I bought this in the hopes that I could easily record my guitar and a second instrument simultaneously. My hopes were dashed rather quickly.
The drivers are awful, and the set up instructions are negligible. This is an entry level device, and while I pride myself on being able to figure anything out sans instructions, I still had trouble.
It should have been as easy as plugging the Firewire Solo into my laptop, and plugging my guitar into the Solo. Then I could record to the computer, while listening to myself as I play through the computer’s speakers. Not so. The Solo sends the guitar signal to the computer where you can apply effects, but then takes the new signal and sends it to it’s own outputs. That’s fine except that you can’t listen to what you just recorded on your computer through the Solo. You need both your computer and the Solo plugged into speakers. I finally figured out that you need to send the computers output to the Solo as well, even though it might seem like this causes a feedback loop. It didn’t, but the manual makes zero mention of any of this.
The system is billed as portable, but already I’ve had to plug in my guitar, my computer, twice, and to speakers. It’s easier to untangle gum from your hair. But here’s the kicker, the whole system breaks, if you unplug anything while the computer is on. Yes, including the guitar.
I innocently unplugged the guitar to test the other set of inputs, but the instant I did so I got an error message that something went horribly wrong. The computer doesn’t freeze, the Firewire Solo simply stops working. It is no longer detected by Windows (maybe Macs don’t have this problem, I haven’t been able to test it on one). You have to uninstall the drivers, and reinstall the whole shebang. This might be tolerable if the install were clean and simple, but it requires telling Windows, on 3 separate occasions, where to look for drivers. Unacceptable and inappropriate.
I won’t even start on the budget software that’s bundled with it, but I might later because all music related software suffers from explicitly mimicking their real world counterparts.
Verdict: Avoid M-Audio Firewire equipment like the plague.
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