after I start up(and btw, startups are much faster now after following that guide).

Also, for the Windows services thingy, go to www.wayback.com and search for the now defunct website called www.blackviper.com , that was a site that had a ton of info on how to tweak Windows for best performance.

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You can't go wrong with going on the manufacturers website for your interface and checking combatibility, the more you can get your system to match the recommended system specs, the better chance you'll have of not running into problems down the line (that is if it works at all).

I have an Mbox 1, i like it but it broke on me after about 7/8 months and i had to get it replaced. They're not so cheap either so i wasn't very impressed. I do really like working in protools though i'll just have to hope the replacement holds up.

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