M-Audio Duo

The hardest thing to do is to make it work. After that, it's plug and play.

I record almost anything with it, and was never dispointed.

Unfortunatly, sometimes, the card just crashes. All you have to do is to turn it on/off, but still, sometimes it can stop during a recording.

After reading other reviews, I mignt be the only one with a good experience with customer support. The techs were polite, and even if I had to call them 7 times, they still did their best to help me, which worked after all.

Overall, I'd say unless you want to open your own professional recording studio, this card is perfect for your casual amateur/semi-professional recording session. I use it with Cuebase, both on a laptop and desktop.

The driver has to be reinstalled any time the Duo is powered off . . or any time you sneeze . .
Documentation is sparse
Knobs don't offer fine enough control over gain level.

Seems to transmit the sound properly

Would not depend on it at a gig as I would not want to be sitting there reinstalling the driver for the thousandth time

They did help me get it to co-ordinate with my mixing software . . . that qualifies as above and beyond the call

I play acoustic, and it works well for that. I've been playing 30 years but I don't have a lot of recording gear.

I will never buy another M-Audio product, after trying their MP3 recorder and finding it just as flakey as (or worse than) this. Their software team is just not on the ball.

It took me a bit to get this unit started. What one should do is practically :
1) Detach the Duo from your computer ( power it off, it's enough. You can still have the usb cable plugged in)
2) Run the latest driver from M-Audio ( Should take about 1-2 minutes)
3) Power the Duo back on and say Continue Anyway when the windows driver logo warning pops up. This takes 30-50 sec.
Now, you got your Duo working. A small icon on the right side of the widows task bar shows you the status of the card.

Important info:
Opening the Duo driver mode controller ( double cliking the small icon in your windows taskbar) will allow you to switch between ASIO and MME modes. If this radio buttion fails to change positions, that just means your DUO lost communication with your computer. Try power cycle the Duo, otherwise first remove all USB audio card instances from your Hardware Device manager and then go again through the steps above.

I have an Acer Travelmate Centrino 1.6GHz laptop, 512 Mb RAM.
I am using this card at 48 Khz sampling rate, with 24 bit long samples. It allows me to have to channels in , to channels out ( hardware wise, on the Duo). No noise, great recording, great sound at 24 bits ( you can hear the difference , just listen for it !!!) .
I use Ableton Live 5 and Reason 2.5 rewired. I record analog stuff in Ableton. The zero-latency direct monitoring works amaizing. Actually, you can record your analogue instrument ( bass, guitar, mic, etc) while you're listening to it and while your analog input is directed through a lot of effects, and still get to hear the processed sound in the monitors quickly enough for my ear not to notice the latency. That's an amaizing thing : )) ( for the price of the Duo).

The effects banks and how the interact with your card depends very much on your software. As I said, Ableton as master and Reason rewired as slave is a setup without problems, low CPU consumption and a lot of fun.
In terms of sound quality, a lot of other things make a difference: from the quality of your analog instruments, to cables, etc. An important issue: get good monitor speakers. ( Edirol makes decent ones around 120 euros).

It is reliable. I would use it at a gig without backup. From my experience, once you got it working, it will work fine within a setup.
You might get into trouble when setting things up but then just remove the card and reinstall it again ( that takes less than 2-3 minutes all together).

No upgrades yet ( maybe the fimware should be upgraded sometime. Is there a new firmware available? If you know about any, write me at gabrielg@nikhef.nl)

The style has nothing to do with the Duo :).
I've been playing music for a while, got some clean sound instruments ( US Fat Strat as guitar, Fender Jazz Bass, Evolution midi key's, ) and they all work very very fine with the Duo.
So, there's a lot on the market that has similar capabilities with the Duo, but at higher prices.

If you want to work with more than a couple of analog instruments at the same time, and route them through the Duo, it's highly recomanded that you get a small mixing console ( it should cost around 100 euro's for a decent one, that is 10-12 channels, eq's on each of them, sends, etc. See Yamaha, Beringher, and so on).

I would say the Duo is the first important step one should take when moving into pro sound, for very little money.

Very simple to set up, not too many controls. This really depends more on the music recording/listening software you are using. Windows XP stock drivers worked well. M-Audio drivers, harder to get to work right. Had a hard time getting it to work right in Cakewalk with the supplied drivers. With Audacity open-source recording software, the Windows generic drivers work perfectly. Instantly transitions to Duo when connected via USB to my laptop. Instantly transition back to internal soundcard when disconnected. Nice.

The mic inputs are excellent and quiet. 96-24 recording from stereo mics is what this unit is all about and this kind of hires sound is liquid and beautiful on this unit if you have the amp and speakers to hear it.

Honestly, if someone heard a buzz through one of these units it was probably the mics or the mic cables or set to close to some power supply etc.

