30 views and not a single entry?!?!?! C'mon poor converters, poor customer service, poor build quality, poor pre's (if included), and the list continues. Lets talk about bad experiences with interfaces.

Well, I do like to think of positive things if you must know. Talking about problems is not what I like to do, solutions are much more rewarding.

I guess there were bad experiences with the current firestudio I use. I run a macbook and if it was not for the presonus forum I would be struggling to understand why the most recent drivers are not working at high sampling rates. I did solve the issue and have had a solid system ever since.

Its important to understand that there can be problems with drivers and getting them to work with the DAW that you choose. Be sure to visit other forums that deal with your interface/DAW specifically.

My thanks and gratitude goes out to the people who help others. We can make our digital experiences pleasurable. A positive attitude goes all the farther.

Jeremy wrote: 30 views and not a single entry?!?!?!

Your thread title is misleading. The title indicates that you have something to say about what is apparently the worst interface. Instead, you don't have anything to say and are asking other people to talk about their bad experiences with audio interfaces. So, the initial interest that brought you the 30 views was lost when the viewers found out that the thread was not about what they thought it would be about.

I understand what you are after, but just change the bait (thread title) and you may hook the right kind of fish.

At any rate, when people have problems, they post them here already...asking for help or suggestions or opinions or alternatives.

Unfortunately, I'm relatively happy with all my audio purchases. Even my B'ringer headphone amp has served me well.

I had the 8 channel behringer headphone amp...ha8000 was the model I believe. It was terrible. It was VERY noisy.

This is to weed out products to our newbie's. So we can help to weed out products with the question of...What do you guys think about????????
It has noting to do with keeping a positive attitude. You can have a positive attitude all day, and still make a bad gear purchase.

Here is one
Aardvark Q10
This is a 10 channel PCI interface. The company has gone out of business, and workable drivers are becoming fewer. Their was a website that hosted all the drivers for this product I dont know if it still exsists.

I think windows 3.1 had the worst interface ever. Excluding, of course, MS-DOS 3.0

Music? We don't play no stinkin' music!!!

Jeremy wrote: It has noting to do with keeping a positive attitude. You can have a positive attitude all day, and still make a bad gear purchase.

Jeremy,
Your absolutely right about that. Sorry it came off that way. :? :shock:

I think your example just states it pretty clearly.

Jeremy wrote: Here is one
Aardvark Q10
This is a 10 channel PCI interface. The company has gone out of business, and workable drivers are becoming fewer. Their was a website that hosted all the drivers for this product I dont know if it still exsists.

IMO The market already takes care of the worst interfaces, nobody buys them because there are so many good products available for very little money now.

Buy an interface thats popular, that way you know you've got other people to support you. An interface thats going for a bargain price usually has a reason for being blown out. All the more reason to question why the price is low.

RO-Keep on rockin in the free world

jammster wrote: IMO The market already takes care of the worst interfaces, nobody buys them because there are so many good products available for very little money now.

Buy an interface thats popular, that way you know you've got other people to support you. An interface thats going for a bargain price usually has a reason for being blown out. All the more reason to question why the price is low.

Pardon the crassness, but this axiom is something that has proven out more times than not.... "Good shit ain't cheap, and cheap shit ain't always good."

But going from "the bottom up" you end up the same...

When the "good stuff" costs $1000, RARELY will something costing $100 be anywhere nearly comparable... e.g. there often is no fine line between cheap and expensive and you get what you pay for.

And there IS a big difference between a good value and cheap... Which is where a lot of folks go wrong, and confuse the two.

As far as naming pieces of worst interfaces..... Behringer, some of the Digidesign stuff, everything made by Microsloth, a few Yamaha pieces, a couple of TASCAM pieces, hell... most everyone makes a clunker every once in awhile... even Neve, API, and SSL.

I'm just trying to make a reference point of places for people new to recording to NOT venture to. I figured starting with the bottom dwellers would be a refreshing place to start. We always hear whats the best this, the best that....I figured there would be a more agreed upon consensus of places not to start. I remembers starting recording from a Mackie 1202...coming out of the headphone output, and into a 1/8 adapter to a soundblaster. So I have been at the bottom, just hoping this would start off on interfaces, and we would move into microphones to stay away from...and so on and so forth.
You are absolutely right about the market dictates, it always does. That rule tends to apply to new gear. Trying to save a new kid from thinking they are getting a bargain on a used interface. That's why I mentioned the Aardvark. It is a very usable interface time and place, but those times have moved on. Shoot you can score the Q10 for 50-100 bucks.

