Ableton Forum

Hello,

Could anyone recommend a good ~$400 audio interface that could be trusted for live use? I intend to have a mic plugged-in so I could apply effects in real time. I currently have a RME Hammerfall PCI card which delivers just what I'm talking about, but I'm moving to a laptop, so I need a solid firewire or USB interface.

I have a 1.6GHz Pentium-M Laptop with 855PM chipset.

I'm looking at M-Audio's Firewire 410, but read a lot of negative feedback. Should I believe that it will be causing me problems as well, or should I ignore them and go for it. How stable is it with Live, and could I achieve an I/O latency that could be OK for adding effect on the Mic input while using live?

Thank in advance!

And I'm looking forward to purchasing it together with Live 4. I mean - SOON!

Cheers.

hi skylit.

there are a lot of really happy 410 users here, some have had problems, I reckon most haven't, and I haven't.

That's the best advice I can give you, ooh, that and search through the threads here, there are loads of these discussions in the archive.

Andreas.

$ 400 is a good audio device budget.you should be able to get a good machine for that kind of money.you mentioned already m-audio (i'm waiting for my audiophile usb to get in my hands next week ),which are nevertheless quality and 'best buy' products.you should also check out the terratec phase26 which is also around that price and the edirol interfaces which are around $500 though...
regards

hi sorry I'm not able to recommend one in the price range your looking at
the ones I have in my desktop and laptop are under $200, but I would suggest that you decide what kind of latency you want to deal with and let
that be the primary guide in your search cause somefolks will say yay and others will say nay about whatever, but if you ask them what their lowest latency and specs are it might help to find whats best for you

No chance of getting a laptop with a pcmcia slot? That'd open up a raft of possibilities including your hammerfall I believe!

have you had a look at a quatafire? i'm using one on a two year old laptop with xp pro and its been fine. i haven't gone live with it yet, but i certainly plan to! apparently its not so hot on macs though, as the drivers don't support all its features yet. the latest firmware and drivers on pc seem rock solid - i haven't had it crash my machine yet and its had a lot of use since i picked it up just over a month ago.

What I've got is much more expensive. I'm very very happy with the Tascam Fw-1884. Does control, audio in and out from a plethora of sources and 4 MIDI in and out channels. And the motorized faders great too.

Machinate wrote:there are a lot of really happy 410 users here, some have had problems, I reckon most haven't, and I haven't.

Another happy user here. There were a few problems at first; e.g. you'd have to reload the driver if your PB went to sleep. These bugs have all been squashed though.

I love it! Lightweight, portable, powered off the Firewire bus - and best of all, I found Live via the copy of Delta that came with with 410.

Guys, I'm simply amazed! So many excellent opinions!

Oh yes, latency is my main concern. I need the smallest possible latency for my budget.

I do have a spare PCMCIA slot, I know the best choice would probably be RME's Multiface or whatever, but I can't really stretch my budget that far. And Echo Indigo although being a great card, does not provide pre-amps, multiple outputs and MIDI.

I'll have a deeper look at Quatafire. Its specs look nice, but I don't think I really trust EGO-SYS (or ESI Pro) since every products of theirs I've dealt with had serious problems and amateurish "made in china" plastic quality.

Firewire 410 seems solid enough. From a picture it looks as if its case is made of metal (perhaps aluminium). Or is it plastic? It also does provide low latency (at least I've read so), Mic pre-amps, two headphone outs, and of course 4 Ins / 10 Outs.
And it doesn't look ugly.

The specs are simply perfect for my requirements. The only thing that's stopping me is bad feedback about their drivers.

Could you share your experience if you have ever performed live with the 410 interface? I will believe that if it hasn't crashed for one of you, it won't for me. Otherwise it's always possible to refund.

Cheers, and I'm looking forward to buying Live 4 and my new audio interface.

i might go for a FireWire 1814 soon. Has more inputs than 410. The best what I think is the ADAT light pipe for additional 8 inputs. Using the 1814 in combination with M-Audio Octane (light pipe output!!) gives you the possibility of using 16 channels at once...
anybody tried that already to get some information about performance...?

lg spacy

i've been using the 410 live & in the studio,never failed! i love it coz it's compact(i'm always on the move) & very light! highly recommended if you're into mobile studio.

Skylit wrote:I'll have a deeper look at Quatafire. Its specs look nice, but I don't think I really trust EGO-SYS (or ESI Pro) since every products of theirs I've dealt with had serious problems and amateurish "made in china" plastic quality.

I haven't run my Quatafire very hard (performance wise), neither have I got much experience from their previous products. But I do know that they made a good job of updating the drivers when they bought STaudio (Hoontech/C-Port). And I do know that the Quatafire is far from plastic and far from amateurish in build quality. It's compact, heavy and very sturdy! Very, very...

Good luck with your choices!

another vote for the 410 here - cant recommend it enough - especially if you're planning to use a mic input - good pre amps and excellent latency - dont even consider USB for real time use of the inputs - USB 1 just doesn't have the bandwidth and there aren't many usb2 around yet (I only know of one - but I would trust FW more than USB2)

Hang on if you already have a hamerfall pci card then you must already have a multiface or digiface? otherwise you couldnt do anything?. The Hamerfall Pcmcia card is awesome, 1.5ms of latency if your recording stuff and then just pop it back up to 10ms when your just fiddling around mixing stuff. Its only £190 and you can just use your exsiting multiface or digiface with it. Hurray, thats what I do and its wicked

i guess he owns the HDSP 9652 and this device is without the multiface...or?