# Time to replace my E-mu 0404, with what?



## tonyptony (May 20, 2007)

I haven't been on HT Shack in quite a while, mostly because I've been using REW with my ECM8000 and E-mu 0404 USB without issue. Until now. It loks like the E-mu has died on me. Either I'm not getting any gain out of either mic amplifier, or the 48V phantom power is dead, or something. I can't get any reasonable signal out of it when using the mic level inputs. I know the mic is okay. I've looked around and it seems like the 0404 USB 2.0 is nowhere to be found; many places have it listed as discontinued.

Since it's not clear to me what the future of the E-mu product line is, I decided I didn't want to spend that kind of money to replace it (there's a used one on eBay going for more than I paid for mine when it was new!). I've been looking at the Tascam US-122 MkII, the Presound Firestudio Mobile, and the Focusrite Scartlett 2i2. Looking for recommendations on which has the best performance in terms of mic preamp performance, gain & noise, stability on Win XP & 7x64 Pro platforms... the usual. I have both USB and Firewire interfaces available. Thanks in advance for the help.


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## Phillips (Aug 12, 2011)

tonyptony said:


> I've been looking at the Tascam US-122 MkII, the Presound Firestudio Mobile, and the Focusrire Scartlett 2i2. Looking for recommendations on which has the best performance in terms of mic preamp performance, gain & noise, stability on Win XP & 7x64 Pro platforms... the usual. I have both USB and Firewire interfaces available. Thanks in advance for the help.



You have two options

1. Buy a pre/soundcard
2. Buy a USB mic e.g. Dayton UMM-6 or the MiniDSP UMIK 

With the Pre/Soundcard i would go with the Tascam US-122 MKII, i couldn't get one because this country doesn't import them anymore. The supplier said it was the best preformance for money.

The USB mic keep an eye on the forums for both. REW is supporting these mics and John is developing the program with updates in the future.

If your ECM is calibrated and you have another use for the Pre/Soundcard i would personally go with Tascam.

Hope this helps a bit.


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## tonyptony (May 20, 2007)

Thanks Phillips. Yes, I was looking at the new USB mics but I wasn't sure if they had the same performance characteristics of a Behringer + good mic preamp. But my ECM is also calibrated, so I'm leaning in favor of a new preamp.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

We used to have a Member here with lots of professional experience with measurement hardware who claimed there wasn’t any difference in lower-priced interfaces, as far as use with REW was concerned. You have to get up in the $800 range before you can get something functionally better. (Unfortunately, he never did elaborate on what that “better” would get you in the way of improved REW measurements.)

Any of the interfaces you mentioned will work fine, as long as they’re compatible with your OS – always a good idea to do an internet search to see if there are any problems along those lines before you buy any interface you’re interested in.

That said, lots of folks around here will tell you they’ve had great success with the TASCAM (click back one page and see the “REW Soundcard Database” sticky thread). However, I found out yesterday that the US122L doesn’t play well with Windows 8, at least as far as recording live audio is concerned (there aren’t any upgraded drivers available from TASCAM yet). Not a biggie, ‘cause I’m ditching that boat anchor and upgrading (yes, upgrading) to Windows 7 as fast as I can.

Regards,
Wayne


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## tonyptony (May 20, 2007)

Wayne A. Pflughaupt said:


> We used to have a Member here with lots of professional experience with measurement hardware who claimed there wasn’t any difference in lower-priced interfaces, as far as use with REW was concerned. You have to get up in the $800 range before you can get something functionally better. (Unfortunately, he never did elaborate on what that “better” would get you in the way of improved REW measurements.)


Thanks Wayne. I'll take a look, but I'm not so sure I'm ready to agree just yet. One of the things that actually annoyed me with the E-mu was its frequency response non-linearity with gain. I measured it several times, and found the upper frequencies would drop off faster and faster as the mic gain was increased (using the ECM mic). This was well before clipping, BTW. I was hoping there was something out there which had a more reliably flat frequency response over the range of usable gain provided with the preamp.


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## Barleywater (Dec 11, 2011)

Your gain expectations are unreasonable.

I own this too, wonderful unit. Resale price tells a lot.









Above are loopback measurements with varying microphone gain settings. At 12 o'clock with 22dB gain, virtually no increased roll off. With 44dB gain at 2 o'clock about -1db at 20kHz. Well before this you are just dialing up self noise of ECM8000.

If you need this much gain for measurement, you signal is just too low.

Regards,

Andrew


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## tonyptony (May 20, 2007)

Hmm, well in this case there must have been something wrong with my 0404 from Day 1. I couldn't get the gain during mic use past 10 o'clock without the high frequency dropping by over 2 dB.

This complicates things. Creative will probably charge me more than it's worth to repair it (assuming they even would repair it). I'd like an alternative.


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## Barleywater (Dec 11, 2011)

Unless you can diagnose, replacement is only sane choice in this price class.


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## tonyptony (May 20, 2007)

Well I won't disagree, but with new 0404s nowhere to be found and only one used one on eBay right now (I wouldn't take the risk given what may have happened to mine), isn't there anything else I could consider (as good) in this price range or less?


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

REW Soundcard Database

Regards, 
Wayne


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