Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
M-Audio Fast Track Ultra *Long-Term Update*
About a year ago, I finally invested in a higher quality sound card. Although my self-built PC has a quad core with 4 GB of ram and two decent (creative x-fi level, but far from professional grade) sound cards, it was still relatively easy to fill the ram and exceed 70% of the CPU's processing power, even in 44kHz/16bit modes.
Looking at the most cost effective brands, I finally decided on the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra. This interface provides the most useful features for the best price, including:
High-speed USB 2.0 > simultaneous 8 x 8 24-bit/96kHz audio
MX Core™ DSP technology > flexible channel routing, monitor sub-mixing and effects processing.
4 preamps with award-winning M-Audio Octane™ technology > premium input circuitry
compatible with Mac and PC > works with most audio production software
Having owned this unit for over six months with almost constant use, I can report this product performs as advertised (or better). The drivers in particular are quite stable, I have only had to power the unit off and on again ~ 3 times because of problems, all of which happened because of software conflicts. (very easily resolved)
One feature that comes in handy is the ability to power this device from USB exclusively. With only the USB cable attached, two of the preamps are disabled. If you have need for the other two, a small power adapter is included to enable the additional amps. This system is most useful, as you can power this device from a laptop with the full set of features, minus the two additional preamps. Basically, you end up with a 96kHz/24-bit mobile studio. Another nice feature is the actual driver interface. The GUI is very responsive with no discernible latency.
Credit to M-Audio, this device works perfectly with Protools and FL Studio, even an Audio-Technica ATR30 sounds balanced through these preamps.
Most importantly, the main reason I puchased this interface was for the DSPs.
I've found them (the DSPs) to be incredibly powerful. I'm now able to run much more complex mixes with absolutely no discernible latency, often with less than 50% of the cpu usage I was seeing previously.
When purchasing this interface, I ended up returning to my favorite audio hardware dealer, Unique Squared (on Ebay and @ http://www.uniquesquared.com/) I ended up with 2 whirlwind XLR-XLR cables and the Fast Track Ultra for a great price. I have purchased several things from this company, and they always have excellent service.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackUltra.html
Pay no attention to the people that have purchased this interface without understanding how to use it and then proceed to complain. Also, I've found AMD to be the more competent solution for intensive parallel tasks, especially with pro-tools and other common workstation programs. Compared to the highest end Mac (intel) pro something with dual xeon cpu sockets, you can build an Opteron workstation with many times more compute power, saving in both the long term upgrade cycle and short-term purchase price.
Hyper-Threading will do you absolutely no good when you near or reach your I/O wall. You will easily overschedule the actual logical (and of course physical) processor cores in the same fashion as After Effects, C4D and Autodesk products.
Looking at the most cost effective brands, I finally decided on the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra. This interface provides the most useful features for the best price, including:
High-speed USB 2.0 > simultaneous 8 x 8 24-bit/96kHz audioMX Core™ DSP technology > flexible channel routing, monitor sub-mixing and effects processing.
4 preamps with award-winning M-Audio Octane™ technology > premium input circuitry
compatible with Mac and PC > works with most audio production software
Having owned this unit for over six months with almost constant use, I can report this product performs as advertised (or better). The drivers in particular are quite stable, I have only had to power the unit off and on again ~ 3 times because of problems, all of which happened because of software conflicts. (very easily resolved)
 |
| Channel monitoring |
 |
| Flow |
 |
| Configuration settings |
Most importantly, the main reason I puchased this interface was for the DSPs.
I've found them (the DSPs) to be incredibly powerful. I'm now able to run much more complex mixes with absolutely no discernible latency, often with less than 50% of the cpu usage I was seeing previously.
When purchasing this interface, I ended up returning to my favorite audio hardware dealer, Unique Squared (on Ebay and @ http://www.uniquesquared.com/) I ended up with 2 whirlwind XLR-XLR cables and the Fast Track Ultra for a great price. I have purchased several things from this company, and they always have excellent service.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackUltra.html
Pay no attention to the people that have purchased this interface without understanding how to use it and then proceed to complain. Also, I've found AMD to be the more competent solution for intensive parallel tasks, especially with pro-tools and other common workstation programs. Compared to the highest end Mac (intel) pro something with dual xeon cpu sockets, you can build an Opteron workstation with many times more compute power, saving in both the long term upgrade cycle and short-term purchase price.
Hyper-Threading will do you absolutely no good when you near or reach your I/O wall. You will easily overschedule the actual logical (and of course physical) processor cores in the same fashion as After Effects, C4D and Autodesk products.
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