I really like the sound out of this bad boy. The noise floor is very low compared to similar 8 mic/line firewire interfaces. In fact it even does well with ribbon microphones which I could not have done with my alesis 26.

The only thing I don't like about it is that phantom power is not assignable to each channel. Instead they do it in groups of four. By the way it doesn't matter if you have phantom power on for dynamic mic so you are not hurting anything. But to use my ribbon mics along with other condenser mics you have to sometimes put the inputs in an illogical order. Not a big deal just adds about two minutes to the recording process when you are assigning inputs in your recording program.

It is really easy to set up. When my friends metal band is practicing I can setup, record there new song, pack up, and bounce a rough mix in 30 minutes. (no lie it has been done) It is really portable.

I hate myself for it but I dropped it 4-5 feet onto a warehouse floor and you could not tell. Just a little paint chip on one of the corners. All the knobs feel pretty good and could only be better if they were completely metal.

Straight up for the money this is it!!! If you are considering the other m-audio fast track with 8 pres I would get this one unless your home studio doesn't need to be expanded in the long run.

Sometimes they get busy at the end of the day, but no more than 20 mins in my experience to talk to someone. Today I called up and was syncing the 2626 with the motu 8 pre and M-Audio walked me through it. Although I would definitely just get two 2626's because they are more easily synced.

Unless DigiDesign makes their HD systems the same price, this is what I would get. it looks and sounds really professional.

Striving Audio Engineer

Punk, Grindcore, Death Metal, Acoustic, dance, and Hip-Hop

Engineer and Co-Producer 12 years.

Pop, Christian, Latin

Preamps are crystal clear, work great on acoustic guitar and vocals, I'm eager to try them on drums. Could maybe use a little more gain.

20db pad on each input is really useful on loud sources. Would have liked independent phantom power on/off on each channel.

Follow the included instructions and everything will go smoothly.

Enclosure is built like a tank, but knobs could be a little sturdier.

Worth every penny.

Haven't dealt with them. M-audio is a usually a great company though.

Looks really professional in my home studio.

Drummer for over 20 years, in a gigging band, beginner audio engineer.

Mostly metal, with some accoustic stuff thrown in.

The mic preamp is very very good. I was trying to go for a MOTU 192HD but was a little over my budget so I came across with this interface and eventhouh I would not compare it with the MOTU 192 HD I dont regret using this product with my amount of budget. I am quite satisfied with it, especially considering the price. It produces more or less a professional sound

This thing has very incredible routing system. And the eight analog outputs give me a lot of options. And it has a very good compatibility if u want to use it with other products also. The attenuation pad is very useful but u have to pull the knob out in order to do so and that makes me wondering how long the knob would last.

The mixer is very useful but i find it a little bit hard to use in the beginning and till now i still dont know how to control the level of my studio monitor output with the master volume knob(doesnt work even if i assign it) or is there a defect in my product??? i dont know and the MIDI port .... I still cant get it to work even though i installed it correctly.... and there is no MIDI option in the mixer

The sleek design ... the blackish look... and the lights are stunning. And i think the casing is quite rugged.... Quality wise, the sampling quality is very very good

VERY VERY GREAT VALUE for money.... with this kind of price what kind of product can you get which can better the profire 2626?

havent done anything yet

Even before checking it out ... the looks is very flattering... And the incredible 26/26 I/O's is what impresses me at first glance.

Diploma in Audio Engineering (SAE, India), and a freelance musician

Blues, Rock and country

its gotta great sound i have used a couple diff interfaces ( m box fire pod fire box) but this has the best sound for me so far i think the octain teck has something to do with it

it has some good features but not enough to make it confuseing lol thats what i was looking for simple and quality

well it was kinda hard geting it to work for the first time im useing protools 7.4 and it takes an cs update to make it work which you can download online then i had to fart @ with trying to make it work with my operateing system by the way protools m powered only works withservice pack 3 i wasted allota time b4 i figured that out but if you know what your doing and how to configure your computer its worth it

the knobs look cool but are kinda cheap feeling when you turn them

best bang for the buck you could spend allot more for the same outcome

never used it

it looks great i love the way the knobs look and how you can pull them out but like i said the feel cheap

aritst that had to produce himself to save money lol

rap r and b

The sound out of this box is very good-when it produces sound. The installation is very shaky. I have a 920 i7 intel 2.67 ghz with 12 Gigabytes of RAM on a Windows 64 bit Vista base. So far the installation stayed in place 1 week. I attempted to change from Asio Direct X Full Duplex Driver to ProFire Asio Driver inside of Cubase 4.5. I was thinking the ProFire Asio Driver would somehow be more appropriate. When that disconnected my previously working sound files (I was then not able to receive any functionality out of the VST instruments), I attempted to switch back to the Direct X driver. This resulted in silence from the instruments when played. I remember having huge problems with M-Audio (back when they were midiman) products before back in the days of Widows 95 and 16 bit drivers that would never stay installed, M-Audio is far worse than Microsoft about using customers as beta testers for all of their products. Now here I sit with $550 worth of worthless stuff and all the tech people can say is I maybe should be connecting my M-Audio device to a FireWire expansion card with a Texas Instruments chipset, but they're not real sure if that will solve the problem either I am so fed up with Audio gear makers who have to label their stuff "pro" to make us think we have something really smooth when really all we have is cheap, overpriced junk. I've been ignored now by the tech folks for a week.

