No dropouts, no hesitation when starting up, no hiccups when dragging the "now time" cursor all over the project For comparison, I set up the for 2 ms latency. Sonar showed a reported latency including buffer and hardware latencies of 3. So of course, I had to see how low I could go in terms of latency.
We'll find out more detailed specs once we hook it up to the RightMark audio analysis software. Still, the sound of the impressed me, especially given the price. Of course this isn't too surprising, given that technology has advanced since the was introduced. The sound was very similar, but after numerous A-B tests back and forth, I felt the had a little more overall "definition.
Sure enough, the Firefly drivers showed up with the "friendly" name I had entered, and once I had selected them, the tracks played back through the outputs I did a quick sonic reality check by running the outs through my "old standby" E-Mu interface. As you'll see, later on I pushed those sliders all the way to minimum Next, I booted up a project in Sonar 8. Note that the control panel is showing the default settings. Maybe I don't get out enough, but I don't recall seeing this in other interfaces - it was always up to the host to do this kind of renaming. This lets you set up sync, buffers, and even cooler, "friendly" names to display under ASIO. I turned up the headphones, and there was the unmistakable dull-but-reliable sound of an SM There's also a control panel applet that you call up from the system tray second attached image. So I figured I'd open up the mixer applet, plug in a mic, plug in a set of headphones, and see what would happen. Installation started off as expected: Close other applications, run setup, wait nervously while things happen behind the scenes It said to click on Finish to launch a troubleshooter, which I did but then Windows indicated he had found everything it was supposed to find, and a screen appeared that said "Completing the Setup Wizard.
I decided to install on my Windows XP machine I did notice there are also 圆4 versions available, which is great - I'll have to try this next time I boot off my Vista drive. I checked the Phonic web site to see if there were newer drivers, but the only document there had a 1. Well, the time has come to check out the drivers and do some real world work. Looking forward to more of this review Craig. I'm glad I took this apart, because the internal construction is more than I expected at this price point.
Phonic has certainly adhered to these design criteria. Phonic Helix Board 18 Firewire Mkii Mac DriverĬlean power supplies, wide traces, and ground plane layers in the circuit board all help keep noise down and reliability up. I believe that power supplies are an essential part of audio interfaces, as is circuit board design. Also, check out the additional heat sink toward the right, and the massive filter capacitor in the lower right corner. The software within the Helix Board, please ensure that your unit does not become disconnected from the computer during the update, and that both the Helix Board and the computer are connected to a stable power source.Īfter letting the unit run for a while, I noticed that the heat sink wasn't even particularly warm.
As you are about to update the firmware ie.
This requires you to install the current driver latest version is 5. While all of these units were previously plug-and-play with the FireWire interface, the USB interface was not recognized on Macs. After the firmware is updated, the abovementioned units will be plug-and-play compatible with the Mac.