Edirol UA-1EX (a USB audio interface)

From SPARK

Description

A simple ASIO-compatible USB audio interface capable of 24-bit/96kHz operation and designed to offer component-quality audio signals in and out of your computer.

• Offers excellent sound quality for connection to any RCA or S/PDIF optical device.

• Features professional A/D and D/A converters, ensuring accurate recording and playback, whether you’re recording tapes or vinyl to the computer, or just playing your MP3 collection through a home stereo receiver.

• Offers an electret condenser microphone input similar to the “MIC-IN” on most internal sound cards, and a headphone output with volume control to quickly and easily listen to audio from your computer.

Main Features (taken from the Edirol website): • Up to 24bit/96kHz audio quality • ASIO 2.0 (Win/Mac), WDM (Win2000/XP), Core Audio (Mac OS X) compatibility • USB Powered (no AC adaptor required) • S/PDIF optical In & Out • Supports both OS-standard drivers (Win/Mac OS X) as well as Edirol’s drivers. (More information available from the Edirol website, http://www.rolandus.com/products/.)

Considerations

The UA-1EX is ideal for use with laptops (where audio quality is all but ignored), offering superior audio quality, versatility, and the utmost in portability. (Also good with desktops.) However, use with a microphone has serious volume and quality limitations, unless used with an audio mixer (see below).

Evaluation

Improved over the previous model, UA-1X.

Excellent for many applications (see above), but there are serious microphone limitations. These limitations can be overcome if the unit is used in combination with an audio mixer.

• The available compatible microphones are usually of low quality. The accompanying paper warns against using standard unbalanced (or balanced) mics, as they may damage the unit. Also, electret mics need the battery removed or disabled.

• Without a mixer, the only means of increasing the gain on the microphone is by the computer volume control (which isn’t sufficient).

• If you're using an audio mixer to boost the gain to a better level, you could consider simply using the mixer itself with a higher quality mic (such as the Shure SM58).

Where to Obtain

Order From

Vernacular Media Services (VMS). Also available at the Edirol website (http://www.rolandus.com/products/) and other sources on the Internet.

Cost

Review By: SPARK Volunteer 1, based on information from VMS sources.

Date entered: April 20, 2008