M Audio MobilePre USB Mobile Preamp and Audio Interface

The M Audio MobilePre USB Mobile Preamp and Audio Interface is the cornerstone of many many home studios — and for good reason! It’s super affordable, and the quality and ease-of-use can’t be beat!

Here’s Amazon’s take:

M Audio MobilePre USB Mobile Preamp and Audio Interface

MobilePre USB is the perfect audio interface and preamp for your laptop recording needs. A total of three kinds of audio inputs and outputs provide maximum flexibility for any application – including two on-board microphone/instrument preamps and high-impedance instrument inputs ideal for connecting guitars and basses. MobilePre USB is completely bus-powered so you can take it anywhere you need to record and play music – including field recording and sampling expeditions with your laptop. (Of course, you can use it on the desktop as well.) And unlike many competitors, the zero-latency direct monitoring provides you with an easy and professional recording experience.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Excellent product; Vista users, beware…
Update: Beta drivers are out now on this product for Vista 64 bit, and they work pretty well.

I would have given this product 5 stars, but since switching to a new computer running Vista 64 bit, I have had some problems.

This is an extremely competent interface, and will do exactly what you need it to do. I have had it for over 3 years, and it has worked flawlessly throughout. It’s very simple: install your drivers, plug it in via USB, and you are ready to go. I used it as my mic input, and just as a regular sound card. Because it supports ASIO, I never had a single latency issue with this device, and I run a lot of taxing programs (FL Studio, SONAR, and Reason). It’s very solid and durable as well, almost feels unbreakable at times. I dropped it from over 10 feet, and it still worked perfect.

Now, if you are on Vista 64 bit, and considering this product, please wait. There are no current drivers available. M-Audio will tell you that it’s class compliant, and will work, which is only half true. It will work, but you will have to download a third party program that offers ASIO support, and maybe jump through a few other hoops to get it to work DECENTLY, and not have horrible latency problems. Just keep that in mind.

1 Star If you want something solid – do not buy this!
Bought one of these a while back. on my first system i was running windows xp pro, the drivers then were bad. since then I’ve changed to vista 64 bit operating system. big mistake m-audio has no support what so ever. in their forums they have lied to people that they would have a driver out in a couple of weeks. That was nearly over half a year ago. So their strategy is to say this every three or four weeks just to keep you on the edge of your seat. before you buy this just go to their forum on their website and search for mobilepre usb 64 bit and see for your self. stay clear of this company!

1 Star VISTA Support updated
Update: Looks like they actually came through with the VISTA drivers, which were released on 8/22/2008. Since I returned mine, I would love to hear if you have it working on Vista SP1 or better.

**** Previous review ****

Looked like a decent product, however…. Turns out that the drivers for VISTA are still in Beta after 1 year (last release of the driver is over a year ago). To make matters worse, it is known NOT to work with Vista SP1, as of May 2008. They don’t expect to have a driver update until October. However, since the last driver update is over a year ago, I put the chances of a real driver update at near zero. Too bad, looked like a good product.

Didn’t work on any of my VISTA machines. Sending it back.

2 Stars No supported by Windows XP Media Center
No supported by Windows XP Media Center. I finally found this on the manufacturer web page. Could be nice if the warning is on Amazon so, you don’t waste time ordering and returning

5 Stars great home studio builder
any electronic musician who wants to record some vocals and sequenced music will love all the features of this device. Plus the version of Live is great.

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