The guy who rated this unit a "1" has no idea what it's intended use is. Any decent $30 sound card can replay music. It's the mic preamps with pro-style balanced XLR mike jacks and hi-res recording that distinguish the Duo.

I leave it on for weeks at a time, phantom power and all, and it almost always just works. A couple of times it has failed to record something, when I start a session. I reboot it and it's fine. 99% of the time it is fine. I've used it for two years with no major problems. Generally it is very well built like pro audio gear with a heavy metal chassis, good connectors, smooth switches and controls.

To me it's pretty astonishing that I can record so professionally in 96-24 through a low-speed USB 1 port on a laptop. I record classical guitar music and quiet, liquid, hi-end fidelity is very possible with the right mics and a quiet studio with the Duo. I use a matched stereo pair of Rode NT5 mics. It's simple, inexpensive, and does exactly what I need it to do. I would not hesitate to get another one if anything happened to it.

Decent, but:
-- Requires custom driver installation.
-- Level knobs are hard to read.
-- Manual is not so good.

Otherwise, not hard to get it working -- but see "Reliability."

The sound is quite good, when it is working properly. There is audible noise -- a high-pitched buzz if you crank up a recording of silence -- but not loud enough to be noticable in most settings. Otherwise, no flaws I've noticed.

It's a dog.

It constantly causes crashes / freeze-ups / kernel panics on my machines (both Powerbooks). Nothing else does that -- just the Duo. Powering the unit on/off while plugged in to the machine reliably requires a restart.

On top of that, half the time the unit introduces a weird buzzing artifact. To get it to go away, I have to flip the "latency" setting back and forth until it works, making a brief test recording after each flip. As a result, the thing takes 5-10 minutes to set up. I've reproduced this problem on Mac and Windows, variety of clock speeds, two different Duo units.

Customer support was sometimes polite, sometimes surprisingly rude, but always utterly unable to help with the above problems -- sometimes verging on incompetent.

At one point, I had to email support a scan of the specs out of their own manual, because they were trying to tell me machine was below spec. (It isn't.)

I eventually sent my unit to them, and they sent me a replacement -- "should be fixed now!" Turns out they just blindly sent me a new unit. They didn't manage to reproduce my problems; didn't even try. The new unit, of course, is as unreliable as the old one.

Throughout the support process, I got the impression that (1) they had no idea what to do about my problems, and (2) their main objective was to get me to stop contacting them.

I give them a "2" instead of a "1" because at least some of the people I dealt with were polite and tried (if unsuccessfully) to help. But I will never, never, never buy M-Audio's products again.

Bottom line: would be a great value if it were reliable. Right now, I'd *love* for it to be stolen -- I'd put them money into something that works. In the meantime, I'm hobbling along with its problems, and have managed to get some good recordings out of it (see http://inthehands.com/), although my blood pressure rises every time I have to use it.

The manual is barely adequate and the install for XP was nothing like what was stated. Once installed the unit would not switch to ASIO and the Kristal Audio Engine recording software could only see it as an MME device, which proved useless for multitrack recording due to time delays. I loaded the updated driver which locked up the configuration manager and completely killed the installation; the Duo was no longer visible as a sound device. I uninstalled and reinstalled repeatedly with similar results. After three days of this kind of frustration I uninstalled and reinstalled again, but this time without the update and, after a tip from a Kristal messageboard submitter about similar time delay problems (but not related to the Duo), downloaded ASIO4ALL (free) to run the unit. ASIO4ALL makes this thing happen - in ASIO mode both channels will now record simultaneously, in stereo and with monitoring capability. If you own a Duo with XP get ASIO4ALL and, if you're as lucky as I've been, it will suddenly come to life. Just type in ASIO4ALL in a web (Google, Yahoo, whatever) search to find the site.

Using a Yamaha QY10 sequencer via direct line in and running bass through an old Peavey Probass 1000 for EQ and preamp before the duo. Sound quality has been excellent. I've got no issue here.

Hard to say. The install dramas have left a bad taste in my mouth and I can't really say I'm 100% (or even 80%) confident in the overall ability/relaibility. Since using ASIO4ALL I've had no problems so perhaps, with that program keeping it alive, it could manage a live gig without backup.

I have not dealt with them. I gathered for other input here that it wasn't worth the hassle.

I play instrumental electric music and have been using this unit to record all-bass, instrumental songs in a home studio environment. Aside from my comments in earlier sections, it is now doing the job well and is (finally) helping me make music.

I love the compact, all metal construction and easy input/output/control design. If it were stolen I'd shop around and see if there was something of better value for money. Unless something extremely proven was offered, now that I have this unit operating well I'd probably buy it again.

Very easy to use. There are very few knobs or buttons, so even amateurs should be able to use this thing and use it well. Someone complained that the knobs felt a little cheap, but I don't really agree. Overall, I'd say this little steel box is the sturdiest, easiest to use USB card out there.

