Best Audio Interface 4 Wimdows 7 64 bit?

[Yety]

I can confirm the trouble with MOTU and Windows Vista and 7, 32-Bit and 64-Bit. Especially 64-Bit generates a lot of trouble. And I think that there will be a lot of people out there, who have had problems with MOTU-Hardware using Windows newer than XP SP2, too.
And their support is crappy, too. It often takes several days until they answer. They also don't come up with driver-updates often.
I heard about Focusrite interfaces working well with Windows. But I don't have any experience using Focusrite.

[night shift]

dont buy motu products on windows - great soundcards, but they really do work best on macs. rme is prob a safer option.

Eh? I was considering a MOTU in my next planned upgrade

Is this a widely held view and does it apply to PCI cards as well?

Think I'll reconsider and get RME

we had a lot of trouble with motu under windows, none ever under osx...

for windows, go RME, for sure (that actually applies to osx as well, if you can afford RME, go RME)

That settles it for me. Also reckon the RME Digicheck software is an important addition after reading B Kat's Mastering Audio book

[TroyP]

Don't know yet, but I'll tell you in a couple days how the Fast Track Ultra works. Looks like we've got similar machines.

Mine's a Pavilion dv7, dedicated vid card, 4GB ram.

[Abzurd]

Thanks chis. The AudioFire4 is looking very tempting.I like the RME products but they are a little out of my price range @ the moment.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Can confirm unsuitability of MOTU products for use with Windows and particularly with any version other than 32 bit XP.

Either save up for a genuine quality product now or manage on a cheap and cheerful until you can is my advice.

[chis]

Thanks chis. The AudioFire4 is looking very tempting.I like the RME products but they are a little out of my price range @ the moment.

You're welcome.

A friend of mine upgraded to an Echo AudioFire4 from an M-Audio Audiophile PCI card. He was truly staggered by the difference. There's better sounding boxes out there than Echo, but there's far, far worse. Their drivers are good too. The only caution I would give is that firewire audio interfaces can potentially have more trouble at lower latencies than PCI or PCI-Express ones. That won't be a problem if you use direct monitoring.

[BoxDJ]

Somewhat off topic, and is a dumb question, why would you buy low latency soundcard when there is direct monitoring?