These tests of the Tracker Pre and 0204 caught my interest, but the horror stories I've read on E-MU's "support" for their products made me wary. The fact that the first page of their website still advertises beta drivers for ... Snow Leopard ... didn't help! I filled their contact form and asked a few questions. Here we go:

Me:
E-MU:
Me:
E-MU:
Me:
E-MU:

If they're not coming out with any more products, that's good news as far as I'm concerned. I had an EMU 0404 USB crap out on me during a live performance. Its replacement, an EMU Tracker Pre, developed a problem which affected recording. Fortunately the problem was discovered ahead of time and another product from a different manufacturer took its place.

No more EMU products for me, thank you. My advice: don't even bother with EMU. Find a company which manufactures gear which won't eventually conk out on you.

+1 for me sadly

Nice and clean sounding preamps but one of the crapped out on me after a few months.
Plus no official Win 7 64bit drivers for 0404usb.

Graham

EMU Support is not the greatist but you can get great unofficial support from these guys:
Multimedia Production Forums - View forum - E-MU

It's really like an official EMU board, everything you need there, there a couple EMU guys on there also who are very helpfull, some good guys. It's been used for many years by some to get great support for EMU products. There is also unofficial drivers that can be had.

EMU 1616M is still a monster of a work horse for it's price and has good caps so they wont go (Unlike the 1820m caps that do blow but are easy to replace)

The best interfaces where the 1212m & 1820m and now the much improved 1616m, anything else is not the best from EMU, especially 0404, just pretty standard, and they cant be judge on those petty cards though I understand about the lack of support regarding those products but don't not get a 1616m based on what's being said here, it's a beast of a card, with great drivers and sounds allot better then a delta 1010, comparable to Lynx sound wise....

So right now their best interface by far is the 1616m, and it has great drivers for all operating systems. Though the 1616m is the last of the best from EMU, their future is up in the air and has been for a number of years.

I'm still rocking a 1820m here, and never needed official support, replaced the caps my self from the help of the forums above, and used drivers for win 7 which work like a treat. Id never go back to the likes of a delta 1010 which I owned before as it's just not up the sound quality which the M series EMU converters offer.

I still use the 0404 USB for quick and dirty testing because the problem it developed only affected the output. I can still use it to record. Of course I didn't know this when it gave out during a live performance and I started hearing bad things in my headphones. I thought the recording was ruined! Luckily the recording turned out OK but that's just the kind of thrill I don't need when recording a live performance and there is no opportunity for another take.

The Tracker Pre started putting hash in my recordings and I frankly can't be bothered to troubleshoot it. As I say, the problem surfaced before an upcoming gig, not during. I substituted an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra and it hasn't let me down yet.

I have an EMU 1212m which still works.

Just like the 1616m the 1212m does not have any problems with bad caps so the 1212m should carrying on working for many a year without any problems.

ALL gear can fail.
Doesnt matter who made it.
Some gear will fail right away.

If brand "A" fails after a short period of time and brand "B" goes for a long time without failure, which does it make more sense to buy?

What am saying is there's no known reports if any problems with the 1212m, such as bad caps and whatever else, 1212m is very reliable in that sense and should be for many a year.

you need a class in statistics and reliability models of electrical hardware. your question is metaphysically irrelevant and not worth replying to.

it makes sense to buy the one that has the BEST OVERALL reliability rating -- if it meets your needs. not what one incident of anecdotal evidence would misguide you to doing.

just cause somebody had a failure and bellyaches/badmouths something on the net does not make that produce deficient/defective.

for everyone of them there are >>20x happy users who dont bother to post anything.

Oh, I see. Next time I'll call the Audio Hardware Reliability Bureau to get their official rating. I can also call EMU and ask them point blank, "Are your USB interfaces reliable?" If they answer "yes" then I'm golden. If they say "no, our USB interfaces are not reliable", then I'll avoid them.

Did you get that statistic from the Audio Hardware Reliability Bureau?

Wow. There's just plain irrelevant and there's metaphysically irrelevant. I feel special.

