Seeking advice on Emagic hardware

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Hello everyone,

a pro might not ask such a question, but I hope someone here is kind
enough to answer it :-)

I'm considering to purchase an Emagic EMI A2|6 USB audio card, mainly
for DJ use.
Now Apple has discontinued all Emagic hardware, so I wonder, what are
the implications for the owners of such hardware? (Erm, is this a very
dumb question?)

What about future driver support (ordered by priority: MacOS, Linux, MS
Windows)?
Several sources indicate the EMI doesn't really require a specific
driver, but can be used with the standard USB audio driver the operating
system provides [1]. Longhorn drivers aren't very important to me,
and continued Linux support will be ensured by the nature of Linux'
development model, I guess. :-)
Your comments?

Other possible problems I'm missing?

Thanks,
Nikolaus


[1] At least after the firmware has been loaded into the EMI, see e.g.
<http://lists.apple.com/archives/coreaudio-api/2002/May/msg00081.html>

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Hi!

hank alrich <walkinay@thegrid.net> wrote:
> Nikolaus Schulz <microschulz@web.de> wrote:
>
>> I'm considering to purchase an Emagic EMI A2|6 USB audio card, mainly
>> for DJ use.
>
> What about that card interests you? Are you running Emagic software?

No special requirements, it just should be a USB device of good quality.
And I've to deal with a limited budget. :-(
Some competent guy once strongly recommended the EMI to me, but those
days I wasn't able/willing to spend about 350 EUR for such a thing.
I've checked back now, and the price has dropped considerably; so I
wondered why.

>> Now Apple has discontinued all Emagic hardware, so I wonder, what are
>> the implications for the owners of such hardware? (Erm, is this a very
>> dumb question?)

<snip>

>> What about future driver support (ordered by priority: MacOS, Linux, MS
>> Windows)?
>
> AFAIK, Apple will not be updating Widnows drivers for Emagic hardware.

Yes, this is, erm, unlikely. AFAIK they even discontinued Emagic
Software for Windows. The questions remains, what does that mean? I
know close to nothing about USB audio, but it seems that at least in
theory such devices require no special driver, as long as they comply to
the USB audio standards.

> Not sure I'd recommend buying into that hardware unless you found
> something really compelling with it.

Well I'm not sure either. :-)
Thanks for sharing your opinion, though.

Nikolaus