Jacques Leplat
March 12, 2007

Rating: 10/10

Running sound intensive applications on my dual core tended to produce crackly sounds. The soundcard in my otherwise great laptop is not too good, and the music apps gobbled up my dual core laptop's processor too.

Reviews of the E-MU raved about it, saying there's not much else around that can beat this on price. And they're right.

The sounds produced are great, it has a wealth of sockets for input and output, so I'm now using it for things I didn't think of: upgrading my Mixer, using the E-MU's MIDI sockets to transfer sys-ex MIDI files to the MIXER.

It's USB 2.0, which makes connection to PC's very easy (Firewire plugs aren't all the same, so it can be tough to find the right cable).

I also love the idea of USB 2.0 as it's so easy to carry around and plug into another PC.

The bundle of CD's that come with it have all been installed, but I have yet to find the time to try them all out. E-MU works well with my favevourite app (Fruity Loops), and it's support of ASIO drivers means it should work well with most music apps.

All in all, this ultra portable little box of wonders has proved to be well worth getting.

MJ F
December 14, 2006

Rating: 8/10

I wanted an external USB soundcard to go with my laptop. I have put the other type of interface into my desktop. I did a fair amount of research and reviews etc. This is fairly new out and so it has some good features. The most important, in my opinion, is the direct monitoring.

Direct monitoring allows you cut out the latency problem that soundcards have. Latency is the delay between playing and hearing the sound. Usually to make the gap unnoticeable, you have to set the buffer time on the PC quite low and this can make the sound pop and crack during recording and playback. The direct monitoring means you can set the buffer time to a much safer setting and you don't get any disturbance in either the playback and recording. It makes the whole process a lot easier.

The recorded sound is just as good as any CD, which is very important. Pristine is how they describe it and it's true.

I use a guitar processor which can use s/pdif coaxial and this soundcard has I/O (in and out) coaxial points and also I/O optical points which many other things use. It also has guitar/mic jack I/Os x2 with mic boost. The output can go to a speaker via one stereo output or it can go out via 2 outputs to two seperate speakers/amps. There is also midi I/O. The point I'm making is that all bases are covered. I have midi in and out, drum machine into the jacks and the processor into the coaxial all at once.

The added bonus is the bundled software. Although they are the lite versions, they are still very good. Lite versions make things a little more fiddly and don't have all the features as you would expect but they are still good recording tools. You get Sonar, Cubase, Waveelab, Ableton and Proteus. You don't need much more unless you are really into music production at a higher level.

I have a lot of applications and players and music sites etc on at once and this can cause the soundcard to get a little confused shall we say. That's more to do with how I use it, I think. On/off sorts that out. You do have to remember to set the sync source manually to internal or external otherwise you won't get sound. I like that it doesn't shut off the built in soundcard in the laptop so the soundcard can be put away and your original sound is still there.

I would advise buying this to go with a laptop. It's been a good buy and it's a good price for what it does and what you get. Obviously, if you have a desktop, I would advise buying the ones you slot into the back. They are better packages all round. Nearly all soundcards from my experience and from what I've read have their little foibles but I've found this one to be very good.