Fed Up With Firewire 410, What's a reliable alternative for a Powerbook? Options

[stimpy]

The 410 has never really worked. Every driver has some kind of issue. Hanging MIDI notes; Loss of audio monitoring, being just the most recent things. It's well spec'd, but doesn't deliver. They've had long enough to get it right..

I need something with solid dependability, low latency and the usual. I'll move away from Cubase and Garageband and get a new DAW.

WHAT'S GOOD?

MBox 2 Pro? At least it'd come with a good DAW..
or
MOTU UltraLite? and maybe get Logic Express or something?..

[lepetitmartien]

Logic express may be a better idea then, more possibilities out of the box, and you can learn enough before jumping to the pro version (possibilities gallore). The MIDI side of Logic can't be beaten. Now, I have no first hand experience of mixed audio and MIDI interface. We need some input there anyway.

One MIDI port is enough or not? (talking about either out or In/out couple)

Presonus makes really great interfaces, you should check them out too. For MIDI only interfaces, MOTU can't be beaten. For the audio and mixed ones, it's more open (Presonus, RME, MOTU are serious guys).

The Digidesign route should be taken if you plan mainly to process audio where it's very very straightforward. plus PT sessions are a bit of a standard (as Logic projects) if it's important. Its MIDI side is fine but not as deep as Logic (and I mean deep). Now, envisioning PT means at least one piece of Digi hardware, you can still complement with something else. There's a real choice of work philosophy between the different DAW so I think the first thing to decide is which one?