Some preliminary bench tests showed
UN-balanced 1/4" plagued with extreme noise, so this mode is useless, and likely NOT firmware fixable. I held off releasing the graphic showing unbalanced mode noise as I thought maybe just a defective deck, but NOT, as a customer emailed with same result so this is a definite production design fault of the MT2.
Also 88.2K mode has wrong filter setting as the frequency bandwidth rolls off at 21.5K Hz. 96K mode seems to work with bandwidth out to 44.5K Hz.
Also others including myself have experienced deck lockup. My experience is with first turn on all buttons were non functional, until reboot cleared the trouble and the deck operated as expected.
UN-balanced 1/4" input with external preamplifier has ~3 dB higher noise, but otherwise identical to balanced noise graphic.
I have yet to update to latest firmware, that might fix the 88.2K mode and lockup problems, but seems destined to NOT fix the input noise issues with this deck.
It does seem M-audio has shipped us another UNTESTED deck with a multitude of shortcomings that should never have made it to production and shipped out to customers.
WAY TO GO M-AUDIO! I am a half step away from returning MT2 as fatally defective.
OK, I updated the to 1.0.1 firmware with
NO CHANGE in faulty 88.2K bandwidth, or unbalanced input noise issues. Filed a customer report with the noise graph attached to M-audio on-line support, and now waiting for a reply
before I return for refund the MT2 deck.
While the MT2 has faster bootup/button response, and easier input gain control with continuous rather than 'stepped' gain settings over MT1 version, at least for what I feel is important for analog input uses, I'm definitely holding on more tightly to my 'trusty' MT1 for the time being as I can see NO significant MT2 recording quality refinements or performance gains worth keeping over MT1 version, especially considering the MT2's input noise.