m-audio firewire 410 review

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Average Ratings

Ease of Set Up	5/10
Value for Money	9/10
Reviewer Rating	8/10
Overall Rating	8/10

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By rmstrand on 25th Jul 2008

rmstrand's Ratings

Time Sound Card Used	6 - 12 Months
Ease of Set Up	5/10
Value for money	9/10
Overall value	8/10
rmstrand's recommendation

Good Points

Bad Points

- Can't plug/unplug the firewire cable hot - BAD MOVE.
- No supression of outputs during system startup - most high-end equipment pads outputs during startup so that the speakers don't receive a "pop" during power on. This is and easy fix and NECESSARY!
-Cannot support S/PDIF optical AND RCA inputs at the same bit rate. This is weird; I didn't expect to be able to use the S/PDIF RCA or optical simultaneously but I did expect that I could have a device plugged into both inputs and be able to lock on the one I selected, but I (you) can't. As an example, you can set the optical at 96k (sound card) and the RCA at 48k (Line 6 X3L) and switch between the two but you have select/re-select the bit rate when you do so. You should be able to set them both at 96k but the unit will not lock a signal if they're both the same. Like I said weird and I consider this a firmware bug.

General Comments

Good entry level recording interface. Firewire minimizes latency. physical inputs (analog) are neutrik and are high quality, Front mounting of analog inputs is nice but I'd also like the ability fo have them come in from the back too. Dual headphone inputs with analog controls from the front panel is nice. Great control over the different inputs and outputs. Like the unit in general.

Overall this is a great piece of equipment for the intended purpose with a few caveats. Turn your speakers off before you power the thing on or perform a cold restart on your computer and you don't have to worry about blowing your tweets. Set you S/PDIF on optical and RCA a different rates and all will work.

By the way - I have had 8 months experience with the unit and am running it on vista 32bit. The new drivers released on 6/27/2008 fixed some of the instability issues.

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