How are M-audio Fw-Interfaces on Macbooks these days?

[maksk]

Hello
I was wondering...
I had a Firewire 1814 on my Macbook Pro and Powerbook a couple of years ago, and it was horrible in terms of drivers/stabilty....
How are they today? Any progress with the Profires maybe?
M.

[The Rebel Dekadance]

hey...i've had an M-Audio 410 for about almost 2 years.....in terms of stability its krap...lately it's been messin up real bad...i cheked the updates and its been like two years since there's been one so i dont know.....with ableton when i try to use it ableton says the audio engine is turned off , even when in the audio/midi setup it shows my maudio as the output and shit...its freakin annoying as hell.....anyone else havin problems with the 410 ??

[beats me]

The general rule of thumb is don't buy m-audio audio interfaces EVER. There's tons of other options and yet people still buy this junk despite the entire global internet telling them not to. Sure they work for some people but for every one person there's 10 that say they are garbage.

Hope that was helpful.

[Voodu]

I use a pc so maybe it's different, but I've never had any problems with any M-Audio stuff. I guess I've been lucky because I always hear people complaining about the quality of drivers...etc.

[AdamJay]

Metric Halo ftw!

[Green Lemon]

hey...i've had an M-Audio 410 for about almost 2 years.....in terms of stability its krap...lately it's been messin up real bad...i cheked the updates and its been like two years since there's been one so i dont know.....with ableton when i try to use it ableton says the audio engine is turned off , even when in the audio/midi setup it shows my maudio as the output and shit...its freakin annoying as hell.....anyone else havin problems with the 410 ??

Same here.

[maksk]

i'm on a firebox now, by the way
this little guy totally rocks.
also had the ultralite before
worked good as wel but was just to big for me...

[Kozak]

I run an M-audio Firewire Solo on a macbook 2007 and I have never had any problems with stability. Only problem I have is that I can't adjust the audio buffer for some reason.

[john doe by choice]

I'm using a ProFire610 right now (got a great deal) and I have had no problems with it, it sounds great and doesn't give me FW dropout issues, unlike the Digidesign MX002 rack piece of !#$@ that I sold - I paid 4 times what I paid for my PF610 for that thing and it gave me nothing but problems, as bad as any complaint I've ever heard about M-Audio. On top of that, customer support was crap, and of course, Apple and Digi just sit there and point fingers at each other, no one ever taking responsibility for anything. I know M-Audio is owned by Digi now, but I still won't buy any more of Digi's proprietary crap ever again, and won't recommend it, either - life without Doh! Tools has been pleasantly simple.

[leedsquietman]

M-Audio used to make better stuff before being taken over by Digi, their PCI interfaces such as audiophile 24/96 were a good starting point for many musicians, I know that when I first started in 1999 with computer based digital recording and Cubase VST3, that it served me well for what it was. A friend of mine who has a massive rig full of expensive gear, still often uses his Delta 66.

Unfortunately, I couldn't recommend them now. Stability issues will always vary depending upon hardware and settings, but M-Audio firewire interfaces in particular, suffer more than most from this. They are also poor at driver support, most of their vista drivers are still only beta, and the official release ones are so poor and buggy they should be classified as beta. Getting low latency and stability with M-Audio gear is typically more of an issue than with Motu, RME, Echo, Presonus and even Edirol. There have been dozens of similar posts here and elsewhere, the FW410 either seems to work great or is a total lemon, there are no inbetweens with it.

[Punky921]

The M-Audio Conectiv interface works fine for me and is fairly stable, though I dislike a lot of the design choices.

J

[evernaut]

It seems like the folks who've had bad experiences with M-Audio will forever hate them, and those who've never had so much as an unanswered email from support will wonder what provokes such ire.

I fall into the latter camp, and have recently bought the Profire 610.

Three weeks in and I absolutely love it - it's well built, looks great, sounds about as good as any interface costing significantly less than 500 quid has any right to sound, the preamps are very transparent and clean with lots of gain before you hit the hiss, there's lots of monitoring and I/O options, it has two dedicated h/phone outs, the latest OS X drivers are rock-solid and support PT M-Powered....etc. etc.

And, at 200 quid, what the fuck is not to like? I'm not saying that M-Audio haven't had their share of duff products - and those issues have been compounded when using Windows it would seem - but I think they're due a reprieve with the Profire.

[leedsquietman]

supporting PT M-Powered I wouldn't necessarily claim as a plus

If a device is working for you then why would you knock it. I understand that, I own an Alesis IO14 and I have never had any problems with that either, although some people have. For the money I paid for it (big discounted sale price), it blew away the specs in anything else and hasn't given me any problems, except that there are no Vista 64 bit drivers for it (or the IO26, which uses the same drivers) - yet. I'm still on 32 bit Win XP SP3 at home, so no issue there.

All I know is that the M-Audio FW410 in particular seems to be a very pernickity unit, which either works well with no issues, or is just a disaster. And that many people complain about the drivers, which definately don't seem as rock solid as RME or MOTU's drivers and a company like Echo who still provides updated drivers even for some legacy products. But if you're a user who is not having those issues, then why would you complain?

I have so far read about 4 profire owners and the verdict so far is 3 really like it and 1 person hated it and put it up for resale almost immediately, but that's not a bad ratio - the ratios of satisfaction on the FW410 are definately not as high IMHO at several forums.

[xzusa8ky]

Dont buy M-AUDIO

I got a Firewire 410 and it so a bad experience! The sound of the card is ok but the drivers are always crap! Most of the time the interface wont play before i plug the firewire cable from the mac...... I gonna sell this piece of crap so soon as possible and then i buy a RME card. I will never gonna buy a M-Audio product anymore!

Hands off!

Piece of crap!

kind regards

[LOFA]

A) Take AdamJay's advice
B) Do not waste your money on M-Audio gear. I am lending my fw1814 to a fried semi-permanently because I would feel bad selling it to a stranger. I almost feel bad about lending the box to my friend. No exaggerations over here.