E-MU 1616M PCI Reviews

[brandondrury]

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E-MU 1616M PCI Description
E-MU's 1616M PCI Digital Audio System delivers everything you need to produce audio on a PC with professional results- 24-bit/192kHz converters (the same A/D converters used in Digidesign's ProTools HD 192 I/O interface), hardware-accelerated effects and mixing, comprehensive sync options and seamless compatibility with your favorite PC audio/sequencer software. The MicroDock M breakout box offers a total of 16 inputs and 16 outputs plus 32 channels of MIDI I/O, including two E-MU XTC Class-A ultra-low noise mic/line/hi-Z preamps with 48V phantom power and analog soft limiting circuit for clip protection. The 1616M PCI also ships with ASIO2 and WDM drivers for Windows XP, 2000 and x64, as well as the E-MU Production Tools software bundle that includes E-MU's Proteus X LE, plus software by Steinberg, Ableton, IK Multimedia, and many more - everything you need to create, record, edit, master and burn your music. E-MU's new 1616M PCI Digital Audio System delivers everything you need to produce audio on a PC with professional results- 24-bit/192kHz converters (the same A/D converters used in Digidesign's ProTools HD 192 I/O interface), hardware-accelerated effects and mixing, comprehensive sync options and seamless compatibility with your favorite PC audio/sequencer software. The MicroDock M breakout box offers a total of 16 inputs and 16 outputs plus 32 channels of MIDI I/O, including two E-MU XTC Class-A ultra-low noise mic/line/hi-Z preamps with 48V phantom power and analog soft limiting circuit for clip protection. The 1616M PCI also ships with ASIO2 and WDM drivers for Windows XP, 2000 and x64, as well as the E-MU Production Tools software bundle that includes E-MU's Proteus X LE, plus software by Steinberg, Ableton, IK Multimedia, and many more - everything you need to create, record, edit, master and burn your music.

[MetalGod]

Quality: 9
This is an excellent sounding card, especially for its price. Nice preamps, excellent converters, and a good solidly build card.
All knobs and jacks, as well as the box itself, have a sturdy feel to them, nothing flimsy.
The onboard effects are quite ok, nothing exceptional but certainly good enough to use.

Reliability: 6
Tricky point here. I had no problems with it on XP, and from what I've heard from others it's rock-solid - on XP. When I switched over to Vista I had a whole rack of problems.

1) It took a long time for EMU/Creative to get the Vista drivers released, and the beta drivers were not all that stable (ok, this can be expected)

2) Even now with fully released drivers the included VST for controlling the onboard effects does not work on Vista! This means you cannot control the effects from your recording software, you have to use the EMU PatchMix application to insert the effects, which is very annoying.

3) EMU support have been very sparse with information, sometimes going for months without releasing any information, or answering questions.

If you are still using XP this is an excellent card, and seems to very reliable. If you are using Vista (which I would not recommend anyway with benefit from experience) it's not that great. I have had no crashes since I installed the release drivers, but the above mentioned problems is a bummer.

I would give this card an 8 or 9 rating on XP, and maybe about 3 or 4 on Vista, so the 6 is sort of a mean value.

Overall Rating: 7
Overall this is a very good card, and as long as you are using XP it's excellent, great sounding, great quality and at a great price.
The Vista problems however have to be reflected in the judgement. If I was reviewing it solely for XP I would give it an overall rating of 9.