Electro existence
January 28, 2008

Rating: 8/10

Hello, I\'ve been looking round for a good PCI card for a while and came across this one. I never heard of them before so I was a bit sceptical. I read reviews around the net and they were all positive, the price is very good too.
I decided to go for it, as the 1/4\" jacks on the card were ideal for my work. Delivered quick (as usual). I took this out and I couldn\'t fit it in the PCI slot (I started to worry), then my wife came along and just slotted it quite easily (how come it didn\'t work for me?). Anyway I got it in, my PC found it, then I installed the drivers, it was simple. You also get some free VSTs on the disc, so try them out you do get some pretty usefuls ones with it.
The jack plugs fit in very snug so nothing can come out easily (all gold plated). I have only used the jacks, so I can\'t comment on the other connections.
The ESI logo appears on the right of the task bar, just click it, this is where you can set up your phantom power on the mic input aswell as setting volume controls for each input/output, set the sample rate (the manual says it will set it itself to match whatever sample rate you use, if you set it to auto mode), you can set the master clock to internal or external and mute the whole lot with the master level/mute button. You can also us this area to access the direct wire technology, it did confuse me at first but the manual is pretty handy for this, it gives you a diagram for wiring up and recording into different programs like wavelab, sonar, winamp, cubase, gigastudio, nuendo, it doesn\'t mention Acid or SoundForge (which I use) but you can set things up in there quite easily. It is good, but i only used it once to set up one thing and that\'s it i never used again. The sound is great! I had an old soundblaster as my main soundcard which was ok, but after using this it totally blows it away, louder, crisper, clearer, I could hear things in my music I never heard before, this really showed it\'s a class act, I am really pleased with it. The only downside is you do not get a MIDI connector with it and I cannot find anywhere on the net that sells one for the MAYA, I\'m sure Dolphin can order one in but i\'m ok without for now thanks to USB. Good product!