Wow, talk about going back.
This guy Arman doesn't look like he knows what he is talking about.
Bad support is the worst that can happen, especially when there are drivers involved.
Also, I don't understand how can some people recommend the product and then say that they had to replace the caps... I am paying for a working product, not something that I have to spend time and money to make it work reliably.
chris319 I think oldeanalogueguy answer was a little harsh, but what I think he was trying to say is that some products follow a bathtub curve concerning their reliability. That means, that a product has more probability of failure at the start of its useful life and at the end, when the product exceeds its design lifetime. That is why a specific case of one product failing early doesn't mean it's reliability is bad, it can be a perfectly normal occurrence. I have found that review sites where you can find hundred of reviews (like newegg) can give an approximate idea of a product reliability. If you go there and read the reviews you will see that even the best products have had cases of early failures.

Its a shame to see where E-MU and Ensoniq have gone.. what great machines they produced in the past.. and now?

For more information on how E-MU deals with driver issues:

• Problem with E-mu 0204 USB (a product that came out this year)
• My iMac does not recognize the audio interface E-MU Tracker Pre USB 2.0

As said, go to the forum I shown above and youll get far better support.

I've never needed to contact EMU directly, on the forum there's a EMU tech guy who is more helpful then the whole EMU support team put together, and other guys who know EMU gear like the back of their hands.

There's unofficial drivers and everything.

Read my post. Two products in a row -- the 0404 USB and the Tracker Pre -- both went south early on. It doesn't make sense to take the risk of going with another EMU product when there are alternatives which perform just as well.

Best .sig ever!

I like this one better!

I had my 1212m working just fine under win7 home premium 32 and 64 bit.

host was reaper and as far as I know that computer is still working with both the emu card AND the new owners SW1000, which I suspect is far more amazing than the emu card working!

Only sold it because I no longer had room in the studio once my double bass came home from an extended loan. also lost 2 monitors in the process, so I do have a little extra elbow room above shoulder height, at least.

All I need now is for someone to buy my zimmer rack so I can shrink down to the last remaining eight U of outboard I still have - then I could lose the Ikea Jerker desk as well!

Could soon be down to small but perfectly formed at last.

Studio too small? Shrink the gear!

My 1820 worked with W7 64, but the I/Os were random. Listed 16 each in Sonar, but they were never the same twice. One time 1L on the dock would be ASIO Out 3L, next time 15 or 17.

Installed an Echo A4 yesterday. All the I/Os are there, and they are all right. Took me less time to instal a whole new interface and get a session up than it had been taking just to find the damned hot outputs.

I'm keeping the 0404 USB cuz it works just fine with the laptop, but I'm done with what's left of E-MU otherwise.

Again, it doesn't necessarily mean that is a statistically relevant event. Read a little about reliability engineering.

bad luck , bad logic, and bad statistics. your alternatives will be as likely to fail too unless you have a lot of valid random data samples on both emu and the other company.

indeed you said it better now can you tell the kids to keep off my lawn. many many sites have reviews. i guess that was too hard for the OP to deduce wrt getting reliability info. you can get real good ideas of quality and problems. read the 1 star reviews. if they bellyache about delivery time ignore them. if they have solid complaints consider if they matter to you.

thanks.

or check on all the reviews on many sites to see what the experience is.
89.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot
you *are* special.
you are good enough, smart enough, and doggone it,
people like you.

Me too 1212m working fine in Windows 7 ultimate non official drivers though,but very stable!

still love emulator X3 the best hardware sounding softwaresampler imo.....

Sent from my PC36100 using Gearslutz.com App

I went there. Even posted there. Have you seen the solution to the "it doesn't work with 64-bit OS X"? You have to reboot your Mac in 32-bit mode. So you've got to affect everything else on your Mac just to be able to use their USB interface. Does that sound reasonable to you?

To be fair, OSX 64-bit support is still not all that widespread, so E-Mu is hardly unique there. In fact, I'm surprised their products work with Macs at all; for the longest time they were Windows-only (in keeping with their parent company Creative's tradition).

And although you haven't badmouthed anyone or anything, your posts are tendentious in nature.

You're confused, I believe. I hadn't said a single bad thing about "this other website" and, as for E-MU, I openly criticized their poor support for their (otherwise very good) products -- in that respect, it's possible to call my posts querulous, but certainly not tendentious.

I have a 1616 here and an 1820M, never had a problem with either of them