Average Customer Review: ( 37 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 22 found the following review helpful:
 Great Interface for Solid Machines Jul 09, 2005
By P. Jones
"Music Hack"
The MobilePre USB has been a fantastic performer in my home studio for some months now. No latency issues when recording Mic (XLR or 1/4") or Guitar. Clean output for my Alesis monitors and Sennheiser headphones. I've had no driver issues, no unexpected noise, nor latency setting problems - but...I do have a newer PowerMAC Dual G5.
Whether working in GarageBand, Logic 7, or Reason 3 with Native Instruments' "Guitar Rig", or just using it to play back my collection via iTunes, it's been a joy.
However, I also tested it on an older G4 500 iMac and I witnessed what others are complaining about. So, if you have a dinosaur CPU, you may want to look into a soundcard rather than the MobilePre USB (or other USB sound interface). Or better still, it may be time to update your computer :).
19 of 20 found the following review helpful:
 Good for demos and budget home studios Oct 13, 2005
By Ian Butler
This is a great value as it can power a condenser mic as well as being a recording interface.
Two gripes:
First, as another reviewer pointed out, this unit is a little more noisy than advertised, with a noise floor of about -75db in my testing. This is fine for demos, but not for recording anything for a major release.
Second, there seems to be some bleed-over from one channel to the other, which is fine if you're recording one channel at a time, or using both for stereo recording, but don't expect a pure channel of drums and a pure channel of guitar.
However, for the money, this is a good unit, especially with its portability and preamp.
17 of 18 found the following review helpful:
Great Audio for PC Jul 07, 2005
By leosport
I was looking for a device that would allow me to use my professional XLR mics to record voiceovers on my PC and MAC machines. This device allows the recording of professional sounding audio without high-end studio equipment. I am extremely satisfied with this product.
49 of 60 found the following review helpful:
 Does its job after some tinkering Feb 02, 2004
By Kent Miller
"shortstop-ok"
I bought this recently after the release of Garage Band for OS X. I'm going to share some information that is negative but I am overall happy with the features of this product, with the OS X support, and would recommend it for purchase. The features that I was looking were analog instrument input and the XLR microphone input, along with the best price I could find. I might get into home recording, but I didn't want to spend a ton of money until I was sure I would stick with it.First off the information in the M-Audio web site lists that the box is able to sample up to 24bit/96kHz. It isn't a big deal to me yet, but I haven't figured out how to change the sample rate. This may be a function of the application but I can't figure out how to change it. The second issue I had was with drivers. When I got the unit I downloaded the latest drivers 1.5.8 off their website that were supposed to be for use with OS X 10.3 (Panther). I was never able to get anything but squealing out of my machine with those drivers -but the 1.5.8 drivers worked fine on my PowerBook. Out of desparation I installed the drivers 1.5.1 off the CD that came with the MobilePre and the squealing went away. While I am happy that I can record on my desktop I wonder why I have to back down on the driver version. The third thing is that there is sometimes some sort of latency issue with the unit. Sometimes as I play and switch settings in Garage Band, there will start to be some lag before what I play comes out of the computer. It makes it pretty impossible to play. Strangely when you open up System Preferences and change the "Latency" setting the lag goes away. It doesn't really matter what you change the latency to, it goes away just with changing. I have not used the unit for USB audio output so I can't comment on that feature. Using the headphones in the MobilePre's monitor port would be useful if you were using the USB audio output, but for recording I find that listening to my unprocessed guitar signal is not all that useful.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Much better than I expected Feb 07, 2006
By JThang
"JThang"
I bought this hardware expecting to just make some nice tracks of myself...maybe for a demo. Some of the reviews had some negative things to say so I was very skeptical. I just expected it to be OK, but I must admit I was extremely surprised. First off, I think the software and kind of mic you use are most important when it comes to the mobilepre. The software it came with is very inadequate. I'm using CoolEditPro along with a Shure Beta58 mic, and the sound is phenomenal for personal PC recording. For the price you pay, I think this is an INCREDIBLE deal for beginner recording equipment. The sound you get is by no means studio quality, but you get 85% of studio power for 15% the price of studio equipment. Bottom line, it's great for anyone looking for simple starting pc recording hardware. A Great value.
If you want a sample of what I've recorded with the mobilepre, feel free to email me and I'll send you a sample of one of my recordings.
See all 37 customer reviews on Amazon.com
|
based on 37 reviews
