Product Reviews

Midiman has a solid reputation for making great value, and good-sounding audio products. Its latest card, the M-Audio Delta 410, features high-quality 24-bit/96kHz simultaneous recording and playback across four input and 10 output channels.

The Delta 410 should appeal to analogue mixer users and music producers who need multiple discrete physical outputs for virtual synths and samplers. SPDIF digital in and out are provided, making it possible to master or mix digitally to CD-R, DAT or mini-disk.

However, the versatility of the M-Audio Delta 410 doesn't stop there. Onboard AC3 (Dolby Digital 5.1) and DTS codecs mean the Delta 410 card can also be used to create surround sound mixes.

The M-Audio Delta 410 package consists of the audio card, a printed manual, two CDs and the breakout cable loom. The drivers CD includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems. Drivers are provided for Mac OS 8.5.1 and higher including Mac OS X, ASIO 1 and 2, GSIF (Gigasampler), EASI (e-magic) and OMS 238. The companion CD is called Maximum Audio Tools, but the slimmer's diet of Mac software it contains adds up to a very lean feast indeed.

The Delta 410 is a short-length PCI card. On the back plane are the digital I/O and the D25 socket for the analogue audio breakout cable loom. The four inputs are configured as two analogue channels and SPDIF stereo digital, and the 10 outputs as eight analogue + SPDIF digital out.

The analogue loom consists of 10 unbalanced inline RCA phono connectors that are colour coded for ease of channel identification. Both the digital and analogue connectors are gold plated. Multiple Delta 410 cards can be installed and sample accuracy is ensured thanks to hardware synchronisation.

Delta force

To minimise PCI interrupt problems, the Delta 410 was situated in the PCI slot adjacent to our video card. The Delta 410 drivers were installed

ADVERTISEMENT

from the Mac desktop. When buying new kit, it's always best to download the latest drivers from the product Web site as sometimes the CD included may not have the latest versions.

Once the Delta 410 ASIO drivers have been copied across to each audio application, the Delta control panel sets the sample resolution (16-bit or 24-bit), the sample rate (22kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz and 96kHz) and the Line output level (+4dB and -10dB). The Delta control panel also contains the internal signal routing settings, pre-emphasis and clock settings, copy protection, and the surround sound preferences.

To get the most out of surround mixing, we recommend using surround-capable software, such as Steinberg Nuendo, MOTU Digital Performer 3, e-magic Logic Audio or the forthcoming Steinberg Cubase SX.

Although we had no trouble installing the Delta 410 in our Power Mac G4 733MHz, we struggled to get the card going on our Power Mac G3 350MHz.

The Apple System Profiler recognised the presence of a new PCI card, but the card was invisible to both the Delta 410 control panel and to our audio applications. It's only fair to mention that this particular machine has previously had trouble with music and a call to Midiman's excellent technical support soon resolved the problem.

Keeping track

To play back 10 tracks simultaneously at the best audio quality (24-bit/96kHz) a Power Mac G3 300MHz or faster is needed with a minimum of 128Mb of free RAM. You also need a fast, pristinely maintained UDMA IDE/ATA or SCSI hard drive. Bear in mind that to run the M-Audio Delta 410 at its highest audio quality, file sizes will be more than four times those of similar-length CD-quality (16-bit/44.1kHz) files.

This requires a steady data throughput of around 50Mb a minute for each stereo track to avoid clicks, pops and other types of unwanted hiccups in the audio stream. To avoid such difficulties, and to generally obtain optimum performance from your system, defragment the hard drive where your audio files are located at the end of each session.

The digital sound quality of the Delta 410 is very good. We detected low-level noise on the analogue outputs, but the general vulnerability of onboard analogue converters to electrical interference from computer activity makes this inevitable.

There's little to fault the Delta 410 card, and its high audio specification and low cost compares very favourably with similarly featured audio cards. Highly recommended.