EDIROL UA5

Edirol UA5 USB Audio Interface For Mac And PC

Published in SOS March 2002
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Reviews : Computer Recording System

Edirol's UA5 is a stereo USB interface offering mic preamps with phantom power, a wide range of connectors and recording at up to 24-bit/96kHz.

USB audio interfaces are still a relatively recent development, and Roland subsidiary Edirol were among the first manufacturers to enter this nascent market with their original UA30. The new UA5 'Audio Capture' device sees Edirol continuing in the same vein, offering a compact stereo USB interface with drivers for both Mac and PC.

Edirol UA5 £249 pros Good sound quality. A good variety of connectors. Phantom-powered XLR and switchable impedance guitar inputs on front panel. An audio solution for computers without PCI slots. cons Undefeatable SCMS. Can't play and record at 96kHz simultaneously. summary The UA5 is a simple, straightforward USB audio interface, with no special tricks up its sleeve, but no nasty surprises in store either.

Unsurprisingly, the UA5 is an external device, and its small but impressively sturdy case requires only a modest rectangle of desk space to call home. A fairly bulky external mains adaptor is, however, needed to power the unit. If this feels like an inconvenience, it's probably a necessary one: even if it were possible to run the unit exclusively on power drawn from the host computer, there could be a danger that competition from other devices on the USB buss (MIDI interfaces, for example) might compromise the integrity of the audio stream, and end up spoiling an unrepeatable take.

For such a small box, the UA5 boasts an impressive array of sockets and connectors. On the back panel are stereo jack outputs, stereo RCA phono inputs and outputs, and both optical and co-axial digital ins and outs. There's also a standard USB socket for easy connection to your Mac or PC, with the added convenience of the option to 'hot-plug' the device without powering down if necessary.

The front panel is home to a pair of combined jack/XLR microphone sockets, each with its own input sensitivity knob, for adjusting between mic and line-level signals. When used as XLR connectors, these can supply 48 Volts of phantom power to any microphone that may require it. The second of these two sockets also has a Hi-Z/Lo-Z impedance switch, the Hi-Z setting providing a useful boost when DI'ing a guitar or bass.

Also on the front panel are the Power button, an Output volume knob, and a switch to choose between stereo and mono monitoring of input signals — to prevent, for example, a mono guitar plugged into the second front-panel input appearing only in the right-hand monitor. A switch for choosing between an analogue or digital recording source, and a Sample Rate knob allowing you to choose between sampling frequencies of 44.1, 48, and 96 kHz, make up the rest of the controls.

When it comes to installing the necessary software for the UA5, you have two choices: a 'Standard' and an 'Advanced' driver. The Standard driver limits you to 16-bit audio, at sampling frequencies of either 44.1 or 48 kHz. The Advanced driver enables 24-bit recording and playback at frequencies up to 96kHz, and also allows you to use the supplied UA5 ASIO driver, for optimum performance with Cubase or Logic. Most UA5 owners will want to opt for an Advanced install unless they're planning to use the UA5 exclusively with a non-ASIO-compatible application that insists on using Sound Manager (or the standard Windows interface) for sound input and output.

The UA5's ASIO drivers offer extensive control over buffer size, and hence latency.

Having found a free USB port and mains socket, I started up my Mac, ran the installer program and asked for the Advanced installation. A few moments later, after a quick restart, all that was left to do was copy an ASIO driver to my Cubase folder and begin playing. To my surprise, I found no less than four different files to choose from, there being separate 16- and 24-bit drivers for both ASIO 1.0 and ASIO 2.0 standards. I chose the 24-bit ASIO 2.0 driver, copied it across, and started up Cubase.

Launching the UA5's ASIO control panel (in this case, from Cubase's Audio System Setup dialogue) allowed for some fairly comprehensive performance tweaking. Choosing the perfect settings for your system is an imprecise art, but the UA5's ASIO driver makes it nice and easy to experiment. The Buffer Size slider at the top of the dialogue box can be used to select one of several perfectly reasonable preset configurations, while ticking the Custom box enables both input and output latency to be adjusted independently, one sample at a time.

VST Instrument addicts will have fun exploring output latencies below 500 samples, where those virtual synths begin to feel every bit as responsive as their hardware counterparts. Those wanting clean, crackle-free playback of complex multitrack arrangements will probably tend to the other extreme. Personally, I was quite satisfied with the driver's default medium setting, which allowed me to comfortably play back a dozen 24-bit, 48kHz audio tracks and still tickle the virtual ivories in real time without any problems.

Recording from the UA5's analogue inputs was a similarly trouble-free experience. Whether using the front-panel XLR/jack sockets or the back-panel RCAs, the recorded sound was just as it should be: clean and clear, with no perceptible trace of noise or interference.

It's not all good news, however, and there are one or two drawbacks to recording with the UA5. The first is that while the interface is capable of recording and playing back 24-bit audio at 96kHz, it isn't capable of doing both simultaneously. In other words, you won't be able to overdub an audio track while monitoring previously recorded tracks when the UA5 is in 96kHz mode. If you're planning to do a lot of work with 96kHz audio, you're going to need to be looking for a more upmarket, more expensive interface. The other significant drawback is that when recording via the UA5's digital inputs, SCMS is not, and cannot be, disabled.

Personally, I also found the UA5's requirement for an external power supply somewhat annoying. If, like myself, you happen to be of a slightly absent-minded disposition, you may from time to time accidentally start up your computer without first powering up the UA5. If you then attempt to launch Cubase with no other ASIO driver installed, you are forced to sit through a barrage of irate dialogue boxes and error messages, complaining about missing drivers, insufficient memory, and various other unexpected internal failures. However, this is a minor inconvenience when you consider the extra functionality that the UA5 brings, especially to computers without PCI slots.

If you have a PCI slot free in your computer, and you don't need to plug phantom-powered XLR mics directly into your audio inputs, there are cheaper and more straightforward solutions available than the UA5. Owners of iMacs and USB-equipped laptops, however, who are looking for a good way to record clear, high-quality audio, and who don't need to do simultaneous multitracking, are likely to be very interested in what it has to offer. Likewise, 'desktop' home or multimedia studios using only small notepad mixers (or perhaps no hardware mixer at all) might find the UA5's ability to handle DI'ing and phantom-powered mics invaluable. Furthermore, there are likely to be some users who will be attracted to the UA5's usefulness as a kind of audio 'breakout box', with its all-important analogue-to-digital converters kept at a reassuring distance from the various potential sources of troublesome noise interference to be found inside the average computer. To sum up, Edirol have put together a solid, well-built device that does just what it's supposed to.

Test Spec     • Apple Mac 'blue & white' 400MHz G3 with 448Mb RAM, running Mac OS 9.2.1. • Tested with: Steinberg Cubase VST v5.1.

information

£248.99 including VAT. Edirol +44 (0)845 117 2001 (UK only). +44 (0)20 8747 5949. +44 (0)845 117 2002 (UK only). +44 (0)20 8747 5948. Click here to email www.edirol.com