aardvark Q10 worth it?

[breaktheground]

how is the sound card? is it better than a sound blaster audigy?

how are the preamps?

if anyone has one or know of someone that does let me know how its working out for them, i am about to dump nearly 1,000$ dollars into one and want to make sure this is worth it. i will use this for live rock/punk/metal recording. it is between the aardvark and the motu 896.

please help!

[1eyedbitch]

it's better than a sound blaster!!!
that's for sure.
it's an audio card, not a sound blaster, if you want to record audio and work with VST instruments so you'll probably notice a hugh difference between an audio card (any audio card) to a sound blaster.
about the MOTU, well if you're using a PC, get awat from them. they were made initialy for MAC, and their PC support is really bad (the hardware is incompatible and the technical support guys are useless when it comes down to PC's).
about AARDVARK they're known for they're XP drivers issue, and for they're great hardware. i just bought the DP24/96 a few weeks ago, fully aware of teh drivers issue, and to tell you the truth it's not that big of a deal (the drivers for the XP are not great but they work), in my opinion AARDVARK gives good return for the money.
in this price range you can also consider RME (which suppose to be very good) or EGO-SYS's wami-rack series. besides that i think the rest of the cards in the market in this price range can't compete with the Q10.
most important - you have to decide what you need from the sound card. the Q10 gives you most of the options a home studio need: 8 analog I/O, pre-amps with phantom power, digital I/O, headphones output, midi I/O, DSP effects (although they're pretty useless). if you don't need few of this options then you should consider a different card with less options and that way you could either save some money or get even better quality.

good luck

[Robertibi1]

I bought the Q10 a few months ago running Cubase SX and WinXP. I timed this 'perfect' <grin> to be on the leading edge of Q10 drivers for XP and the new release of Cubase SX. I did have problems with the Q10 but now I am satisfied with what I have at the moment. I expect better drivers, etc. but I can certainly do what I need to at the present. For me, there was no other choice except the Q10. I play acoustic & electric guitar, all my MIDI gear is analog so the Q10 was a perfect match.

You did not mentioned the guitar Z inputs, those are good also.

[breaktheground]

in 3 year old terms, drivers are??

[Robertibi1]

A driver, basically, is software that allows hardware to interface or communicate with the OS. Hence, a different video driver for your video card for each OS. Get it? Hope this helps.

[Boom]

I personally would buy something else. Aardvark's drivers are flaky and there's alot of problems for some people. My Aark works pretty well on my old PIII, but sometimes I wish I had bought an RME or an Echo instead. Problems seem more common on newer systems. The preamps are very good BTW.

[This message has been edited by Boom (edited 11-18-2002).]

[Gato]

I'm pretty happy with my Q10. The mic preamps are pretty good and accept both xlr and 1/4" inputs. 96khz/24bit resolution. Comes with full version of Cakewalk 9 Pro Audio which you can upgrade to Sonar 2.0 for $99. Been happy with the recordings.

[Stereo]

I am very happy with my Aardvark ProQ10. It sounds great and it is very stable in my pc running XP and Cubase SX. I am glad I choose aardvark pro Q10.

[joemix]

What mainboards do you guys with working Q10s have?

[gotoluc]

Hi, I'm new to this forum. I own a Q10 for over a year now and it works for me on my abit KG-7 *Lite *No Raid controller, Athlon T-Bird 1.4, 512 Ram with Windows XP. I did try it at first in many PCI slots before I found the one it worked best in (2nd form AGP). My bus efficiency is always at 100%, even when I start-up Cubase SX or play a 8 channel production it never goes down. I was thinking of upgrading my mobo and processor but maybe I have the best combination? I do have one thing that I don't understand is why I have a kind of jet engine noise when I select 88.2 or 96Khz, it's not there at 48Khz or lower. If anyone can help me with this it would be great.

[E]

The noise at 96k is a hardware problem with some of the Q10 units. Apparently there were some early Q10s that need to be modified to do the 96K.

Contact Aardvark and they will fix your unit for you, however there might be a small charge. It cost me $40 to get mine fixed, but it works great now, sounds incredible and was worth the cost of the upgrade.

E

[k_munchie]

Q10 is rock solid @ 96Khz on my Dell Dimension 4400 P4 1.6G 640M RAM running XP SP1.