Great little box 
by Anonymous from Boston, MA USA, December 2004

Overall I have been pleased with this unit. Edirol seems to carefully test their drivers before releasing a product, and they get it right the first time.
I bought this unit because it the first firewire interface for a PC that could be DC-powered. I was pleased with how small and light the unit is.
If you make sure that the FA-101 is not sharing any IRQ with another hardware device, and that all Windows bulls*it is turned off (screensaver, auto-update, etc) this unit should perform flawlessly.
The preamps are what you would expect from a box in this this price range- unacceptably noisy for classical music recording, probably fine for a project studio recording pop/rock. The meters are very basic- just four little LEDs, but at least they give you some visual indication of clipping. You probably already know that the only digital I/O is via optical S/PDIF, so hopefully you can live without coaxial S/PDIF. OK, Here's what you really want to know that they don't tell you in the manual.
First off, when operating at 192 kHz, the FA-101 is only a 6 in/out device. A little deceptive considering that they silkscreened 10 IN/10 OUT 24 BIT 192 kHz on the top. It works great, but its only 6 channels. As a side note, this really is a 10 IN/10 OUT device at 96 kHz and below, meaning you can clock off the optical input getting you 2 channels and then use all 8 analog inputs for a total of 10. Some other audio cards won't let you mix digital and analog input. So kudos to Edirol for that.
Secondly, there is variable gain on output channels 7+8, controlled by a little knob on the back panel. This is useless for many people, and this extra gain stage makes those channels significantly more noisy than channels 1-6.
Thirdly, unlike most other audio cards, the FA-101 doesn't change sample rates automatically. You have to change the sample rate with a knob on the front, and then power off/power on the unit to get the sample rate to actually change. What this means is that you will almost certainly need to close any programs using the device any time you want to work at a different sampling rate. This can be a real pain if you are working simultaneously in video at 48 kHz, and audio at 44.1 kHz.
Finally, there is a built in firewire hub, allowing you to chain additional firewire devices. BUT...you CANNOT chain 2 FA-101s together to get 16 channels. Also, I have had lots of problems connecting a DV camcorder and loading in/out video. And I cannot play DVDs using my external firewire DVD-ROM. Apparently its just too much data being pushed in and out through a single firewire connection- you will get tons of drop outs in the audio. I'm not really sure how this limitation compares with other firewire units like the MOTU 828 or Presonus Firestation. Maybe they all have this problem. For the $499 I paid for this unit at audiomidi dotcom, I am happy with my purchase. Every unit has its drawbacks that they never tell you in the product description, and my experience so far has been that the drawbacks are worth living with due to the overall performance of the FA-101. The manual is basically well-written and the FA-101 and its drivers interact well with Windows XP.

My first report on the new Edirol FA-101: 
by David Proudfoot from UK, West London, October 2004

Well firstly let me say that out of the box this device certainly looks the business. It’s bright red, 1 rack high and about half a rack wide and a very strong metal build (not too heavy or too light) There is a typical Roland style schematic type diagram on the top that shows all the connections in and out and as I expected from a Roland product the build quality is exceptional! Note – Roland own Edirol and is a direct move by them to get into the PC, USB, Firewire market. It also sits very nicely on top of a stand-up desktop PC (although if yours is under a desk you might want it to be placed on the desk itself)


More about the build. (technically described as a 10x10 24bit 192kHz firewire audio card)


The back of the box is awash with connections … 6 ¼ inch TRS balanced analogue inputs (that’s 3 stereo line ins – e.g. 2 keyboards and drum module) 8 ¼ inch TRS balanced analogue outputs (including 2 main outs) MIDI in & out and 2 firewire ports. It also has a power switch that has bus or mains selection.


The front has 2 XLR/TRS combo inputs with 48V phantom power on both and one with Hi & Low Z setting (any combination of mic, guitar & bass etc. can be plugged straight into the front) The optical in & output sockets have an interesting “flap” that keeps them covered when there is nothing plugged in (unlike the dummy plugs that you normally find) There is a selectable sample rate (44.1 to 192kHz at 24bit), direct monitoring switch and headphone out with its own volume control.


It would be fair to say that I have not tested everything that the FA-101 can do but here’s what me and the guys in the studio had set-up:


Firstly we ran Cubase SX V2.06 and checked the software latency with some virtual synths such as impOSCar - http://www.vintagesynth.org/misc/imposcar.shtml , CS-80V - http://www.arturia.com/en/cs80v.lasso (this is a seriously fat synth that will squeeze the juice out of your CPU!) Interestingly the FA-101 suffered a little bit when running at 10ms but when changed to 7ms it worked like a dream almost as though it preferred to work at very low latency.


Next was the MIDI in which we used a Roland TD7 synth drum kit to externally trigger Groove Agent - http://ga.clubcubase.net/index.html This is an amazing way of getting live drums into a virtual set-up and by adding something like Quadrafuzz (comes with Cubase SX) and PSP Vintage Warmer - http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/vintage.html you would be hard pushed to distinguish it from the real thing. Recording and playback was rock solid even when layering instruments to get fatter drums sounds (i.e. Sonic Charge µTonic - http://www.soniccharge.com) + LM7 (comes with Cubase SX)


Monitoring … We ran 1 keyboard (through the back) + turntables (via a DJ mixer) + Bass & Guitar (through the front) and were able to monitor them all directly and separately in Cubase applying further processing and effects etc. to their individual respective tracks. (ALL LIVE!)


The FA-101 also has a direct hardware monitoring function which in theory allows you to use it as standalone mixer without the need to go through a PC. We haven’t tested this. It also has a DJ type headphone monitoring function for mixing with something like Traktor - http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?traktor2_us (again – we haven’t tested this)


It’s worth mentioning at this point that all this is done through the mixer in Cubase and I have not found a ‘Windows’ mixer for the FA-101. The option to show a mixer in Windows is disabled under sounds, audio and I can’t find an Edirol mixer anywhere. Having said that so far everything we have plugged into it has worked immediately as apposed to having to select the input from a windows/manufactures mixer so maybe it doesn’t need one?


Something I wasn’t expecting … as the FA-101 has 2 firewire ports I thought it could be used as a kind of network hub or router connecting 2 PCs together. When I plugged it into the 2nd Desktop in the studio it asked for a CD with drivers installed both PCs were able to use the FA-101 at the same time?!?!?! This has not been tested to the full and we may need to disable the 2nd PC’s audio card but I will let you know more when we have played with this set-up again. Oh … by the way it did work as network hub and we were able to see both PCs on the same domain through the FA-101! Before this we were running optical out of the FA-101 into the other PC’s optical in (again – at the same time as everything else).


In summary you can probably tell that I am very pleased with this little red box. OK, it doesn’t have 2 MIDI in & outs or 2 headphone sockets and the sockets themselves are not gold plated but what it does have is style, compactness, durability, reliability and plenty of bang for your buck!


Cheers – Dave

Write Your Own Review!
We all love gear, and we all love talking about gear with our friends and bandmates. Why not share your thoughts with the hundreds of thousands of customers who regularly visit Sweetwater.com? Write your own customer review on this product! To begin, just Click Here!