I used to do multi tracking on a standard cassette tape player...it's not the bottom from my point of view, just getting the best you can out of what you have.

Stop your whining all of you and answer the bloody question, Jeremy has a point! (yall sound like a bunch of 9 year olds)

I'm dissatisfied with my Mbox 2 Pro Factory. Its built with cheap parts, it doesn't react well with Logic. It doesn't feel 'Pro' Doesn't even feel "pro-sumer'!

Don't get me stated on the software.

He screams because no one answers, you scream because no one cares...coincidence?

edit: it is another example of ask a better question, get a better answer. It is a poorly formed question with no real answer EXCEPT what the disgruntled may produce.

i actually don't mind the mbox pro (even though it doesn't look or feel 'pro') but am unhappy that the phantom is either on or off on BOTH inputs, so i can't use a ribbon and a condenser together. silly.

OK.

I'm using a Realtek ALC880, on my motherboard.

If I slapped another pair of sound cards into the PCI slots, I could record say, 6 channels of input. But that's useless because they're out of sync.

All the inputs are lacking in something (clarity comes to mind) and I have this buzzing issue.

My argument for soundblasters is that it's taught me to watch levels, forced me to focus on my mixing skills, but most importantly, taught me that
Noise floor doesn't matter. As soon as you have more than 30dB SNR that's PLENTY to work with.

Listen to http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/176874/BF-HC2.mp3 and tell me, does the buzzing (evident at the start) annoy you? Not me. I hear it as a fantastic rendition of a great Scottish song which means more to me than having all the gear in the world.
(I do have one complaint about that recording: the mics I put up were too far back and lost half of the violins)

Thanks for understanding where I'm coming from here Halifax. I'm sure making a thread of gear to stay away from would get a ton of replies, but the problem would be, the replies would be all over the place. I was trying to make a more focused inquiry on a specific part of the recording chain. Trying to get products to stay away from, and then maybe we could post a list once we have enough replies in a few threads we could compile a list with good input from many forum members(Interfaces/Monitors/Microphones/Preamps). It was just an idea, but the true nature of this forum rears it's ugly head far too often. I have been guilty of this I wont even say I haven't ( I called Dan retarded, and he clearly is not but we differ on an opinion). But people who say they wont contribute anything to a thread because I don't like the title, clearly don't understand I'm not doing this for my own benefit.

Code,
That performance is amazing. You did a very good job with what you have. You can't use that as some leverage to get a crack at good equipment? Even a better PCI soundcard?
It's a shame.

Yeah Code, I agree with iamfrobs, really refreshing to hear a great recording of Scottish music.

I have no idea if you have a direct box?

I have a JDI Duplex that I use on everything that I can. Its amazing how much it gets rid of hum. Just like the really awesome mic pres it has input transformers that isolate and get rid of lots of noise.

Check it out:

http://www.proaudiosystems.co.uk/product-2947/radial-jdi-duplex-mk4-stereo-direct-box.html

I am sure you probably already know about these.
Keep up the good work.

Thanks so much guys. I really do appreciate it.

Goes to show, it's not the gear, but the performance.
That fiddle band was in our church for a 2 hour gig - I threw those mics up at the half-time interval to be as unobtrusive as possible and didn't get to listen to them until they started playing.

Jammster, yeah thanks. I've actually got a few channels of DI but they're all used for guitar inputs etc. although one is used on the feed going to the induction loop in the church. People moaned about buzzing, some guy from a company came and looked at it, didn't fix it. I put a DI on it and the problem "went away". Now I'm a DI down... (sounds like a film)

Monkey if you remember, what were the mics you ended up using during this session?

Hardly a "session" more of a "supply monitoring of their keyboard and then throw some mics up for the conductor/announcer and also for a few violin/guitar solos.

I remember well, that was a pair of Shure PG58s plugged into the preamps on my Phonic K-16 taking a feed directly out of the Insert jacks and into the line in on the PC.
I did a bit of EQ in the DAW afterwards, some bass boost and a low filter. I probably still have the project file.

