Magic Black box

I was in the market for a high quality audio interface, and it all came down to the duet, and the Profire 610. I'm happy to say i choose the Profire 610 due to the fact you can use it with windows.

Unlike previous M-audio products the pre's and A/D/A converters are quite premium, i will say the duet's are better, but only by a couple of inches, everything else it wins in, the number of outputs are insane at this price. The ability to have two different headphone mixes are great as well.

In the manual it states that you should not use the included AC adapter if your using bus power. That for this particular unit is a misprint in the manual. It is confirmed with M-audio engineers, that using the AC adapter plus bus power will yield more dynamic range on the mic pres. Bus power is just enough to get the unit to work, this bad boy is a bit power hungry to say the least.

In conclusion it seems M-audio has decided to become a bit more serious in the pro-audio field, and this interface is making the right kind of noise for them. If your on a budget and need to be able to use a windows and mac machine, but don't want to sacrifice quality i grant you the Profire 610, its one of the few Swiss army knives of audio interfaces.

AMAZING!!

The ProFire 610 is an amazing machine that is recommended to use as an interface for home recording

2 years and still kicking.

I've been using the ProFire 610 since 2/2010. And for the most part, it's been rock solid. Used it originally with PC, and since Spring of 2010, I've been using it with Mac. No issues on either. Sounds great, no issues there either. Preamps are every bit as good as any moderately priced pre-amps. Conversion is excellent as well. I owned an RME ADI-2 and I felt the difference in AD/DA conversion wasn't enough to warrant keeping the RME unit. I'll likely use this ProFire unit until it dies or I need to replace it because of compatible issues at some point in the future. Built quality is top-notch, and two years later the knobs all turn as smoothly as they did the day I pulled it out of the box.

Great for the price

For 400 bucks, it sounds very good. Substantially better than my fast track pro. No major complaints. You can customize master knob controls for whatever inputs you want btw.

Great personnal, high definition interface

I had this pitted against an E-MU 1616m which boasted ProTools HD 192 converters, and all I can say is I can't hear any significant difference in the sound.

For the price, its really 'up there'. It's simple to use, easy to operate, mobile, good looking, and is a perfect solution for the home studio / mobile musician who does not need too many I/Os.

Pro Fire is good!

I am having wonderful recording sessions with this device thus far. I had a tough time actually getting it set up. For instance, I wasn't able to get me monitors to play on the right input at first. Otherwise, the box has been super!

Well...

It sounds ok compared to a Duet. I only bought it because I had to have pro tools for a project and mpowered seemed the way to go.

Anyway, it is not in the same league as the Duet. The audio is noticeably inferior. Not terribly so but if you had a Duet you'd notice.

My biggest issue is the drivers. All the diatribes about Maudio's drivers are true.

I have saved sessions with over 40 tracks with endless plugins running like a dream with my Duet and Logic 8 that won't get past milliseconds of playback with the profire. I know it's the Profire's flaw because I can run the sessions on my Macbook Pro's internal audio interface without a blip in cpu usage.

Fair to poor.

Maudio needs to shake up their team...

Bad News

I bought this product because the salesperson hyped up the "superior" inputs on the 610. He said that the Profire had way better input technology than a plain old Mbox. Well this may be true, but within 6 months of owning the device my first input totally crapped out and is plagued with hardcore static. Also, you only have a gain control knob on inputs 1 and 2. This is very inconvenient when using all 4 inputs. (but now I'm just down to 3). Don't waste your time with this inferior product.