New gear

[Peter Korsten]

As some of you may already have read on Facebook, I got myself an 
M-Audio M-Track 2x2M. It's a combined audio/MIDI interface, and I got it 
for the express purpose of hooking up the Electribe I'm buying from our 
Galactic Space Emperor to my PC.

The last serious bit of kit I bought was the EX5, and later some extra 
outputs and a SCSI interface for it, so it's been a while. The reason 
why I got a combined interface is because the first thing I did when I 
bought my motherboard six years ago is blow up four USB ports, and ever 
since I've never had quite enough.

It's a cute little box. It looks and feels sturdy, has four knobs and 
one big knob/dial. The knobs are for the two input channels, to mix 
between direct monitoring and USB monitoring, and headphones level. The 
dial is for the monitor output. You can stick instruments in the front 
inputs (1/4") or the back (combined 1/4" jack/XLR). Phantom power can be 
switched on and off.

It connects to the computer via a USB-C cable, and that's pretty much 
it. If you're on PC, you need to install drivers; on the Mac, it works 
out of the box. Finally, you get Cubase LE and some other freebies.

Considering that it came to around £100 on Amazon, I'm quite happy with 
it. Don't expect a chart topper any time soon, but I'm working on it. :-)

- Peter