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"There is so much more to a sound card than just special effects and playing games. M-Audio's Big Daddy, the Firewire 410, shows us the potential of what a professional level device can do for music production and performance."

Direct Link:
http://www.futurelooks.com/display.php?i=220&p=1

This review was terrible. It said nothing of the sound quality, CPU utilization, compatability with different firewire chipsets, etc. And how about measured THD, S/N ratio?

All we got is a description of how it looks, and how well it works for MIDI. Please! I could have got a more subjective and useful review from m-audio's website.

Next time when you review a recording interface, please try recording with it!

Thanks for the comments. The writer will improve on his writing based on your suggestions. I have informed him of your useful criticism.

I just purchased a FireWire 410 about a week ago. Prior to that, I had a PreSonus FireStation that I couldn't get to work via FireWire to save my life (worked great as a stand-alone however). After reading through various forums it became apparent that there were some wide-spread problems for a lot of people with the mLAN drivers that went with the FireStation, so I dumped it and did some further hardware shopping.

So...I ended up with this little gaffer. If you do get one, do yourself a favor and don't even try to install the drivers on the CD. They've worked out a lot of problems since the device first launched and you'll find some very solid, updated drivers on their web site (again, reading through the forums saved me there).

I followed the instructions very carefully and installed the latest drivers without a problem. When I attached the 410 it was identified and the driver wizard proceeded to set it up. The control panel is very straight forward, although reading the manual was helpful with a couple of things.

Unlike many FireWire devices out there, this actually came with two FireWire cables: the 6-pin to 6-pin that you'd expect, and a 6-pin to 4-pin as you would need for a typical laptop. Since I bought this largely to be mobile, this made me very happy.

Within about five minutes of opening the box, I had it setup and configured in Cubase SL 2.0 and Reason 2.5. I'm running a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop with a 1.6GHz Centrino, 2Gb RAM, a 40Gb 7,200 RPM hard drive and a Radeon Mobile 9600 video card. Other than a couple of USB devices such as my mouse and keyboard, I'm not really running anything that would cause a conflict with the 410.

So far, I've recorded some simple voice tests with an Audio Technica 3035 mic and messed around in Reason with my really crappy Yamaha MIDI board. All of that went flawlessly.

As far as CPU usage, the task manager doesn't show any noticable change while the unit is connected and sitting there. Of course, when Cubase is running, that is a different story but I have no idea if that is Cubase or the 410. That said, I haven't had any noticable latency with it. Then again, I've only been messing with it for a week.

My only wish is that M-Audio made something like this with about 8 inputs. I'd love to be able to use 3 mics on a drum kit, two on a guitar amp and run a couple of keyboards in at the same time and keep everything as separate tracks in Cubase. As things stand, I'm recording stuff separately and quantizing it later.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the 410. It is relatively small, it does what it claims to do and, yeah, it looks cool too.

Hi. I'm Grayson Peddie from Tallahassee and I have a question and "Cubase SX" were mentioned in here:
http://www.futurelooks.com/display.php?i=220&p=3

Does Cubase SX shows 8 ports in VST Outputs inside the Device Setup? The reason I ask is I have a sound card which is Creative Labs' SoundBlaster Audigy 2 NX External USB and it's a 7.1 multi-channel sound card, and Cubase only recognizes two ports which is "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX 1" and "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX 2" where "1" curresponds to the left audio out and "2" curresponds to the right audio out and because I have a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 NX USB, I got disappointed with Cubase SX that only recognizes two outputs and I want to do 5.1 multi-channel music production.

Thank you.