by Steve Cunningham
When Avid Technology, the parent company of Digidesign, acquired M-Audio last August for $80 million in cash (that’s right, eighty million), it was clear that they were buying more than a line of inexpensive soundcards and controller keyboards. Digidesign essentially owns the pro and semi-pro audio markets, so the acquisition gives them a substantially larger slice of the low-end market to complement their dominance on the high-end.
The first fruit of this marriage is a version of Pro Tools designed to run on M-Audio hardware. Pro Tools M-Powered is a re-packaged version of Pro Tools LE that runs on one of eleven M-Audio interfaces. This month we’ll take a look at Pro Tools M-Powered on M-Audio’s Firewire 410 interface.
M-Audio’s Firewire 410 interface has been around for a couple of years, and with two mic preamps, it’s good for many of you doing production work. The other supported interfaces offer a wide variety of configurations, from the Firewire 1814 (18 inputs, 14 outputs, 2 mic pre’s and ADAT lightpipe), to the PCI-card-based Delta 1010LT (10 inputs, 10 outputs, and 2 mic pre’s).
THE FIREWIRE 410
The Firewire 410’s case is 1U high, and slightly more than a half-rack wide. Inasmuch as it’s designed to be portable, there is no provision for accessory rack ears. The box itself is a rather plain gray, but the silver front panel with its beveled edges, silver knobs, and chrome buttons looks sufficiently pro for my tastes.
The two front-panel inputs have Neutrik combo jacks that are wired to accept either a balanced mic plugged into the outer XLR portion, or an unbalanced “instrument-level” quarter-inch plug inserted into the inner jack portion. The rear panel is home to two separate quarter-inch jacks for unbalanced, line level signals, and these are activated by pushing in the front-panel Mic/Line buttons. I like this better than having switched jacks where plugging something into one deactivates the other, since you can leave both your mics and line sources plugged in and switch between them at will.
The two mic preamps have a globally switched +48V phantom power option, and provide up to 66dB of gain. There’s also a switchable 20dB pad for each input to cope with hotter signals, and each mic/instrument input has its own gain control knob. The rear line-level inputs have a fixed sensitivity of -10dBV and are unaffected by the gain controls. Rounding out the front panel’s input section is a pair of LED indicators for each input which display signal presence (around -30dB) and clipping (these seem to kick in at about 3dB below audible clipping).
Next to the input controls on the front panel is a stepped rotary control labeled Level Controller, which can adjust the output level of any of the eight outputs, using the 410 software control panel. Atop this knob are eight output signal level LEDs that flash yellow when signal is present at each analog output jack.
Next to these are twin stereo headphone outputs, each with its own rotary level control (both jacks carry the same signal, but I still think that having two headphone outs is very kewl). The rightmost section of the front panel contains S/PDIF in and out signal indicators, a MIDI Thru switch, a switch and indicator for the global phantom power, and a power switch.
This power switch has an associated blue LED which also provides status information. Fast flashing indicates that the Firewire firmware isn’t loaded, which can happen during the boot up process or when something has gone wrong between the computer and the 410. Slow flashing shows that the 410 has been detected by the computer, but that it isn’t yet switched on. A steady blue glow indicates that everything is hunky-dorey.
The rear panel contains the two aforementioned line input jacks, along with eight line output jacks (all of which are unbalanced quarter-inch jacks at -10dBV level), a pair of RCA and Toslink optical jacks for the S/PDIF ins and outs, two Firewire connectors, MIDI In and Out jacks, and a jack for the supplied but optional 12V DC power supply. The Firewire 410 is powered by the Firewire connection itself, except with some PC Firewire cards and with any 4-pin Firewire cables like those found on camcorders. The 12V supply is unnecessary with Macs.
All the audio inputs and outputs can operate at either 16 or 24-bits, and at up to 96kHz sampling rates. In addition, analog outputs 1 and 2 can playback at 192kHz (although I’m not quite sure why that’s important, unless it’s for compatibility with something or other).
DRIVERS AND PANELS
On the PC, the FW410 runs under Windows 2000 and XP (but not under Windows 98 or Me). On the Macintosh, you’ll need Mac OS 9.2 or later, or OS 10.1.5 or later. Mind you, those requirements are for the interface only, as Pro Tools M-Powered requires Windows XP or Macintosh OSX. As always, I disregarded the supplied driver CD-ROM and went straight to M-Audio’s web site to download the latest drivers. It’s important to do this since often the enclosed CDs are several months (and revisions) out of date. Be sure you get the right installer for your computer and software version... the FW 410 supports ASIO2 and WDM on the Windows side, and Core Audio on the Mac side.
Whatever your computer platform, you must run the FW410 installer program before plugging in the Firewire 410 itself, so that the various files needed by the interface are loaded on boot up. Following the driver installation, the installer forces you to reboot your computer, but don’t plug in the FW410 with your computer running — M-Audio warns in several places against “hot-plugging” the Firewire 410, lest you toast the Firewire ports either on the interface (a real drag) or on your computer (a disaster that may require the motherboard be replaced). So run the installer, and shut down the computer... now you can plug in the 410, power it up, and have the new hardware properly detected on startup.
M-Audio’s Control Panel software for the Firewire 410 is useful when using the interface with programs other than Pro Tools M-Powered. It has four main pages labeled 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.
The Mixer page provides separate control over all 10 of the playback channels (eight analog and two digital), plus the four inputs (two analog and two digital), arranged in stereo pairs. Each channel has level faders, along with peak-reading meters, Link buttons for stereo fader control, Solo and Mute buttons, and there are routing options to assign channels to hardware inputs, although you will want to make changes from within your audio program.