Non of the features in the mixer were very useful, Cubase 4.5 has a ton of mixing options, why would I need any more? A very nice feature would be a set of drivers supplied by the manufacturer that would give my computer the ability to recognize the sound card I have tried to install 15 times.

For $550 I should get some support, not a vaguely worded statement to buy a breakout card from another maker.

Looks nice and the lights flash in a very pretty fashion when I turn on the power.

Laughable if it were not so sad

Active Musician

Classical

Didn't like it at all. I found it to be muddy and actually "boxy". No highs. But not in a warm old school way, but in a "what's wrong with my speakers" way. If you want to do serious work I suppose this will be a constant obstacle. I tried a couple of tests one of them being to record a DI'd acoustic guitar(using the DI's preamp) and then the same thing with the Profire's preamps. The Di's sound was just what it should be. Vivid and present. The other wasn't. So I suppose it's mostly the preamps....

Everything you need to do project recording is here.

The interface is quite good actually, but since recording quality is vital , this unit's preamp sound won't allow you to get good results without some serious tweaking and I suspect that even that won't just cut it...

It looks solid. Only used it at home. Doesn't seem like it's easy to break it.

Haven't used any other products in this price range....

Never needed it....

Doesn't matter does it?

professional musician

ethnic rock

I have done several recordings with this interface and I noticed lots of clicks and eventually discovered that the bass guitar wave was getting chopped at various points on the recording. If you are doing music just for fun its suffient, but I notice a major difference when I use a higher quality interface.

Its got a lot of useful buttons, fairly simple to use.

Its clear to use except for the software part of it. that would take a while to figure out.

It was built well, it just doesn't compare to other units.

no experience

It looks good.

Recording Engineer, Musician

Rock

the bad thing that i am going to remix my songs once more :)

the featuers is ok

its easy that i think my 3 old dughter can use it

now i can say why you want to own HD in your home studio , M-audio profire 2626 is here

i will not be angry with them if they sell it by more price

i live in Egypt my M-audio agent support me

Recording Engineer

Orintal , house , R&B

Producer

Electronic

Not as warmth and crystal clear as I expected. I may have to buy another preamp and converter to side-chain.

There's nothing here you won't like. 8 mics plus 2 inputs in the front to plug your instrument, 2 headphones which is always a great feature, phantom power for mics on all channels, coaxal and optical SPDIF which is good if you want to expand your studio. It's FW400. I work with Mac OSX Snow Leopard and my Mac has FW800 and it brought a FW400 to FW800 cable along so if your machine has FW800 you MUST have a FW400 to FW800 cable. NEVER PLUG THIS UNIT AS LAST IN SIDE CHAIN OR TO A HUB or you'll be having problems. It must be connected to the computer directly. It has 2 FW400 connections so you can side-chain a hard drive or a mixer.

The first day you use it, it will be a little bit confusing setting it up. Some people complain about the mixer and how to connect monitors and how to separate the headphones from the main output, but it's not hard at all once you get to know how to work with it. I have the monitors on 7-8 line outputs. Just go the route in the mixer and choose "mixer out" for all analog inputs. My only complain here is that the master volume is not analog controllable. It's digital so the sound doesn't go up and down smoothly as you turn it. It stays low and then gets higher. But it's something i can live with it. No big deal.

The sound isn't as I expected. It's very transparent. No colour at all. Whether you work with Pro Tools or Cubase or any other DAW and if you want great quality I advice you to invest in better preamps and converters. But keep in mind that this a great way to go PRO with Pro Tools, instead of going HD in which price is ridiculous. It's well built. Heavy. Bottoms are plastic but well made.

If it would brake, got lost or stolen, I'd buy another one. Great way to start investing in Pro Tools.

Didn't have any experience yet...

I have it and I like it.

Producer, Musician

Rock and Metal

I Love my profire. The sound of the octane pre's are amazingly clear. I run a Audix DP7 drum mic kit through this and i get an amazing sound. I use Logic 9 with the profire and they work great with eachother. I also use an ART preamp with my at4040 mic and connect the preamp into the profire's optical ports. You can't get a better sounding interface for this price.

The profire came with a a break out cable which came in a lot of use. The optical ports are nice, and of course the 8 combo jacks with phantom power are great.

When you have the right drivers, its just plug n' play. Very easy to use gain and tweet the knobs to the sound you want to get.

The build of this interface is great. It has a nice weight to it and feels very sturdy. I sadly dropped it against the knobs but there was no damage at all and still worked great!

Best in the price range.

When i upgraded my Mac to Snow Leopard the drivers they cam out with failed to work. I have been waiting on the new drivers that they promised for a while now. Also i used my PC a couple of times with vista and the drivers worked fine, but when i upgraded to windows 7 the drivers didn't work with that upgrade either! The people on the forums are very helpful and most of them have the same problem as me.

It's a very "sexy" looking interface. Looks very sleek and has a nice black metal casing. The knobs have the m-audio sign engraved in them that also looks cool. and the whole design just flows.

Active Musician, Recording Engineer

Dub Step, Metal, Experimental, Rock, Reggae, etc...

Alot of features I wanted. I wanted a mixerless setup to go with my MPC 5000. This was on the money and cheaper than the project mix and the 003 rack.... YOU DONT UNDERSTAND THE FRUSTATION OF HAVING TO SEND THIS BACK!

I couldn't tell you... Never was able to use it..

HOBBYIST

HIPHOP