Customer Reviews

M-Audio MobilePre USB Mobile Preamp and Audio Interface

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The MobilePre USB has been a fantastic performer in my home studio for some months now. No latency issues when recording Mic (XLR or 1/4") or Guitar. Clean output for my Alesis monitors and Sennheiser headphones. I've had no driver issues, no unexpected noise, nor latency setting problems - but...I do have a newer PowerMAC Dual G5.

Whether working in GarageBand, Logic 7, or Reason 3 with Native Instruments' "Guitar Rig", or just using it to play back my collection via iTunes, it's been a joy.

However, I also tested it on an older G4 500 iMac and I witnessed what others are complaining about. So, if you have a dinosaur CPU, you may want to look into a soundcard rather than the MobilePre USB (or other USB sound interface). Or better still, it may be time to update your computer :).

This is a great value as it can power a condenser mic as well as being a recording interface.

Two gripes:
First, as another reviewer pointed out, this unit is a little more noisy than advertised, with a noise floor of about -75db in my testing. This is fine for demos, but not for recording anything for a major release.

Second, there seems to be some bleed-over from one channel to the other, which is fine if you're recording one channel at a time, or using both for stereo recording, but don't expect a pure channel of drums and a pure channel of guitar.


However, for the money, this is a good unit, especially with its portability and preamp.

I was looking for a device that would allow me to use my professional XLR mics to record voiceovers on my PC and MAC machines. This device allows the recording of professional sounding audio without high-end studio equipment. I am extremely satisfied with this product.

I bought this recently after the release of Garage Band for OS X. I'm going to share some information that is negative but I am overall happy with the features of this product, with the OS X support, and would recommend it for purchase. The features that I was looking were analog instrument input and the XLR microphone input, along with the best price I could find. I might get into home recording, but I didn't want to spend a ton of money until I was sure I would stick with it.

First off the information in the M-Audio web site lists that the box is able to sample up to 24bit/96kHz. It isn't a big deal to me yet, but I haven't figured out how to change the sample rate. This may be a function of the application but I can't figure out how to change it.

The second issue I had was with drivers. When I got the unit I downloaded the latest drivers 1.5.8 off their website that were supposed to be for use with OS X 10.3 (Panther). I was never able to get anything but squealing out of my machine with those drivers -but the 1.5.8 drivers worked fine on my PowerBook. Out of desparation I installed the drivers 1.5.1 off the CD that came with the MobilePre and the squealing went away. While I am happy that I can record on my desktop I wonder why I have to back down on the driver version.

The third thing is that there is sometimes some sort of latency issue with the unit. Sometimes as I play and switch settings in Garage Band, there will start to be some lag before what I play comes out of the computer. It makes it pretty impossible to play. Strangely when you open up System Preferences and change the "Latency" setting the lag goes away. It doesn't really matter what you change the latency to, it goes away just with changing.

I have not used the unit for USB audio output so I can't comment on that feature. Using the headphones in the MobilePre's monitor port would be useful if you were using the USB audio output, but for recording I find that listening to my unprocessed guitar signal is not all that useful.

I bought this hardware expecting to just make some nice tracks of myself...maybe for a demo. Some of the reviews had some negative things to say so I was very skeptical. I just expected it to be OK, but I must admit I was extremely surprised. First off, I think the software and kind of mic you use are most important when it comes to the mobilepre. The software it came with is very inadequate. I'm using CoolEditPro along with a Shure Beta58 mic, and the sound is phenomenal for personal PC recording. For the price you pay, I think this is an INCREDIBLE deal for beginner recording equipment. The sound you get is by no means studio quality, but you get 85% of studio power for 15% the price of studio equipment. Bottom line, it's great for anyone looking for simple starting pc recording hardware. A Great value.

If you want a sample of what I've recorded with the mobilepre, feel free to email me and I'll send you a sample of one of my recordings.

This item is perfect. it does what the manual says it does. I opened this box about two hours ago and I can't stop recording music with it. I installed the drivers, plugged it and it worked. I didn't have to do any configuration changes except for changing the input settings on Garageband. Sound is clear and I didn't have any flow in the sound or recording. I was able to record two instruments at the same time guitar and vocals. Preamp works a lot better than I expected. I would give it a 5 out 5. I recommend this item to anyone. I tried other items such as Tascam US-224 (good luck if you can make this thing work) and Tascam 788. A mac and this item is everything you need to start recording your own tracks. Also, they don't make it in blue color anymore like shown on the picture above. The new color is metallic gray with a black front. It matches the color of my Macbook Pro. Check out the new Mac Laptops they start at $1100 or the Mac Mini at $700. They both very powerful, but if you can afford a Macbook Pro buy one. You can't go wrong with a Mac it does more than windows base computers. You can also install windows if you like. but after using Mac OS X, you can't go back to windows.
Macbook Pro, Mac OS X 10.4.7
1.8 GHz, Dual Core Intel
I Gig Memory
Garage Band

Thsi device is only 16 bit, but I was able to record in 24 bit 48 sample rate with fooling with the settings on my recording software. Before, tweaking the software...I would get really high latency while recording, but the pres on this aren't bad at all. If you're not lazy and don't mind tweaking stuff a bit, it's a pretty cost efficient piece of equipment. But it's definitely not for lazy people that don't want to take no more than a minute to get stuff to soundultra clear. I've definitely gotten some professional sounding stuff with this one, and I have an ultra critical ear, it definitely does what it's supposed to. Make sure you have an up to par system though because it is usb powered. if not, you might want to try for the presonus firebox...which is firewire based and I definitely recommend it as well.

The MobilePre has been around for a while now - note that the photo shown here is outdated, the unit is now black and grey rather than blue/white. While this unit may not be the absolute latest and greatest audio interface on the market it has pretty solid support and history. I got mine about 8 months ago for ~$60 (i think there might have been a pricing mistake!).

Works well with Windows 7 32 and 64 bit OS. My only minor gripe is that the minimum number of samples is 128, which makes for roughly a 7 ms total latency. The built-in soundcard on my HP laptop works down to 64 samples (32 using Jack in Linux), BUT cannot touch the sound of the MobilePre. Note - using Reaper permits using a WDM Kernel Streaming driver instead of ASIO, which allows a little better latency. Still, sound travels roughly 1 foot each millisecond, so the total latency is like have an amp about 7 feet away, which is barely noticable.

Solidly built, great for guitar. The preamp section when using a dynamic mic is a bit noisy though.

Would recommend to a friend.

Update: Beta drivers are out now on this product for Vista 64 bit, and they work pretty well.


I would have given this product 5 stars, but since switching to a new computer running Vista 64 bit, I have had some problems.

This is an extremely competent interface, and will do exactly what you need it to do. I have had it for over 3 years, and it has worked flawlessly throughout. It's very simple: install your drivers, plug it in via USB, and you are ready to go. I used it as my mic input, and just as a regular sound card. Because it supports ASIO, I never had a single latency issue with this device, and I run a lot of taxing programs (FL Studio, SONAR, and Reason). It's very solid and durable as well, almost feels unbreakable at times. I dropped it from over 10 feet, and it still worked perfect.

Now, if you are on Vista 64 bit, and considering this product, please wait. There are no current drivers available. M-Audio will tell you that it's class compliant, and will work, which is only half true. It will work, but you will have to download a third party program that offers ASIO support, and maybe jump through a few other hoops to get it to work DECENTLY, and not have horrible latency problems. Just keep that in mind.

works awsome for what I need it to do. Being USB powered lets me do things with it I wouldnt be able to do with other mic preamps or external sound devices