sorry, just found several sources,....yep.

Yeah, but the deals on these cards right now are great. Plus it's being replaced with the 1616M. So far it (1616M) seems to have somewhat better pres, but overall less inputs. Otherwise same converters. For $149 new, the 1212M is an outstanding deal.

Yeah. Anything that has analog signal going directly into a PCI card, where the signal path is sharing space with CPUs and hard drives and power supplies and fans, is automatically out as far as I'm concerned. I mean, it's just an incredibly dumb idea.

JSL

I never thought of that.

hmmm..

the 1616m seems like a good substitute though. The 1820m always sounded very good, as long as you didnt touch any patchmix settings!! I am surprised that newer cards are still coming out pci. Arent the newer boxes not really needing this?

I am not a PC geek (yet), so I guess I am missing the benefit.

If you have an interface with a breakout box/rack unit the converters are away from the computer and all that electrical noise so a PCI interface is no big deal and will move data faster in and out than a firewire connection (one less thing to go through as the firewire is usually tied to the PCI buss on the motherboard). You are right about all these cheap cards having a weak analog circuit before the converters, this is where you get what you pay for. The converter chips are cheap in comparison to the analog stage for the manufacturer.

I've not had this issue. ASIO on the 1820M has been rock solid here after I sorted out which PCI slot to put the card on. I've run 30 track projects with piles of FX's and three VSTi's at 2ms and it worked fine. I don't do that as a normal practice but it's nice to know I can if needed.

Be aware that the cable connecting the breakout box to host card on the 1820 is proprietary protocol firewire. So the 1820M is a proprietary firewire box and it's PCI card a proprietary firewire adapter as far as data flow is concerned...

Actually its a cat 5e cable from the converters/breakout box on the 1820M to the PCI card, so its ethernet not firewire. I replaced the furnished 15 footer with a 25 foot cat 6e which works fine. The PCI card has a firewire jack but it's just a pass through (same thing you would find on a motherboard) which is only useful if you don't use your motherboard's (no audio goes through it). I posted the link to the E-MU unofficial forum in a prior post in this thread. Although there are lots of fanboys that hang, there is still balanced (both the good and bad things) info on the cards to be found there. It's a good place to start with your research before spending your dollars.

I have tried everything and still no luck. I gave up as I really don't need the asio drivers anyway and I'm able to get 2ms-6ms of latency with the WDM drivers depending on software. I've heard many people have had no issues with them, I guess I've been one of the unlucky ones. But it's a great card regardless.

The protocol itself is proprietary firewire, they chose to implement it via cat5 wiring is all.