Looking for a Vista-friendly usb or firewire interface

[_tom_]

I have a Presonus Inspire 1394 right now but the Vista drivers dont seem to be quite there yet - I occasionally get crackly, distorted audio and sometimes I dont get any sound on startup til I unplug the interface. When it works, it's fine but the odd occasion where it doesnt work really frustrates me.

So far I've been mostly interested in Edirol, especially the UA-25. I see they have a new one out(UA-25EX) which I may go for instead though (when the price drops a bit). Theres also the firewire version FA-66, any reason I should go with that over usb? Right now I'm using firewire and having these crackly problems, not sure if its because of the firewire (texas instruments built into the motherboard) or just the drivers. I really need solid vista drivers.

Thanks

[stratman]

I've got Vista.

I've got a Line 6 Toneport UX1 USB interface and an Edirol FA-66 Firewire interface.

Both work fine with Vista, but I much prefer my Line 6 Toneport UX1 for the reasons given in my post on another thread (see link below).

http://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php...09&postcount=9

A point to note though, as mentioned in my other post, with the Toneport you'd have to get a separate midi interface because the Toneport doesn't have one.

Pete

[_tom_]

I was going to get a Toneport but I dont like any sounds I've heard from it and I use amplitube 2 anyway so I dont need the modelling stuff, I'd rather have better pre's in the interface. I can get down to what sounds like virtually no latency, the inspire control panel says 4ms so I need to get at least that really - cant have any worse than what I allready have!

[stratman]

4ms sounds very good.

You mentioned you were considering a FA-66, which I've got.

There was a discussion about the FA-101 and FA-66 Edirol Firewire interfaces at the link below
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=23703

It seemed the lowest latencies people were achieving were around 12ms when checked with the Centrance utility. And these figures pretty much agreed with the sum of the Input/Output latencies shown in the top right hand corner of Reaper.


Pete

[_tom_]

Well I dont know if its actually 4ms, but thats what the Inspires software control panel displays. Either way it sounds very close - close enough that its fine for practicing and monitoring with.

[homegrown]

My Helix Board 24 MkII (firewire)runs well on the new Vista driver, downloaded from Helix site, and the firepod also after I installed new firmware. Sadly though the firepod doesn't still run on the old XP system after firmware upgrade. There is probably a fix for this but so far I haven't needed it.
I am slowly coming to grips with Vista. Introducing Process Lasso and turning off SuperFetch have been the two big differences.

[Klemperer]

I am using the (old) Edirol UA 25 here, without any problems (had terrible problems with Vista, but not soundcard-related, and all problems were gone with the sp1). Rock solid, stable, drivers were always great since version 1.0. Of course that says not much about the new one, just that the UA25 works grrreat and I can really recommend it.
It is USB1.1 though, and as far as I hear USB3 is around the corner (or around the corner after the next corner only ).

[Wyatt]

I use an Edirol UA-1000 USB interface with both XP and Vista with no issues on either. XP is on my older desktop and Vista is on my Dell laptop, which has the evil firewire chipset .

[Document02]

Have used a UA-25 on Vista without any problems. It sounds a bit "metallic" though. Am now using hardware from TC Electronics which is very stable and rather neutral.

If you don't use many inputs, I'd recommend staying with USB though, the whole firewire chipset issue is a real pain when wanting to use/buy/borrow a laptop.

[Heartfelt]

Echo Audiofire 4. Flawless, tracking at the 32 buffer (lowest setting)

Rock Solid. Reaper is another story

[thequietroom]

Im using m-audio fast track pro, and pod xt. had to wait for 64bit fast track pro drivers, but it is working great now. Pod xt seeems to need to be on a non-onboard usb to be reliable (was unusable on the onboard usb) had to buy a pci usb card). had some strange noise untill recently and now its ok. For whatever reason, the pod noise cleared up after the following optimisations on Vista
set swap file to fixed size (1.5x physical ram)
bought a usb stick to use the vista "ready boost"
have pc on a UPS batter backup and enabled vistas "advanced performance" on the hard drives.
eliminated all but the windows services from the startup in msconfig

these steps seemed to make my visa more friendly to my podxt, and the FTP is rock solid.

[_tom_]

hmm I cant decide what to do, the Presonus really sucks in vista though, I have to unplug quite a bit now cos its doing that crackly distorted thing all the time. Definitely needs replacing but I dotn know with what, the new Edirol UA25 is a bit too expensive for me at the minute and I dont like the idea of having it "metallic" sounding :\

[Document02]

Originally Posted by _tom_

I dont like the idea of having it "metallic" sounding :\

Honestly I found that color to the sound was less a problem than the "bass boost" quality of the Presonus firebox (don't know about the inspire), but then my music often uses metallic / industrial percussion.

The TC Electronic Desktop Konnekt 6 is in the same price range, reviews seem quite positive about its sound quality.

If you are on a tight budget, PCI interfaces might offer better value for money.

[Jae.Thomas]

both my firepod and gearbox work fine under vista64 as soundcards.

[_tom_]

That TC Electronics looks good apart from the single XLR input. I'd rather have two as I want to experiment with recording with two mics, makes it a bit more versatile. How about the Konnekt 8 instead?

I was looking at PCI interfaces but they dont seem very flexible.