Ben46721

Overall Rating
 1 of 5

Value Rating
 2 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Visitors rate this review
5.00 of 5, 2.00 votes

Price Paid:  $110.00 from ebay

Summary:
I brought the M-Audio Audiophile USB primarily to listen to music on my notebook. It's connected to a headphone amp, then headphones.
Sound quality for listening purposes is very good (when it works, see below), haven't used the Recording and MIDI capabilities at all, so I can't comment on that.

I'm currently only using line out connected to a separeate headphone amp, but the build in headphone amp is pretty decent as well. (Tested using Sennheiser HD 600 and Bayerdynamic DT 770).

Unfortunately the Windows drivers are terrible. They don't seem to support CPUs with Speedstep (i.e. any and all modern CPUs and pretty much all Notebook CPUs). I get regular driver crashes that require me to turn off the Audiophile USB and turn it back on again. The latest driver acknowledged a problem with speed step cpus and is supposed to fix it. However the only difference for me is, that whenever the driver crashes, I don't have to cycle the device, it's enough to turn off all software using it for playback (e.g. restart the audio player).

There are no drivers available at all for Vista x64 (over a year after Vista went RTM!) A lot of the M-Audio devices still don't even have Vista 32bit drivers, so I doubt there will be working Vista 64 drivers out any time soon.

So If you think about buying the M-Audio Audiophile USB, I recommend you buy it somewhere you can return it to, in case you experience similar problems.

Strengths:
- good audio quality
- I think it's one of the cheaper usb cards that have decent sound quality

Weaknesses:
- bad drivers
- constant crashes with notebook cpu
- no Windows Vista 64bit support at all (device doesn't work at all)

royphil345

Overall Rating
 3 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
3.67 of 5, 3.00 votes

Price Paid:  $120.00 from Sam Ash

Summary:
I bought it to replace an Audigy 2 on a second computer I have hooked up to my home theater. I use the computer mostly to stream audio and video files via wireless network from another computer. Was hoping mostly for better music playback quality and better digital transfers from vinyl.

Recordings from vinyl sound MUCH better now. Recording levels are a bit lower than I got using the Audigy 2. I'm betting the Audigy 2 boosted them digitally anyway... Resolution, smoothness, and tonal balance are all better in the recordings made by the M-Audio Audiophile USB, even with the reduced recording levels. Setting the levels is easy enough. The max setting on most recording software seems to be "flat", or just the original signal strength, not reduced or boosted.

Playback from the Audiophile sounds fantastic. I can see how it got it's name. I know I'll be listening to more music from my computer library now. The Audigy 2 just never sounded good enough for me to bother much with it. Even some bad 128 kbps MP3s I ended up with sound listenable now, not edgy at least. They sounded extremely horrible using my old card.

There aren't too many settings to make things difficult. The little booklet explains them all very well. Installation went smoothly in XP Pro.


THE BAD STUFF...

Well... It's a USB card.

I use a USB wireless keyboard and other USB devices that probably use up some shared resources. Most of the files I view / listen to are streamed by wireless network which may increase demands on the card.

The only way I can get it to play without occasional clicks and pops is to adjust the latency all the way up and only have 1 input or output selected at a time. The computer is a P4 with 1GB of memory and runs great otherwise... This device probably wouldn't work well with a slower computer. I see the price is coming way down on this. I'm guessing it's not uncommon to have problems with clicks and dropouts. One of the reviews here mentions the problem.

Having to adjust the latency so high, and not being able to use multiple inputs and outputs at once would make this thing pretty useless for any kind of multi-track recording / music creation. I would strongly recommend one of the firewire or internal versions if that's your goal. I was hoping to dabble a bit... Doesn't look good... Although, most pro recording software uses ASIO drivers which are supposed to allow lower latency... and I wouldn't be working over a wireless network... Still, A HUGE improvement would have to be seen using the ASIO drivers to make this thing useful in music creation, particularly for monitoring while adding another track... I don't know if I see it happening...

Strengths:
Great sound!!! Great digital recordings!!! Price...

Weaknesses:
Slow USB interface. Don't think you could use multiple inputs and outputs at once with low latency as suggested by the product description.

If you have a decent computer and your USB ports aren't too loaded down... You should be able to get good, reliable, great sounding stereo playback OR recording... and thats about it...

Similar Products Used:
Audigy 2 Value... Lots features... bad sound for main home theater...

jdawgshox

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
3.50 of 5, 8.00 votes

Price Paid:  $140.00 from Guitar Center

Summary:
I very recently purchased the M-Audio Audiophile external sound card (USB). Got a great deal on it being the last one in the store. MSRP is over $200! For some reason the manufacturer's driver CD was not in the box; not a problem. Fortunately, M-Audio's website has all of their products' drivers available for download on their website. This was definately a plus, and I was up and running in no time. The device isn't entirely plug and play. On my mac running OS X 10.3.7, I did have to go into the control panel after installing the drivers and change the default audio inputs/outputs to run off the audiophile. At first listen, you may hear some clipping, cracks, pops, in the music etc. This most likely will be the result of your source's (computer, analog input, midi input) output volume being excessively high. Not to worry. Turn your source down and crank the audiophile up. The thing has plenty of juice to take a low power source and play it clearly at high volumes. In order to take advantage of the M-audio audiophiles full capabilities you will most likely have to purchase some quality recording and mixing software which I have yet to purchase. I am still looking into the products supposed Dolby Digital/DTS capabilities and will probably end up eventually getting a surround receiver to hook up to this bad boy. Anywho, it's going to take a lot of money until I finally realize the product's potential, but I have a feeling it is well worth it. Happy listening!

Strengths:
Plenty of interconnectivity options. Powerful headphone amp.

Weaknesses:
None so far.

ericl

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
3 Months to 1 year

Visitors rate this review
4.36 of 5, 14.00 votes

Price Paid:  $160.00 from ebay

Summary:
This is a very nice external sound card. It's DAC section sounds great, it has a very good headphone output, and plenty of connectivity options (digital & analog i/o, headphone, midi) making it very flexible. Another nice feature is that it uses an separate power supply than your computer, keeping the PC's noisy power out of the DAC. It also has its own volume control. I use it mainly for playback to my bedroom system, which consists of a Marantz 2240b receiver and Sound Dynamics RTS-3 speakers. On the computer side, I am using iTunes with Apple lossless encoding. I have a 15ft analog interconnects running from the sound card to the stereo. The sound is smooth and rich. With this computer/external sound card setup I am getting some of the best sound I've ever had although its hard to compare to my vinyl setup. Definitely giving it a run for its money. I am very satisfied with this product.

Strengths:
-Great sound -Many connectivity options -Great headphone output -Inexpensive compared to typical audiophile DACs -External power supply

Weaknesses:
-Occasional track skipping. I know it is not the music file itself, so it must be something with the dac. I'm guessing/hoping I can fix it with a little research.

Similar Products Used:
-msb link dac -denon cd player -budget pioneer and toshiba dvdp -linn, music hall and thorens turntables