Preamp interface noob

[wildchild247]

Whats the most popular computer interface preamp device?

I bought pro tools without the interface as a friend of mine had it and hates it

I was thinking of something that can handle two guitars and two mics, portable and user friendly

thanks

[rty13ibz98]

man, that is a pretty vague question. there are so many choices. there isn't one "standard" or which is the most popular. also considering that you bought pro tools, that just limited you to down to digidesign stuff or m-audio stuff. i use m-audio stuff right now, for my home studio i use the delta 1010lt(3 of them actually), which will end up getting replaced soon. for portable, i use the fast track pro with my laptop. the pre's are ok in both, but nothing beats a dedicated preamp. unfortunately, on the go you compromise. with what your looking for, 4 channel i/o devices are few and far between. the norm is 1, 2, or 8. since your looking for portable, the only one i could recommend would be the motu traveller, but i'm not sure if motu works with pro tools. i would've recommended sonar or cubase because both of those have a very open architecture as far as recognized audio i/o's go. plus vst/directx plug-ins are cheaper than their rtas/tdm counterparts.

rich

[Jamie]

Isn't the Firewire 410 by M-Audio ProTools compatible now?

Its a neat little half-rack unit, very pretty, never really saw the point of those 10 outputs but I used to use one for demoing round at my band-members houses and it was a nice thing to own...

It has 2 preamps on the front for your mics, and 2 lines on the back for your guitars. I do however have a sneaking memory you couldn't track 4 tracks at once, but I might be wrong about that.

[wildchild247]

Yes the Firewire 410 is compatible now

I am looking into a couple of M Audio interfaces and was wondering

where is the best place to buy them online or in store?

[rty13ibz98]

online=no tax. some places will ship for free, too.
in store, you get to see, touch, sneeze on it. your call. does it come down to customer loyalty or dollar bills at the end of the day?

rich

[David McCarroll]

In all honesty, I don't know;

a) what your friend's problem is....
b) why you listened to him....

I started with a DIGI 001 about seven years ago, and am up to a 003 Rack Factory now - I just can't recommend it highly enough - it might do more than the basic needs you describe, but it really does everything very well - and of course it is actually designed to run with ProTools.....

[guitarman13]

You should also check out the TC Electronic Konnekt 8. I have one and it works flawlessly; the preamps are outstanding. I can turn the preamp gain up to the max(+60db) and there is no hiss whatsoever.

[microdmitry]

+1 on Konnekt 8. The only downside of it is that it's quite big physically, and my laptop can't power it through Firewire (a desktop presumably would be able to, but I don't have a desktop). I'm quite impressed with its sound quality.

[dahjem]

I'm very new to this stuff, but do know that depending upon what version of ProTools you're running will depend on your limitation for an interface. Protools LE requires Digidesign's MBox series or if you have the cash, 003 series. M-Audio interfaces are compatible with ProTools M-Powered software. Dubble check that I'm right on this and hope the info helps!