m audio quattro and cubase/pro tools free, did i buy a pig in a blanket? Options

[gorillacake]

I just bought the m-audio quattro usb interface and I'm wondering, Uh, did I just buy a piece of crap? I've been hearing a lot of negative stuff but I got it for a good deal and i wanted something that had 1/4' and midi input so...
also, I was thinking about getting cubase but I'm wondering if I should just use pro tools free for now since I'm a beginner and my needs are pretty basic. My question is, will the m-audio quattro work with pro tools free? I should note that I have not received the quattro yet. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

hi

indeed, you have bought a piece of crap
the quattro has made me quite miserable and unproductive
i hope you have more luck/patience

i don't think PT free uses asio
if it does then it's ok, if it doesn't then you can't input audio, because the soundmanager doesn't seem to work with the quattro. or more likely the opposite.

the good news is that i've been able to use the MIDI in and 2 audio in/out at the same time, contrary to what people say.

[lepetitmartien]

[better here ]

PT uses the sound manager for hardware not digidesign…

So if you need the sound manager and that the quattro doesn't like it (no personal experience but the horrors associated with this card are gore movies as seen on the forums here) you're in bad luck rigth now…

How can a card have so bad drivers that it doesn't even support the Sound Manager. >

THE BASICS!

I'm beginnig to think that the Quattro buyers should make a protest of some sort.

[gorillacake]

Hey thanks for your responses guys. Yes the drivers have given me problems right out of the box. I installed OMS and then the drivers but got an error. I was told installation could not be completed due to a volume lock? Does anyone know what this means? Even though the installation failed, the asio drivers still appeared on the desktop but when I tried to set up my casio as a midi controller for reason, the computer locked up. I'm using OS 9.2. Hey newenham, any advice on getting the midi going?

[lepetitmartien]

Volume lock ?

Are you trying to install on a cd?

if you're installing from a CD copy the installer on your hard drive

Else at least ONE guy here has a quattro working! (I won't disclosed his name)

tadaa!

[gorillacake]

Muchos gracias lepetitemartien. I copied the file onto the hard drive and it worked. So far so good with the quatto. I've only used it as a midi interface for reason but it seems O.K. There's hardly any latency. Maybe the quattro isn't that bad afterall?

[lepetitmartien]

maybe…

[olo23]

i'm running a quattro with nuendo and reason both happy as hell with it. In fact, i am surprised by the amount of negative experiences with it on this board, since from the day i unboxed it it's worked.

mind you i will aknowledge that the soundmanager can't see it, but then i never use the sound manager to send out the audio i'm working on, so it's not an issue (i save those crappy D/A's for the error beeps ;-)

Anyway, just saying that more than one person here has a quattro going, and it's a dream to have reason slaved to nuendo, streaming back multitracked audio while I play on the controller, all with little or no midi device/channel ID assigning ugliness.

[gorillacake]

Hey Olo, that's good news. I'm new to digital recording maybe you could help me out. I have the quattro and reason working fine but now i'm trying to work cubase into the mix. I can record midi into cubase no problem but I can't get the digital audio at all. I'm micing my guitar amp, that then goes into an art tube pre amp, then into the quattro input. How do I configure the asio for cubase. the quattro asio drivers are in the reason asio folder. how do I get them into the cubase asio folder. and where does the sound manager fit into all this. I'm confused.

[olo23]

i don't know cubase, but luckily nuendo it so closely related i don't think they'd ever be able to marry each other, or have sex without producing children who play banjo. So I'll tell you how i'd troubleshoot this in nuendo and hopefully you can see some parallels in cubase.

first of all you get the quattro asio driver into the cubase asio folder just by copying it (or making an alias to the one in the reason folder). that's it. after that midi and audio will be happy to use the quattro in cubase.

next, look for a 'devices' menu item in cubase, and in there choose 'device setup'. in device setup go to the VST multitrack, where it will allow you to juggle output drivers. pup down the menu and it should now see your quattro asio driver (since you put it in cubase's folder).

Next, go back to the devices menu and in it you will likely see an item that says 'reason', select it, and it brings up a big list of channels, activate the ones you want (usually just 1&2/L&R unless you're bypassing the mixer in reason and using the mixing in cubase/nuendo (which i recommend further down the line).

Now you should be able to make a midi track in cubase, assign it to input from your controller, and output to something in reason, tickle the ivories and have reason react.

Now that the quattro is in the cubase asio folder you should also be able to drag in some audio files and have it play them back all shiny and happy.

As for where the sound manager comes into this, it doesn't really. it does if you don't have a quattro / D/A interface, as you would need to send reason and cubase out the built in sound manager to hear anything. However sqitching to use the quattro you also ease up load on the mac, so you'll likely notice significant processing and speed improvements once using the quattro.

another bonus of seperation between the quattro and sound manager is that you can route the quattro to one stereo strip on your mixer, and the regular mac sound out to another, crank up the quattro while you work and not have to worry about an apple error message, or mail recieved tone, jumping out at high volume and giving your heart a shake.

hope this helps, your mileage may vary.