Audio interfaces

[Blackinfinity]

Heh, the reason I went with a external box is because a number of other people I spoke to said that internal cards can be more problematic.  Go figure, right? 
It's a desktop system, so there's no reason I couldn't use a PCIe card.

Hope you are joking

External interfaces are usually good, but it is when you want very low latency that you get problems.
Especially for budget interfaces, but if you do not need extreme low latency...it is not much of a problem I guess.

[LNerell]

If things really don't work out, I might take back the FA-101 and try that route to see if my problems go away.

If the issue is still there you could try adding a ferrite bead to the cable.

[Scott M2]

If things really don't work out, I might take back the FA-101 and try that route to see if my problems go away.

If the issue is still there you could try adding a ferrite bead to the cable.

I think that would look quite stylish!     

Just a BTW - Jamie (the other dreamSTATE dude) and I each use a ProSonus Firebox
and don't experience the problems you describe - though the inputs can be noisy when you
kick in the +12dB Input Level Boost.

[MarkM]

I use a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 and have had good luck with it.

[mgriffin]

My Presonus Firestudio broke a long time ago and I procrastinated about getting it fixed.  Finally, Jeff Pearce calling me Monday to brag about how much he loves his new Apogee audio interface made me realize how much I missed having a decent audio interface, so I contacted Presonus to request out-of-warranty repair.  I was very pleasantly surprised by how easy they made the process, and I'll be sending the unit off tomorrow.  It looks like they have a flat fee of $95, which isn't bad at all.

[Chad Kettering]

RME all the way if you want rock solid performance. It is expensive but you kind of get what you pay for. I'd also recommend the Echo products.

If you are going Firewire you must get a TI based chipset card. So many problems with non-TI based firewire ports.

Hope this helps!

[Altus]

I'm happy to say the Edirol FA-101 with the TI firewire card has been rock solid.  It's always nice to be able to make music without fighting with the technology.

[darkenedsoul]

I read (after the fact) about getting some card that has the TI chipset on it. I have a Motu 828Mk II from my buddy and had to find a 3rd party FW driver to get it to be able to load the 3 options under the MOTU menu and that was goodness. Then I hit an issue dropping samples from 256 to 192 (it stuck/held in Live 8.1.x)  and was able to reproduce it (and abes were able to as well so now waiting to see when MOTU gets off their duff and resolves that issue). It wasn't a big deal to me but could reproduce it in Vista 64 Ultimate AND XP Pro SP3. Anyways, I bought it from my buddy cuzz he wanted to get something newer (at some point) and it has 8 ins/10 outs and is enough for me. I was looking at the Ultralite but saw a bunch of issues via searching.

I hear RME makes good stuff, but is a bit of a premium. I am just glad the ABes (Ableton) were able to reproduce my issue and are working with MOTU on a resolution. It crashed Live BUT on a reload it was set to the lower value. Going up was ok, only when I lowered the samples did it crash. Then again, quality from any mfr is debatible no?

Just my $0.02 cents.