I apologize to the original poster for disrupting this thread.

That said:What CM has achieved, is why to me, it is a negative influence to anyone who may be considering a specific interface only to find that RO has a shit list, and that piece of gear is on it. Not to mention it is one persons opinion on one persons experience with one piece of gear.

Code has done a fantastic job of capturing and reproducing what he was hearing and as I understand it, that is all you are trying to do.

The realtek would be on the TOP of the list or fighting with a soundblaster for that position, right CM?

To be fair, it's not an interface[on board sound card] so it would not even make the list.

It is a poor technician who blames his tools. I should know:)

In terms of features, Realtek/SoundBlasters are junk.

In terms of quality, well...
With a pair of £50 mics, preamps in a 16 channel mixer and some luck I've produced something you guys seem to like.

My Sig wrote: I'd like to clarify, SoundBlasters will do the job.
But they'll do a bloody awful one.

ok, I'm gonna resent doing this, but not for the obvious reasons....

Code, not bad... but yes, the noise gets on my nerves all the way through. However, it doesn't ruin the recording, it's just part of what it is. A live recording with a 50Hz buzz.

The performance, while not absolutely perfect, is more than enjoyable... it was real. Real musicians, playing in front of a real audience and it was captured rather pleasantly... so, I'm not bashing the recording, nor the mixing. It is what it is, and it ain't that bad.

As far as the original topic of this thread...

I have to agree with Space... I think it's a mistake to try to create a list of worst interfaces, et al. It's about as pointless as; "What's the best mic, pre-amp, etc..." Everyone is going to have varying opinions.

If I said that Logic was the worst, someone else would say digi was worst, the another would pipe in with Cubase being a dog...

The only way to effectively get a "reasonably accurate" list of the junk gear out there, is to index this, the pro audio, and recording forums for key phrases. Then once you have the indexes, you could count the number of times vs the number of posters' who uploaded the indexed phrases.

That would yield a reasonably accurate consensus of what is not well thought of as either a good value, or of poor quality.

I'd really hate to try this, because you are going to spend goofy amounts of time trying to develop the key phrases with enough latitude to account for the many native tongues spoken here... as well as regional and slang nuances.

I knew there were problems with it. I actually can't even hear the 50Hz after the playing starts :O I should get some monitors. No, a real interface. No, more mics. No, monitors. *head spins*

I agree with Space/Max now. A list of truly useless and consistently bad gear might help but too many "bad experiences" and one-off bad units would clutter it up.
Sure you could say "don't use Behringer" but I found that Behringer DIs are perfectly reasonable and functional. Maybe not solid or as good as Radial but you pay so little you can't help but want a few of them.

Monkey do you have any plugins that would help to take the hiss away?

Part of the Reaplugs pack (http://www.reaper.fm) Reafir: spectral analysis. Set it to subtract mode, check the box to auto-generate the curve then play a selection of "silent" i.e. noise floor audio, disable the checkbox and that will remove the noise. Usually I screw around with the track gain first so it leaves some in but stops strange artifacts.
I left that recording untouched because well, I felt purist that day.

tl:dr; yes I do.

The real issue I have with Hans Ringer's gear is not just the inconsistent quality... it's MUCH deeper than that... they break international copyright laws and reverse engineer gear.

They don't pay the fine's they've had levied against them... the just stop making that particular piece...

Then they manufacture their stuff in places that are just shy of forced labor camps... but I think they cleared them of accusations of child labor abuse.

I'm with Max on this one.

Boycott Ber#rin&er, I don't care if it means spending a few more bucks for the next box.

Checkout the [[url=http://[/URL]="http://en.wikipedia…"]references[/]="http://en.wikipedia…"]references[/] tab in this link. This is real.

You'll be able to sleep better at night knowing your supporting a more worthy company than them.

Hans Ringery has been scamming for years, somehow they dodge the bullet every time.

Ah.
I tend to forget about that awful history of Behringer, despite all the Behringer bashing.
Why is Behringer so awful? This thread will inevitably reveal all.

(i'm not obscuring the word because this post is negative enough that anyone coming to read it will realise how bad they are).

Yeah that MX8000 is a direct Mackie rip off. Could work out to be a sweet mixer, but they stole it shamelessly.