I was actively considering purchasing two units of Aardvark Q10 interfaces, but ever since I saw some negative posts at other audio forums about Q10 driver's issues, I have slightly developed cold feet. Most people agree that Aardvark's products are great but they are sloppy on writing drivers which create lot of stability and software compatibility problems. I don't know what they mean by WDM drivers, but it seems that Q10 doesn't have a WDM driver. I have Sonar for recording and XP OS.
I especially prefer Q10 for its preamps that obviates the need for mixer or external pres. I sincerely hope that Q10 will work without any probs.
Does anyone here use Q10? If yes, please share your experiences.
Comments
At the risk of sounding biased as well as revealing a bit of my
At the risk of sounding biased as well as revealing a bit of my "identity". I do work for Aardvark... and I can dispell some of the rumours and untruths that you may have seen at the other forum.
The XP drivers are very solid, and any remaining bugs that are still there will be fixed in the upcoming driver release which will be soon.
ASIO has always been rock solid, and Nuendo/SX users will get latencies down to 3-4 ms with our Turbo mode ASIO driver. Of course we have always had 0 input latency.
For Sonar, we do have our own driver called A|WDM which is very stable and works great in Sonar. This driver has been approved by the guys at Cakewalk, and you can go to their website to check that out. I run Sonar and XP myself on a Carillon system with my Q10 and its really solid and sounds great.
Is everything "perfect". No...but I defy you to find ANY soundcard company that has "perfect" drivers. Remember, you are dealing with Windows.
BTW, we have Mac drivers that are close to being release...
Did I mention the Q10s discrete mic pres? All 8 for under $850 street, with a shielded PCI card and built in MIDI etc. etc....
Anyway... the proof is in the puddin, and i encourage you to check out the Q10 for yourself. Remember that hundreds of Q10s are sold each month, and very very few users have any problems at all, most of which come down to user or configuration issues, and are solved with simple tech support calls and emails. Id stand our record for drivers, quality and tech support up to just about anyones. The best news of all is that the people I work for are extremely bright, and really do care about getting it done right for our customers.
Thomas Adler
Dir. of West Coast Sales
Thomas Welcome to RO first off :D ) I do have one small gripe
Thomas
Welcome to RO first off :D )
I do have one small gripe though which has to deal more with the software control of the mic pre's rather than a gain pot. Any reason why Aardvark decided to go that route? I like the hands on control of my gain rather than going to a software control panel and trying to get the mouse or typing in a value.
Again, Cheers mate!
Opus
Hi Opus, This is a good question. We originally went with
Hi Opus,
This is a good question.
We originally went with the software control with the Direct Pro 2496 when it debuted in 1999-2000.
I wasnt in on the development for that product, however I believe the advantages to having a software digital mixer outweighed a bunch of external knobs, at the time. It makes for a more streamlined breakout box design... as well as allows for dialing in exact gain changes in .5 dB increments. With the digital mixer, there is snapshot recall of any setting on the entire 'board', including gain.
Also, all of the gain is done in the analog stage before it hits the A/D converter.
Its quite possible that knobs will make their way into some of our future products, as there certainly are advantages to having them.
One tip that I always recommend is to click on the gain knob with your mouse and then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to adjust the gain in .5 dB increments. This is easier than "mousing around" and becomes pretty much an after-thought after you get used to doing it that way.
Thomas
yo try the q10 plug-in from Waves Ltd. That is where everyone go
yo try the q10 plug-in from Waves Ltd. That is where everyone got it from anyways. Its directx and it works great. or just get waves gold bundle which has almost all theplug-insyou will ever need.