Edirol FA-101....at first glance

[Nick's Picks]

Just got mine yesterday (thanks edirol)

a couple of quick notes:

1. beefy consruction.  Not Grace beefy, but just as good (or better) than the UA-5
2. rubber knobs instead of plastic.  That is very nice
3. Better level meeters, but only one set and not a pair of them.  that is both good and bad.
4. ONLY SUPPORTED BY WIN XP (or mac..but who cares ;-)
5. 1/2 assed manual !

6. wall wart outputs 9.5v (compared to the UA-5 12v)....which sort of sucks as I liked the versatility of being able to run 12-9v.  I dont think i'd plug 12v into this.
7. Toslink only for digital I/O
8. all analog i/o is quarter inch plugs (except the two XLR inputs), which means no real HQ signal path out of the box in the analog domain.

I'll get into the beef this week as I have to UPGRADE my laptop to XP in order to use this sucka.

[Nick's Picks]

First run out w/the FA-101 was the other night in Hampton Beach NH for Dickey Betts and the Great Southern and Little Feat.

Here is the skinny.
Fresh install of windows XP pro (only microsoft drivers supplied by edirol) , sans Service Pack 1 (cant download over dial up...ran out of time ) and a cheap $19 firewire PCMCIA card.  Laptop is a toshiba 3480ct w/extra battery.  N-track 3.2 and Wavelab 4.0 as my mastering software.

Power for the Edirol was supplied via fresh RC 1600mah packs in parrallel, suppplying 3.2mah of 9.6v.

issues:
the FA-101 draws .950mah per hour !!  I think that is just about what the AD1000 sucks.  yet...it does not get real hot.  My battery pack died after about 2:45 of 24/96 recording w/phantom power.  bummer.  And  going to SLA always sucks (i hate carrying lead).  Still, next time i'll be armed with a 5 or 7amp 12v SLA.  I've got a RS voltage stepper that is selectable in its output to all the common DC voltages under 12.  That will certainly do the trick.

Little feat offered a board patch.  i came completely unprepared for any type of patching, but was able to scrounge RCA cables that were 1/4 on one end, and tried to run a 4 channel recording in N-track.  Unfortunately...I could only get levels on 3 channels (one SBD feed was out, but the single signal was a stereo signal, or so it was on another guys DAT deck that I listened to on headphones).  I eventualy gave up and just stuck to my mic signals.

The final results...
Dickey Betts set is riddled with various flaws.  dropouts, clicks, pops..etc.  Its listenable, but at times it sucks.  They are far too frequent and are definately a buzz kill.
however, the clean spots are fantastic.  Really crisp and clear sounding.   My best pull ever out of the Club Casino.  Its too bad that the drop outs occur every 2 minutes.
Little feats set is completely thrashed.
I was bouncing around w/the settings on both the hardware and the software...and when I finaly settled back to 24/96 recording it was apparetnly confused or something.  I probably needed to shut down everything (though I did power cycle the fa-101) and start from scratch.

Next up will be a TI chipset firewire card (as recomended in the FA-101 manual)...all ready on order.
I'll continue to tweak XP for audio, but would appreciate any known links that any of you reading this might have.  its been a while since I've been mastering live w/a laptop.  I need to get this shit straightened out.

[nic]

could it be the hardware buffer settings?
there should be somewhere to set this in the mixer/control panel for the FA101.

hard drive dma?

[John Kelly]

Not a mac?  There's your problem.

[Nick's Picks]

Little Feat...whom i've seen several times, was completely unimpressive in both sound, song selection and overall performance.  A pale version of any previous show i've seen by them.

dickey betts' set stole the evening.

as for the Edirol...
buffer settings, i'll look into that.   I remember that being an issue w/the UA-5, but this box has so many more options, I would have figured that two channels of 24/96 would have been just fine right out of the box.   Still, i'll track down that setting.
I forgot what a pain in the ass it is recording w/a laptop (unless you use a vx pocket card).  I expected more refinement out of this product.  Firewire is a fat pipe of data, and there shouldn't be any reason why this laptop is choking on it.
As per the drive, i'm sure its only 4200rpm....slow, but not too slow for what I am doing.
I'll do more tweaking, testing and "stereo taping" to see what I can find out.

[caymanreview]

fwiw, im doing 24/96 via firewire out of my 410 into a picturebook w/ 667mhz & 128mb of ram & a 4200rpm hard drive and ive not had one single problem yet

[John Kelly]

How's that warm mod workin for you cayman?  Ever get any samples up?

[caymanreview]

i just got my phish from last night track'd & flac'd

working on a BT right now, il post it before i hit the sack

sounds very nice!

[John Kelly]

Got anything other than phish?

[caymanreview]

Got anything other than phish?

nope not yet...

[Phil]

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?

[Nick's Picks]

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.

[dklein]

Hey Nick - if you can, yank the cover and take some pics of the board!

[Phil]

Please keep us posted.  I'm very interested in the ability to multi-track.  As for the stability, you'll get it down, I run 24/48 on a ua-5 to a 600mhz laptop (4200rpm hd)via usb no problem.  Your review might make my decision to buy one of these things.

[Nick's Picks]

I'll keep TS.com up to date w/my trials and errors.

In two weeks, i'll be taping DSO as they come through NH, and I'll take their board patch and run my mics at 24/48 (not enough hdd space for 4 tracks of 24/96) just for the testing of that option.