Hi WAMUGGERS, Mark, I've been doing a bit of work on these sorts of units for some primary school music teachers and there are a lot of options in these external USB AD/DA interfaces. These are needed as the teachers have laptops not desktops. The ones we want need to have both MIDI and audio connectivity both hi and lo Z inputs and some aux input and connectivity to USB. The upshot is that the tascam, yamaha, roland edirol ua3 (and others), midiman , m-audio quattro, aardvark, digidesign mbox (recently featured on Apple's website!) all do the job. One big difference is the quality of the software for sequencing/recording and then mixing down to audio. Some come with nothing and don't work with much either (not even Steinberg Cubase VST or EMagic Logic Audio - go figure). The Tascam units come with Cubasis that does 8 audio tracks and 48 midi and seems a good value - this is $200 software. I like the US-428 unit with 8 sliders that link directly to software mixers and let you have 16 banks of 8 slides - with presets and DSP built-in - sweet! It's the one I'd buy - but it isn't cheap.
http://www.tascam.com/products/us428/index.php http://www.tascam.com/products/computer_recording/us224/index.php These are great for small mixing/recording needs and ideal for beginners getting into recording. Creative have a great but PC-only softwarewise (at this time) unit called the Extigy which is good for the home hobbyist who wants it all - a bit of recording, amplification, surround-sound for gaming etc. http://www.soundblaster.com/products/extigy/ I'd love to get my hands on one of these and see how well it works with macs - it's far cheaper than many alternatives and has some unique features. petersw "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur." (Anything written in Latin sounds impressive.) Spicer-Wensley Consultancy Services 6 Wilkins Street BELLEVUE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6056 Ph/Fax: 9250 2048 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
