Nick, did you ever get the rig stable at 24/96? maybe try a scandisk or defrag or your hard drive So how's the mic pre's or the FA-101?
I've only used it once in the field, 24/96...and it was *close* but no cigar.
My laptop needs to be tweaked, and rebuilt likely. It was a fresh install of XP when I used it, no service pack. I didnt leave enough room on C:\ to install it (d'uh!) as I tried to keep it lean so that I could have more space for the audio partition. Small HDD, 12gb. Gatta do what you can. so any way, it was not a fragged hdd or anything like that. Freshly scrubbed, in fact.
As for the mic pres, Edirol will not divulge what is different from the UA5, but they claim that it is indeed different.
As for my outing w/it....it sounds fantastic, IMO. Very clear and detailed. I'd be very content to run it stock w/my c414B-ULS set. But then again, that could be my new mics talking as well as i've only used those 2 other times before getting the Edirol and they have not pulled a bad recording.
I'll get it into shape....or, I'll give it a poor review (from a field taper standpoint) and ship it back to Edirol.
I'm starting to believe that laptop recording with Edirol products is just an exercise in frustration. We'll see...and hopefully firewire bandwidth will solve the problems, but I'm not holding my breath.