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Sign up for product alertsESI MAYA44 PCI videos
There are currently no videos for this product. If you are registered with us you may log in to add additional videos related to this product. You can also register an account to add a related video.ESI MAYA44 PCI Reviews
Initial Reactions Still Count...
First things first, the shipping was excellent, delivered next day as promised.
My initial reaction when opening the box however was a little disturbing. The box was well wrapped and protected and yet this product was crumbled and ripped, it looked like it had been sitting on a shelf for years.
When I opened the product box (after taking photos to show Dolphin staff) The actual soundcard was unwrapped and just fell out of its plastic container which looked like the wrong fit.
The instructions were all nicely wrapped but with every other sound card I have ever bought, they have always been sealed in an anti static bag of some kind.
Anyway, enough of my bitching, lets install the sound card and see if it works!
GOOD NEWS - it did work, although, the installation disc itself is not a plug and play autostart, auto install style, you have to physically locate the drivers yourself. My advice is to read the instruction booklet, it is very thorough and talks you through the steps. Where possible go online and find the latest driver download too. The one on the CD is outdated I think.
Now that it is installed I can honestly say for £79.95 + p&p this sound card is definately worth the money and all of the above.
I may even sound crazy but my portable AudioBox USB doesnt give me as richer sound as this thing does, but never the less if portable recording is your thing always go for the USB external audio interface.
What I love about this is the inputs and outputs. Its something to build upon for sure and the connetions feel solid and robust.
I am using a set of KRK KNS-8400 headphones so they do help when monitoring the sound but all in all I am very impressed with this sound card.
I am giving the sound card a 10 for value, but overall an 8 for the experience of being totally shocked at the state of its box... ;-p
Maya 44 Review
One of the best soundcards I\'ve owned, I switched from a Mac, and started using a Windows computer, I was using a Behringer FCA202 Firewire (Which was also bought from Dolphin) and the Vista x64 driver support was, well, non. Thought about many other Firewire devices and instead bought this one. I had some problems at first installing the drivers, blame Vista though. Works fine on Windows7 too if you were so inclined. Sound quality is great, and I get 3MS latency in Sonar 7 Producer Edition. My PC was custom built and is a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo system, 4GB/s of RAM and all the other goodies :-)
If you need a decent PCI soundcard and cannot afford to spend £100s, or even if you\'re making beats on a budget, then get this, you won\'t regret it.
ESI does it
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!
