m-Audio Recording interface 20k now

M-Audio FireWire Mobile Recording interface 20k contact 8948463 On-board ASIO 2 compliant mixer and software control panel provide total routing flexibility -- including monitoring with external effects
Ultra-low latency software monitoring and zero-latency hardware direct monitoring
Two headphone outs with independent level controls
Can be completely bus-powered for totally mobile operation
2-In / 8-Out 24-bit analog I/O

M Audio's Control Panel software for the Firewire 410 is completely new, and looks and feels totally different to the control panel supplied with their PCI and USB products. There are four main pages labelled Mixer, Output, Hardware and About. The last of these simply provides details of software and hardware versions, covering driver and panel software, boot loader, firmware and hardware.

Some controls are visible across all four pages, including Reset, Save, Load and Delete buttons to manage the control panel settings, assignment for the rotary encoder, Mute and Dim (-20dB) buttons for the main output, and graphics showing which Firewire 410 unit is currently being controlled if multiple units are connected — although, as mentioned previously, the drivers currently only support a single unit.

Like the Monitor Mixer page of the old M Audio control panel, the new Mixer page provides separate control over all 10 of the playback channels (eight analogue and two digital), plus the four inputs (two analogue and two digital), arranged in stereo pairs. Each channel has level faders — although as always these are best left at maximum to maintain optimum audio quality unless you're creating some sort of monitor mix — along with peak-reading meters, Link buttons for stereo fader control, Solo and Mute buttons.

Each stereo pair also has a bank of routing buttons, which by default patch channels 1/2 to hardware outputs 1/2, channels 3/4 to outputs 3/4, and so on, although you can re-route each mixer channel pair at will to any combination of outputs. The hardware input channels are left un-routed by default, since you may want to set them up from within your chosen music application, and they also feature pan controls so you can position up to four mono input signals in your stereo image.

The Aux Sends are a new feature, and let you set up a completely different submix, perhaps for monitoring on headphones or to send to a hardware effects unit. Each channel has a rotary Aux control, and the level of the combined signal is displayed on a peak-reading meter beneath the S/PDIF software return channels. Since multiple channels can be routed to the hardware outputs, and the summed signals can therefore cause clipping, additional meters display the Output buss levels.

The Output page provides control over the 10 hardware outputs, plus the headphone and Aux busses. Once again there are meters, level faders, Link, Mute and Solo buttons, but this time there's also a rotary Balance control linked to the stereo faders. The 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8 and S/PDIF outs, along with the Phones out, also have an extra button which by default reads Main, denoting that the output channel gets its signal from the buss assignments on the mixer page. However, if you click on this it changes to Aux, and this is how you can route your Aux submix to any combination of hardware outputs — a very handy feature indeed. The Aux output doesn't have a Solo button, but it does have an extra pair of rotary pan controls.

In the control panel's Output page you have final control over the signals being sent to the various hardware outputs, including the twin headphone sockets. Notice here that I've routed the Aux signal to the phones, to receive the monitoring submix previously set up in the mixer page.
Having got this far, I can finally explain the function of the front-panel rotary encoder. This has five possible selections — SW Return Bus, Output Bus, Input, Phones or Aux Send — and even then there's more flexibility than at first appears. If, for instance, you select SW Return Bus, a new set of five Ctrl buttons appears in the Mixer's software return channels, and you can disable/enable any of these to provide simultaneous level control of any combination of these signals.

Switching to Output Bus provides similar control over any combination of signals being sent to the hardware outputs, while Input, Phones and Aux are hopefully now self-explanatory. When switching between the five options, the mixer remembers your previous Ctrl settings. Overall, the system is very well thought-out, and the Control Panel's virtual encoder control knob provided me with smooth control over my selected parameters.

However, I found several practical problems with the front-panel rotary encoder. First, it's so closely positioned to input two's gain control that it can be difficult to get your fingers in for a 'twirl'. Second, feedback via Firewire seemed erratic, making the software faders jump about following a smooth change from the front-panel control, and sometimes even causing them to go in the wrong direction. Hopefully M Audio will resolve these issues in a future driver revision, as the concept is a good one.

The Hardware page is much simpler than previous M Audio offerings, with a display of the currently selected sample rate, selection of ASIO/WDM buffer size from 64 to 2048 samples (with a default value of 256), selection of internal or external sync source, and selection of optical or co-axial S/PDIF input signal. By the way, both digital outputs carry exactly the same signal.

Overall, this M Audio control panel is a considerable improvement over its predecessors, primarily because of the extra Aux and Headphone mixing busses. It might be rather overwhelming for new users, but it's good to find this amount of flexibility available when you need it later on.