hay guys I needed an opinion so I came to the pro's. in about a week I going to get some cash and I can't seem to make up my mind on what to get with it.
I got the I mac I got pro tool m-powered 8 a fast track pro interface a couple of low grade monitors an I need both the upgrade and the control surface but I can't make up my mind.
so with you guys knowledge can you please give some feedback thanks guys.

 

I love my M-Audio Project I/O Mixer, but I'm gonna tell you right now even though its made by M-Audio its not fully compatable with Pro-Tools. Meaning half of the buttons won't work. Which is stupid because in almost any other DAW you just set it to the makie general midi controller and everything will work.

And as far as I know there is nothing you can do to make all buttons work in Pro tools.

Also just a note you may have to buy a special Firewire card for Project I/O also. My desktop has built in Firewire but it didn't work and I had to order a special Texas Instruments Firewire PCI card for it to work.

Other than that there are a few bugs for Win7 but since your running mac I don't know if any would apply to you.

But yeah completely love my Project I/O. Great sound, Great control, and recording live instruments has never been easier. I don't even use my guitar amp at home anymore I just plug in and use a vst amp sim.

 

is mackie hui any good

 

Well it's just the "generic" midi controller settings, but eveything works. All the faders, everything on the screen, the wheel, etc. Using Pro Tools HUI you can't even use the rewind buttons and last I remembered the play/stop didn't work nor half of the buttons around it.

Here's the funny thing I forgot to mention. To get the I/O to work in the makie setting it has to be set to cubase mode on the Project I/0 or it wont read. However I have NEVER gotten it to actually work in Cubase. It shows up, it says its working and NOTHING. But yeah, it was really quite annoying.

 

Also I wanted to note that This test was done in Pro Tools 8 M-Powered also. So I don't know if they've fixed it but I doubt it seeing how long it takes M-Audio to come out with drivers for Project Mix I/0. It took them about a year to originally release x64 drivers that worked.

 

I see originall MACKIE HUI's pop up everywhere. Those were built to last.

 

Very bad solution you go for...!
Now even with Texas Instruments Chips you have to deal with slower PCI transfer speed.
The transfer of a motherboard integrated firewire is much faster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394

I use a ASUS motherboard and I made sure it has integrated firewire.
Mine works fine...
I have a M-Audio Firebox 610.
Never had better and faster sound card connection...

To choose the right motherboard is the key here.
I only use ASUS since 10 years
and never had a bad one.

 

What do you mean "half of the buttons won't work"? So, that applies to Pro Tools M-Powered 8, right? Because with Pro Tools 9, the whole Control Surface works, except for the Master Fader. I've been using the I/O with Pro Tools 9 and now with Pro Tools 10 and it works flawless. Another DAW that works well with the I/O is Ableton Live, it's almost as if the board was made for Live.

k-chuco14, you can also look into the Alesis MasterControl Firewire and if Pro Tools is all you gonna work with then try getting the Digidesign Command 8 Control Surface on the cheap on eBay or anywhere they have them with discount.

 

Yeah, I've only tried it in Pro Tools M-Powered 8. I had an altercation with Digidesign after we lost a iLok key and they wanted to charge us $200 for a new one... Basically I told digidesign to F off and I'd never use their products again. So it may work with later Pro Tools that I don't know. I use the I/O mostly with FL Studio and Reaper where everything works flawlessly even the master fader.

 

As for the firewire card. As I said I had on board firewire also but it didn't work. Wouldn't even recignize the I/O. When I went online [mind you this was 6+ years ago when I got mine] it was said that the card I ended up getting was the best out for it. That may have been opinion or just an "at the time" type of thing.

As for speed though I haven't found any problems with speed on anything and I always have all my settings up so I dunno.

But the sound from the Project Mix I/O is great. I have rather high end monitors and mastering headphones and the difference in the sound from the I/O and other UAD's is just huge.

Point is I'd suggest getting one. The only downside to this control Surface is figuring out how to get it working correctly for you. There isn't a whole lot of info out there on it but once its working right it does EVERYTHING. The only thing I need besides it is hardware for pitch mod, which probably could be done with the spin wheel on the I/O with some tweaking.