M-Audio Firewire-410 or M-Box?

[Gi-gi-giggity]

Seems like Mbox is the way that most people go, but I may have a potential hookup on the M-Audio. All things being equal, does anyone have recommendations or experience to speak of?

BTW - I, like many others here am just getting started. You know, trying to build an empire and looking for the best place to start. More than likely I'll just be recording guitar, vocals and bass. Small fry stuff really, I just want it to sound good. I'm using a new iMac, 2.16 w/2G RAM.

Thanks.

[stvnscott]

The M-Box features the mainstream PT software package. The M-Audio has the newer licensed stuff. I would tend to bank on the Digi stuff considering.

With that aside, M-Audio seems to have cleaner preamps and tighter drivers. It's a tough call to be sure.

I personally use an M-Audio interface with Sonar 6 and external pres (my interface doesn't have pres).

I don't know if this helps, but I type really fast

[52ftbuddha]

Well I have been at this a while and have just tried a bunch of new interfaces because I wanted something to travel with. My hope was to find one with decent spec preamps so I could capture 2 trks without needing any outboard gear. I have previously used Echo RME and Apogee. I can not rave more highly about the 24d it does have limits in std IO but the onboard dsp is so good that it better than anything else I have tried. I am able to run 128 for sub 3ms latencies on my Centrino laptop. I will use my 24bit echo IO over adat for more inputs. Cheap combo with huge IO count. I tried the traveler Saffire and Alesis, none sounded as good or behaved as well with my Ricoh chipset.

rob

[Gi-gi-giggity]

Anyone else have comments or experience with either of these guys?

[getbent]

mbox is less problematic.

the 410 has a nasty habit of cooking 1394 ports... if you do get it (I had one and traded it for an Alesis fw mixer) make sure to plug it in and power it up prior to firing up your computer. it is not hot swappable.

I'm not thrilled with the mbox (i've had a couple and have given them away to customers) either... the firebox was the best thing for awhile but they are having qc problems...

if you are going one track at a time... you might even go for an older usb device and get it cheap like the maudio fastrack... then as you build your empire you can get a fancier setup... the fastrack and devices like it are brain dead easy and just work...no fiddling...

[eru]

the fw410 and the mbox2pro are basically the same...chipsets are nearly identical. the difference is the mic pres and the bundled software.

if you want to use pro tools, there's always m-powered...just make sure you buy an iLok with it, 'cuz the store will probably forget, esp. if you buy it online.