M-Audio ProFire 2626 first impressions

[MDog]

This is a repeat from another thread in case anybody missed it -

Just hooked up the ProFire 2626 and have been playing with it for a few hours. So far, it's pretty much cracked up to what they make it out to be. I've loaded several different sessions and everything has been playing back quite nicely. Connected a mic and was able to see the meter bounce in Pro Tools as well as listen with no latency though the 2626 internal mixer. Then I connected my Apogee Mini-Me and Mini-DAC and was able (after messing with the mixer and routing tabs) to enable both with no problems. So far (knock on wood) I think I have 18 inputs and 18 outputs with "no latency" monitoring on all of them, *including* the digital I/O.

A tip for those who have yet to install it: Pro Tools MP (and LE) has a maximum I/O of 18 at this point in time. The default mixer routing inside the ProFire 2626 has the S/PDIF as input and output 25 & 26. Pro Tools will not see it until you route the ADAT "B" port *after* the S/PDIF, and change the S/PDIF Coax Out to "Software return 17 & 18". I'm routing my mix via S/PDIF through my Apogee Mini-DAC, so I choose all my channel outputs in Pro Tools to 17 & 18 (you can rename them in the Pro Tools I/O setup panel). It's would be very easy to route my Pro Tools to Mini-DAC outputs to 1 & 2, but I don't do that for personal consistency sake.

I would recommend that M-Audio include a little mixer setup file like this to ship with their new units. Pro Tools is their software, after all. Hopefully they're not bothering because they are going to enable all 26 I/O in Pro Tools? Let's hope so.