This is a dynamite sounding little box. There have been numerous reviews here about the sound quality fo the machine, and I agree with them all. It sounds AWESOME. I purchased this for my laptop after I got tired of carrying around my MOTU 828 firewire. The sound quality is as good or better than my MOTU. You won't be disappointed.

Mixed reviews on this one... I use XP Pro and have no trouble installing the drivers or using the program in Cuabse and Reason. Every once in a while, the card will stop working though. I have never had that happen while recording, only occasionally while in the middle of some heavy processing. But I downloaded the latest driver (an .exe file that sits on my desktop) and all I have to do once it quits is run through the set-up process again and it is good to go. It takes maybe three minutes and doesn't require a reboot. Small hassle to deal with for the ease of use and sound quality.

Never even needed to call.

I have used this for live recording, live performances (DJing with Traktor) and at home goofing off. I have used both the ASIO drivers (for music production/recording stuff) and the WME drivers (for DVDs and MP#s and making mix CDs in iTunes) and really think that it is a great little piece of equipment. If you have a laptop and want a portable and affordable card, this could be the one for you.

It's pretty easy to use.. if it worked right. Mic preamps are self explanatory.

Sounds great! When it works right.

Full duplex should work at 48khz/24bit, but it doesn't.
96khz/24bit doesn't work at all.

I've tried contacting tech support twice about my problems and have NEVER gotten a responce. I am a very unhappy customer. THe unit is usuable, but does not work to the extent that is advertised.

I got this so that I could record at 24-bit, which it does allow me to do.. but it doesn't let me monitor at the same time. Bummer. Tech support has completley ignored me both times I've tried to contact them, spread months apart. I am upset.

Ease of Use - Easy enough to load the drivers, power up the Duo, and...........wait for my PC to freeze or crash.

Driver version 128rc2beta. Version 126 is no better.

Sound quality is good. No as great as I expected after reading all the glowing reviews regarding M-Audio's A/D-D/A conversion. It's definately not as noisy as my Soundblaster Live, though the Duo is only a bit quieter than my Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500 and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. It a bit clearer than the rest of the consumer cards I own, though the Aureal comes in a very close second.

It's just not reliable - I've installed it into several machines, PIII Tyan Tiger mobo, PIV Intel mobo, etc. I even wiped my hard drive several times on one PC - fresh install, it still froze and crashed my machine. The 5% extra clarity just was not worth it.

Typical - somebody reading from a book. They still asked what PC hardware I was using after I explained it to them in detail multiple times.

All I wanted was something primarly for listening to music using the Duo's 1/4" headphone out and my Sennheiser HD-280s and AT ATH-M30s. And for the occasional recording using the Duo's 2 mic preamps with my condensor mics and vocals and acoustic guitar without having to power up my analog mixer and getting the levels right, etc.

I can see why all the shops blew them out at $99. Compared to my $5.00 Aureal SQ2500, the Duo isn't worth the barely noticeable increase in sound quality.

Latency in Reason 2.5 using the M-Audio Duo's WDM drivers on my PIII 500 on just a single NNXT instrument when playing in realtime via an attached Midi keyboard- 11ms.
Latency in Reason 2.5 using the Aureal SQ2500's WDM drivers on my PIII 500 on just a single NNXT instrument when playing in realtime via an attached Midi keyboard- 8ms.

I wonder if M-Audio's PCI cards stink too? Looking around, I see the Audiophile 2496 is now $99, Delta 44 is $149. I don't think I'll risk it. I'll try the new Emu 0404 at $99.

Easy to install the software and drivers - however see later ;-( The manual was also easy to use.

I attempted to use it on 3 recording gigs - it worked on one. I did an A/B comparison of the unit feeding my Dell XP laptop - vs my Mackie 1202VLZ Pro feeding a TASCAM CD-RW2000. The mics were Neumann KM183 phantom powered recording a String Orcheestra - and the Duo was as good if not better than the Mackie.

On two other occasions, the unit failed on me - on both occasions it simply stopped recording! This was not its only fault - see later.

Rating - 9 when it works - 1 when it does not.

Never use this on a gig without backup! Also, I had exactly the same issues as Mike on this page. I tried to use it at home to monitor my editing. Every day - sometimes 3 times a day - my ears got BLASTED - and I mean blasted - with a crunch/thump of pure digital distortion. I tried every driver I could find, old ones, current ones, beta ones - same effect. The laptop was XP Home - using all the hints and tips in the Duo manual. Also, I used the MME drivers and the ASIO drivers - neither worked.

After a month I could stand it no longer - I swapped it for a Roland UA-5. The UA-5 is rock solid - Roland know how to write drivers.

The shop had no answers for why it was so unreliable - but they did the right thing by me and took it back!

Rating 9 for the shop - Rating 1 for M-Audio

I can't speak about other OS/hardware - don't buy one of you have XP - buy a Roland US-5.