Anyone out there using an Edirol UA-25?

Hey Mango!


I don't use the Edirol, but I do use (RELIGIOUSLY!) the echo IO.

Here's the deal. The Echo IO sounds great, records great, the software console is easy to use and you can get good latency figures using the WDM ASIO drivers. Short of having PCI, which we can't have with a lap top, it has the best bandwidth, better than fireware and usb 2.0. The only drawback, which can be a big one for recording multiple track, is that is only has one input. For me, it's no big deal because I'm using it to monitor my Cubase projects.

I did have a US122 from tascam, which is siilar to the Edirol, but the USB 1.1 and drivers worked like crap for me.

My advice, if you are looking to get an outboard sound card/recording unit, would be to go with a firewire unit, maybe something from m-audio (firewire 410)

I've only read a few reviews, of the edirol, and each article mentioned how robust it is, but If I'm recording multple inputs, I'd still get something wih better bandwidth capabilities.

Did you look at the M-Audio Firewire 410? Using that myself right now and loving it, Firewire 400 bus powered with the proper connection, Midi I/O(No thru but you should be able to do that with software, havent tried it out tremendously yet) Also Phantom Powered. Two combination connectors(XLR/TRS) and two TS connections in on the back, and enough connections out to do a surrond mixdown on, should you be anywhere with that capability, or in my case do multichannel playback on, very useful at times for live theater.

My suggestion though is obviously look very carefully if you are planning on using a bus powered Firewire device and make sure that your laptop supports it, not all do. Also the M-Audio is now supported under M-Powered ProTools if you use that, personally I have the PT setup, but I dont use it for my straight audio stuff myself, that is what I use ardour for and since M-Audio is pretty well supported under linux I like it a lot

Anyways just thought I would throw out another option for you.

Seablade

>Going off-topic here, but how's your experience of Ardour? Using GNU software is a really, really tempting idea, I'm just not sure that Linux would be solid enough for me (I can only endure so much tweaking, I'm a plug & go kind of mindset.)

Ardour is quite capable for straight audio(No Midi or Video yet), as a properly tweaked Linux distro is both fast and stable, but learning linux can make it not worth the effort for some people. Mainly its a lot of work to learn linux, but once you learn linux the rest doesnt seem bad at all. As I said though I prefer ardour to ProTools for my straight audio sequencing/recording work. But I have to for instance use ProTools for Video Projects I get every now and then and I dont do enough Midi in the typical sense for me to even take a stab at it, though RoseGarden4 seems to be extremly capable for that purpose, not sure how it stands up to things like PT though, since as I said I never used it

Yes you do need a 6 Pin for bus powered Firewire, and unfortunatly most laptops dont have one, a pleasant surprise on the Mac I got thankfully, love it completly, but I am still gonna go back to a PC based laptop to run a linux distro off of myself, turion based laptop most likely, dual core if I can afford it and it is out by then. Anyways I ramble. Have fun.

Seablade