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This month I'll take a look at three products marketed by M-Audio, a company that has created a niche for itself by manufacturing and distributing innovative audio hardware and software at affordable prices. The company's FireWire Solo, Keystation Pro 88, and Ableton Live products fit into this category.
FireWire Solo is an easy-to-use portable interface box for recording guitar, vocals, and other sounds on a computer. The Keystation Pro 88 is a USB master MIDI controller keyboard with 59 assignable controllers. Both of these products come bundled with the Lite version of Ableton Live music production software, now in version 5.
Together, these products could go a long way to getting your audio for video suite up and running.
FireWire Solo
FireWire Solo represents the low end of recording interfaces, in terms of price and feature set, for the professional. Perfectly suited to the musician or producer who travels, this device is cheap, has remarkably good audio quality, and may fit your needs. Let's take a look at it.
FireWire Solo is a small, bus-powered unit designed to let songwriters record guitars, vocals, and other sound to a computer. The box offers dual FireWire ports, is compatible with most popular music software, and is small enough to carry with you. Features include a 1/4in. input on the front panel, an XLR microphone input, and dual line inputs. The box's FireWire connectivity provides up to 24-bit/96kHz sample rate support and digital I/O. Ableton Live Lite 4 software comes bundled with the Solo, and the package prices at $249.95.
Installing the software and hardware for this device was simple. I tested it inside Cubase SX3, running on my new, awesomely cool dual AMD Opteron system. I simply removed the RME Fireface 800 that I own and replaced it with the Solo, which obviously connects via a FireWire port.
SX3 had no problem recognizing this device, and all I had to do was create a new stereo output, which I labeled "Solo Stereo Out." With some minor variations, any software DAW you use will follow this same procedure. From this point, all software and hardware audio sources that pass through your DAW will simply be routed to the Solo, which throughputs signal to a pair of 1/4in....