I use this to record my five midi sound modules. The sound of the Hercules is very clean and noise-free. My main concern before purchasing it was if it would record all of the inputs simultaneously without timing issues between the various inputs. Hercules tech support was great with a response to my question. I am happy to report that when recording all five midi modules at once there are no timing issues and the sound is excellent.

The only thing I really miss about it is the lack of monitoring options. You can only monitor one set of stereo outputs at once. Fortunately the included software does allow you to select which pair you want to monitor. There are workarounds to this though. You can switch on-the-fly among the various outputs while recording without affecting the recording. You can also use an external mixer with it.

The product has been very reliable for me. The only issue I have is that I have to set the latency pretty high to avoid pops and crackles in Sonar. This is not a problem for me as I am not recording "live." Basically I am recording previously composed midi tracks. If you want to use this to record in real time you may have some latency issues between your keyboard and DAW. Then again latency is more an issue between your computer setup, your sound card, and recording software.

Almost every other firewire audio interface offers a maximum of eight channel recording. I needed ten (five stereo pairs) and this unit actually gives you twelve analog inputs plus another four digital inputs. It sold me!

As I stated above, I contacted their support team prior to purchasing this unit. They were very helpful and their response was incredibly detailed. I haven't had to contact them since my purchase.

I wanted it because of the number of inputs. It looks nice.

minister of music

choral and gospel

What goes in is what comes out, but I would have to say that the AD specs (105) probably isn't quite up to spec with other current interfaces. Having said that, it's still a very quiet unit.

Current drivers only allow for one stereo pair to be monitored in realtime

The mic preamp pots on mine seem a touch noisy, especially at the higher gain levels.

12 analog and 4 digital inputs can't be beaten for this price. You'd need a seperate ADAT interface on just about any other interface to get 16+ channels. I'd like to see support for multiple units in the drivers, and adat support would make this unit completely killer.

Local support was helpful. Needs a hotfix to work with XP SP2 which can be gotten from the Hercules support site - but you need to email a request for it.

If you need or just want the sheer number of channels, get it. Keep in mind the lack of monitoring options at this stage...