Akai Professional EIE Pro 24-bit Electromusic Interface Expander

I received the EIE pro a day before a touring musician arrived in town for a outdoor venue. Note that I decided for the Pro over the normal EIE for the recording capacity (the pro being 24-bit with the EIE just being 16). I was keen to see how the EIE held up in a outdoor setting; Outdoor venues being slightly more cumbersome to live recording provided the traditional hardware setup. The Neutrik Combo Connector XLR-1/4" Jack actually came in handy because the house live sound engineer gave me two XLR cables that had looked like they had been dragged behind a car for a few miles. In fact the male jack on the cable were so worn and banged up, they wouldn't even fit in the interface. so I just pulled out my 25ft Gold TRS popped it right in and handed the other connection to the engineer.The gig went off without a hitch. I mean literally I had no problems whatsoever no dropouts, no latency issues, I even stuck an external webcam to the extra USB ports while recording. just to see if I could get a hiccup. I got nothing. EIE pro went on effortlessly, Vu meters showing real time the available headroom which completely synced to the digital headroom meters in my mDaw Mind you this is during a live performance(read: one take. no stopping).So the EIEpro passed the live gig test with flying colors. Afterwards I originally planned to transfer the files to my Studio's DAW where I have a full suite managed by a Focusrite Saffire PRO24but instead I used the same setup to mixdown and and provide the artist with a copy of his performance. all using the EIEpro. In my opinion as a Consultant this External Sound Card Is Definitely worth its weight and is essential to the mobile Digital Media Artist.

Honestly I believe this device is awesome! I would love to give it 5 stars but honestly the fact that it comes with Pro-Tools and the hell it put me through... yea not so much fun.I am still playing with it to try to figure out how to get the most out of it but honestly so far it does what it was meant to do. the speed is there it's just pro-tools that is what sucks.I purchased this to go with Music Creator 6 Touch (Steam purchase) only to find out that MC6T only allows 2 inputs at a time! I still honestly may contact Steam and the BBB about that as NOWHERE in the documentation on the page to purchase discusses the number of inputs... oh it says 16 tracks but NOTHING about (at 2 at a time MAX). Apparently they want you to jump up to more expensive packages.So because of that I went ahead and decided "why not" and installed the Pro-Tools included in the package... One and a half hours later I was able to plug in and record. About 10 minutes after that I found out that the Pro-Tools bundled with this doesn't even export to MP3 without purchasing more software. So be prepared to run through a very convoluted DRM (via USB Dongle and associated websites and software) scheme in order to get the software even running and then after that another 20 minutes or so getting the lame-mp3 encoder installed and working.Now my whole reason for buying this was that I wanted to do a little recording here and there but have the option to also record multiple vocals at the same time (this being a 4x4 input device). So after getting Pro-Tools installed and recording something I decided to listed to what I recorded... CAN'T. Apparently this is because Pro-Tools only will output back to this device as OUTGOING AUDIO. So even if you have normal PC speakers/headphones good luck. You cannot even plug in headphone cables to this on the "headphone monitoring" ports. Pro-Tools will only send to the Monitor OUTs on the back of the unit.So honestly I am off to find some software that will do 4 in as well as just let me listed to the playback in my normal headphones/speakers (I am not looking to setup a professional studio).Lastly the build on this is just great! Everything is labeled well and it is straight forward to understand. My only complaint with this unit itself is similar to what others have said... CABLE PORTS SHOULD BE ON THE BACK OF THE UNIT NOT THE FRONT! At first I didn't realize how much of a hassle it is but then after rigging everything up... yea real easy to understand how annoying real quick. If you are getting this for long term usage... build yourself a little stand to run the cords down & under to head out the back... you will be thankful you did.

Coming out of the box, it seems like a solid, well built unit with all the features one could want. 4 inputs and outputs, MIDI in/out, 4 sends, cool VU meters, and a USB hub! Unfortunately it's hindered by a couple of showstopping defects:The drivers are awful. I used 2.2.5 (for Mac OS X), and the control panel would not let me change the buffer length.It randomly disconnects and reconnects. It momentarily disappears from the audio drivers menu before reappearing, while making a faint "popping" noise through your speakers. Obviously, random disconnects of your audio device throw your DAW for a loop, at best stopping the sound and at worst crashing the whole thing.Sometimes when I connect it, the latency is great and I can record with no problem. Other times, it appears to have a half-second lag in both recording and playback. Unmanageable.Sometimes it seems like it sets its own buffer length way too short, because all the sound coming out is crackly and lo-fi. Or it might be truncating the 24-bit recording down to 16-bits. I don't know for sure, but either way it sounds AWFUL and you can't use it.All of these problems are present with nothing plugged into the USB hub on the back, but I noticed the more USB devices you add, it gets even worse.Finally, when I initially got it all 4 inputs worked, but after 2 days the first input stopped working completely. Even when disconnected from a computer, you can directly monitor the inputs with your headphones and watch the VU needle bounce. On my unit, this works for inputs 2, 3, and 4, but not 1, even with the gain cranked all the way up.In short, my unit was unusable.