"Alesis Hits it Out of The Park!"

This reviewer purchased this item from Same Day Music.

Feature:
Wish it had onboard 80 or 75 hz rolloff on the mic ins. Other than that, the feature are extremely well-designed and useful. It's a little bigger and heavier than I expected, but it's nice and solid. It's a nice metal housing and way better than it looks in the picture. They also neglect to inform you that when using extreme HD, i.e., 176.2 khz or 196 khz sampling rate, your available inputs drop from 8 to 4, both ASIO or WDM. The drivers are a bit weird -- I get was getting some kind of unidentifiable driver problem with XP that was crashing my computer. I restored my computer to a few months back and the problem went away though. It doesn't crash with my laptop, which has less software and has had less programs come on and off -- So, it's probably not a problem unless your computer has reached the state of near anarchy that my my main workbox has gotten to. Also, sometimes the outputs and inputs loop into feedback -- It's not always cooperative about turning the input monitoring on and off, both with Cubase and Sonar 4.4. A little waiting or wiggling around the settings usually trips it into doing what I need it to do, but it can make some awful noises when using it for re-amping and the feedback kicks in.

Quality:
Minor driver issues. Otherwise, it seems very well-built and solid.

Value:
I haven't had a chance to A/B it with a Firepod or 8Pre, since I own neither -- Both of which are also a little more expensive. But I'm absolutely blown away by this. I haven't had the best experience with Alesis gear in the past, but they got it right this time. As far as I can tell, there's nothing even close in this price range.

Desirability:
It's pretty sexy. Not that I care much about non-functional aspects of these kinds of things, but it does look and feel pretty nifty. If the drivers were just a little less buggy, it'd be the most amazing product since the vacuum tube. The drivers/firmware are quite functional, but they do have a few little problems that require futzing around with. Other than that, they hit it out of the park with this one.

Sound:
The sound is excellent. Previously, I'd been using a Delta 1010, usually with a Mackie 1402 VLZ, but also with other preamps. This thing just blows it away. The preamps and sound are absolutely fantastic. Everything sounds clear, juicy and detailed. Warning, you will need a good firewire card. The cheapo 4 pin port on my cheapo laptop with cheapo chips doesn't work. However, the two PCMCIA firewire cards I have work just fine. I'd also suggest getting a TI or VIA chipset firewire card if you use it with a desktop. This is probably more problem with firewire and not the product itself. There's just a lot of cruddy firewire I/O chipsets floating around.

Ease of Use:
See above. Other than that, pretty much the same as any other audio interface.

Support:
Haven't dealt with support, so I couldn't tell you. I'm kind of a computer geek and used to work at The Evil Empire in Redmond, Washington, including a brief stint there in consumer tech support. I've been doing PC computer audio for years, so there's probably not much they can help me with unless I want to send it back.

Overall:
If it wasn't for the feedback loops, misrouting, and occasional crashes, this would be the most amazing product since the vacuum tube, especially at it's price point. On the other hand, this kind of stuff is pretty much par for the course with audio interfaces, so if you're a little computer savvy it should work just fine. The sound quality is absolutely stunning. I cannot stress enough how good the mic pres and converters sound -- I don't know whether it's the pres or the converters, but the combination sounds incredible; the features are terrific, and the price is better than anything else with similar features. Alesis hit one out of the park here. A few more driver and/or firmware revisions, and this thing will be untouchable!