Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Got this unit with some reserve....I had an M-audio Fast Track, and I was not sure why the Alesis was so affordable and with 2 IN for the instruments or mic.
The quality of the case is very low; cheap plastic for the case and the knobs, same for the switches and mic connectors; the only metal parts are the 3.5 inch jack where you plug your guitars or your external equipment, and the headphone OUT
The unit itself looks cheap, but what it matters is what it does; and this pup does it right.
I've hooked it to my Mac pro via USB, and as soon as i plugged it, Snow leopard recognized it; I just had to switch my audio settings to redirect the audio in, audio out and system sounds to the io2 and everything is set up.
I am happy to hear no noise even if the volume is cranked up, while wearing headphones; this means that either the circuit board is well done, or the unit is well shielded from external interference (the fasttrack would give a disturbing hiss now and then; that would disappear if i would change position to the unit of few inches)
The mic in works great; plugged in a mic and it works just fine; setting the knobs is a cakewalk since they are pretty precise and does not make any noise while twisting them (again, means that the people that put this together did a good job shielding the unit; we will see how good is shielded from dust, since that is one of the main causes of noise while twisting the knobs)
the Line in/Guitar in works also great; plugged in my guitar and increased the gain and the sound was really good; tried it with garageband and guitar rig 4 and the latency was under 10ms; versus 18ms with the FastTrack; the Phantom +48v is also useful if you just plug the guitar without amplifier; in this way you can use a sound modeling software like guitar rig and play nice effects directly into your computer, saving the hassle to bring in interference and other noise that would come from the amplifier or pedal.
The recording was also awesome; you can tell that the quality is high when you listen at something recorded with the io2, using Bose headphones or a good audio equipment; the quality was same if not better of a 196kbps MP3, even at high volume and using software equalizer.
The chance to use 2 IN at the same time (2 guitars, guitar and mic, mic and line in and so on) opens up a lot of possibilities; tried with mic and guitar and it works fine; giving you control on each separate channel (the +48v gain works globally on both IN ) with separate knobs for the gain and 2 extra knobs to control the mix between the wet and dry sound (so you can listen the sound of the instrument before being processed by the computer, and after)and to control the main level.
In the end i give this unit a 5 star, since even if is cheaply made; feels pretty solid when you actually use it; and cost much less than any other comparable external usb unit for mac.
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