Its been awhile since I’ve used an audio interface.
I’m building a live rig that will also be my home or travel recording rig. I plan on keeping it simple, mostly for personal use and interacting with a few people.
I came across the term “class-compliant” for the first time, looking at Akai’s EIE I/O and from what I understand, its plug and play. No drivers and I can use it on whatever system.
What are some of your experiences, if any, working with class compliant audio interfaces with Renoise and other DAW’s ?
No experience with such, but afaik no dedicated drivers means no asio support which means latency. Might work with asio4all, but then it wouldn’t be “no drivers” solution anymore.
If live use means laptop gig the extra latency doesn’t really matter.
Class compliant is of course the way to go when working on Linux! Most companies (if not all) do not release Linux drivers for their non class compliant audio interfaces.
I own a Edirol FA-66. It is a class compliant audio interface; or at least it requires no drivers on OS X.
I love it.
I was fed up with crappy driver support and slow updates from other vendors on OSX.
The FA-66 has a lot more buttons and knobs than my previous soundcards. The previous had these in the software. My guess is that the buttons/knobs are external to avoid software update problems, so I can’t complain.
Not sure about the Linux or Windows situation, though.
Yeah, on OSX my experience matches Conner’s. Unless you have a high-end interface from a company that really puts a lot into their drivers, class compliant is the way to go on OSX. The native Core Audio is very low latency - you’ll typically get better results from that than using a budget interface that has a custom driver.