The Output page lets you reconfigure the channel outputs to other than the default hardware outputs, but again you’ll probably want to make these changes from within your audio editor. The most useful function of the Output page is to let you assign the stereo headphones to outputs other than the default channels 1/2. The Hardware page lets you set sample rate, the ASIO/WDM buffer size from 64 to 2048 samples (with a default value of 256), the 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.
GETTING M-POWERED
With the FW 410 interface installed and functioning, it’s time to add Pro Tools M-Powered (hereafter PTMP). The PTMP package includes Windows and Mac installation CDs, a brief Getting Started manual and an even briefer Basics Guide. These are reproduced in PDF form on the discs, along with the full manual and various other bits of documentation. Also included is an iLok USB dongle, which serves to copy-protect PTMP.
Hmmmm... now that’s different...
Up until now Pro Tools has, in effect, used Digidesign’s hardware as a copy protection dongle, with PACE’s iLok USB dongle employed only as an accessory for authorizing third-party plug-ins. But with PTMP, the iLok USB dongle is now used for the program too. It’s hard to love any copy-protection scheme, but the iLok system is widely used for plug-ins, and it makes it possible to store all your plug-in authorizations in one place. It also lets you install a single copy of PTMP on as many different machines as you like, as long as you only intend to use one at a time. However, the sheer physical size of the dang thing can be a serious nuisance — the two USB ports on my Mac laptop are located in such a way that with the iLok in place it’s impossible to insert any other device save a USB cable. The iLok won’t work in an external USB hub, so the only alternative is to get a very short USB extension cable.
Installation is straightforward on both the Mac and PC. Although the PC version does demand a couple of tweaks to System Properties settings, the manual does an okay job of holding your hand through the process, so be sure you read the installation section. It’s also important to install the drivers before you install Pro Tools, but with that done you just plug in the iLok key, navigate the Found New Hardware wizard yet again, and you’re ready to go.
I won’t bother to describe the program — hey, it’s Pro Tools, and it seems to me identical to my LE system. So what’s different from LE? The DV Toolkit, which gives you a timecode ruler and allows you to import project files from Avid’s Xpress DV video-editing package, is not supported here. Neither is DigiTranslator, used for working with OMF projects, and there’s no support for Avid video peripherals. No problem so far, right? The only potential hurt is that PTMP doesn’t support any of the Ethernet-based control surfaces, like the Control|24 and ProControl. But honestly, I don’t know anyone who owns either and doesn’t work a big TDM rig anyway, so the net answer is that there’s no difference. And PTMP sessions are completely compatible with LE and TDM systems, so you can take your hard drive into almost any studio in the world and work on ‘em there.
Like Pro Tools LE, you can have up to 128 mono or stereo audio tracks, but also like current LE versions, PTMP provides only 32 “voices,” and playing back a stereo track requires two voices. And again like LE, you can have 16 mono busses (or eight stereo busses), and up to five inserts and five aux sends per channel. Trust me, if you’ve used Pro Tools, you’ll be right at home using Pro Tools M-Powered.
BUNDLED SOFTWARE
No self-respecting audio recording package can be competitive without the sweetener of free effects and processors, and PTMP is no exception. The standard Digirack suite of basic plug-ins has now been increased to 35 items, and you can download the new EQ III plug-in, which is the best EQ offered by Digidesign. While it may be hard to get excited about DC Offset Removal and Normalize, most of the Digirack tools will come in handy sooner or later. The compressors and equalizers are useable, and D-Verb is more versatile than most bundled reverbs. All the dynamics plug-ins can be keyed from any of the internal busses in the Pro Tools mixer — an invaluable feature which is not available in most editors. What’s more, all the real-time plug-ins (RTAS) are also available in off-line Audiosuite (AS) versions. If you run out of processing power, you can just copy your settings from the RTAS plug-in to the AS version and apply the effect permanently, saving valuable CPU cycles.
As with all current versions of Pro Tools, you also get a selection of plug-ins from Bomb Factory, which was another of Digidesign’s acquisitions. The highlight for most folks will be BF76, a recreation of the classic Universal Audio 1176 compressor. I think I prefer Universal Audio’s own software recreation of this unit, but since you’ll need to cough up for an extra DSP card or a TDM system in order to get that one, the BF76 plug is not to be sneezed at. Also included on the CD is Ableton’s Live Digidesign Edition, but the other lite programs bundled with LE versions of Pro Tools are absent here. Propellerhead’s Reason Adapted is bundled with most M-Audio hardware in any case, but it’s a shame that you don’t get IK Multimedia’s Sampletank SE, Amplitube LE or T-Racks EQ.
THE WRAP
If you’ve always wanted to get into Pro Tools without buying into the Digidesign hardware, here’s your chance. While many of us had hoped that the total cost of an M-Audio interface and PTMP software would be less than that of a Digidesign mBox (which includes LE), that isn’t really the case — the total is quite nearly the same (actually a bit more with the FW 410, but there are cheaper supported interfaces). But in many ways the M-Audio interface is more versatile than the mBox... 10 outputs instead of two, and ASIO2 drivers that work well with non-Digi software, for example.
How does the M-Powered package sound? Easily as good as an mBox, that much is certain. I like the mic pre’s better than those on my mBox, and the dual headphone jacks are quite useful. And hey, it’s Pro Tools.
The M-Audio Firewire 410 retails for $399, and is available on the street for less than $300. Pro Tools M-Powered retails for $349, and can be found for less than $300. For more information and a demo version of Pro Tools M-Powered, visit www.m-audio.com, or www.digidesign.com.
♦