• Nearly Perfect for home recording

  
  As reviewed by PHILIP WARE on 3/19/2012

  OK -- my basis of comparison comes from over 20 years of digital recording, from the PerfectSound digitizer on the Amiga to the line-in from the mixing board to the sound card, to USB-based input from the effects to this little beauty. In that time the software has gone from single-pane digitizers to the CoolEdits (now Audition) to Audacity to Sonar. The bottom line for anyone who wants to record *now,* it's hard to say you could find anything better for the price-point (and that includes the "non sale" price). One of the biggest problems I'd had, of late, was multi-track, multi-take recording using other software and running the effects rack directly into the PC via USB. The biggest headache was the latency which, depending on the effect and amount of signal processing, ranged from as little as 9ms to as much as 55ms. Not getting these synced up while recording just sounds obnoxious an it's a little bit of work to get things sync'd up again in post. This is handled beautifully and invisibly by the MobilePre/ProToolsMP tandem. The hardware is simple enough and while lightweight doesn't really feel cheap and it doesn't feel like something I could break easily without trying. Ran the line from the effects processor to the MobilePre and then the USB connection to the computer and that was it. It took me a minute to realize I needed to run any monitoring speakers/headphones through the MobilePre box, itself, but once I sorted that out, I was up and running. ProToolsMP, itself, takes a bit of installing and whangling with the dongle (man, that sounds bad...) and the licensing, but once it's installed, it's good to go. I will recommend the *1.5GB* update from their site. There's supposed to be a quick upgrade path to v10, but I haven't found it -- I also haven't looked that hard. Basically, I went from putting in the disc to install to recording in roughly 20 minutes. Downloading the update obviously took a little longer than that, but from opening to the box to recording was slick as a whistle. I won't say the ProTools has the easiest interface or learning curve for the more advanced features, but once your guitar/(whatever you're recording) is plugged in, two mouse clicks later, you're recording. Now, I will say that the default settings for the Guitar 1 track in a couple of the template settings are so saturated with reverb, delay and chorus that it sounded like a bit of a train wreck -- complete with hydraulic hissing -- and was pretty unusable. Once I dug down in the track settings, it was fairly easy to find the controls that handle the effects settings and with a few clicks and drags, I was back to a normal tone that sounded good. The ProTools controls combined with the MobilePre's controls and whatever your controls on your effects processor provide you with amazing -- you guessed it -- control. The bottom line, for me, with this package is that it does everything I need and, aside from a bizarre glitch where it will blow the computer up if left unattended for several hours (like going to bed after recording late at night), is a solid little device/software combo. For the hobbyist or recording musician who needs something small for the road, this is pretty close to perfect. I wouldn't recommend it for a studio, mind you, but it would easily fit in your laptop/guitar case. I say near perfect mainly because it's a CPU hog and I haven't figured out (without reading the 1400+ page manual) how to bounce tracks and export in anything other than stereo WAV files. Since I just load them up in Audition and do the mixdown, there, it's not that big of a deal, now, but at some point it would be nice to do it all from within one software package -- which I'm sure you can do, but I haven't found it in my 6 or so days of using it without having read the manual past the Introduction section. My recommendation is that if your 4-track is dead or dying and you want something very portable and powerful enough to do what you need from a home/portable recording standpoint, this is definitely a very solid way to go.

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• EXCELENT PRODUCT FOR A GREAT PRICE!!!

  
  As reviewed by Josh Mergens on 12/13/2011

  Perfect for home or mobile recording. I was using fl studios for my midi and analog recording, which gave me decent results, but Pro Tools MP9 and the M Audio interface took my recording to a whole new level without breaking the bank! PROS: Easy to use, excelent sound quality, allows you to do everything the full version of do for a home studio set up or really anyone who isn't recording an orchestra, and the m audio box is all usb powered so that's one less plug you need. CONS: In order for this set up to work well on your system you need to have a 7200rpm hard drive minimum. This information is almost nowhere to be found and it took a decent amount of research to find out why my lap top couldn't handle the program, but now its installed on an external hard drive and it works great!

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