M-Audio Project Mix I/O

Well, I got a new mixer.  It’s very nice.  It’s been out for awhile, in fact, it’s rumored to be ready for a refresh (kinda like the MacPro, but let’s not get me started on that).

The reason I’m reviewing an older piece of gear like this is because, as I researched the purchase, I had a very hard time finding anyone using this mixer with Final Cut Studio, so I went in crossing my fingers, pretty much blind.  Well, it works.  Everything maps out great, works great.  Except…

I’m having some sort of occasional freezing.  It seems to be at the Core Audio level.  Everything works great, but then it freezes up everything.  If I just walk away, it will generally start responding again, after anywhere from 2-10 minutes.  If I get restless and do a force quit, the crashed thread always shows up as a Core Audio thread.  It’s quite annoying, yet not annoying enough that I want to spend a lot of time troubleshooting this machine, as it’s still my old G5, and the new MacPro towers are coming out today, right?  I’ll troubleshoot when the new machine arrives.

Freezing issues aside, this is a solid machine.  Other initial thoughts:

• Having 8 mic preamps is awesome.
• It’s built very solid, much more solid than my Tascam FW-1082 it replaced.
• Having the LED strip to ID the tracks is also very nice.
• The faders are sturdier.
• Other controls are more easily accessed than with the Tascam, esp. PAN.
• I can’t seem to adjust the jog/shuttle wheel speed, which is very slow.
• The locate buttons work well to navigate through the FCP timeline.
• Works VERY closely with Logic Pro.  Easily had it up and running and recording my 3 year old playing my drums.
• It needs a level indicator to tell exactly how far up it is turned by just looking at it.
• It has more “out-of-the-box” functionality with FCP than the Tascam did, I haven’t done any customization yet.

I’m very happy with the purchase, overall.  Hopefully I’ll be able to easily fix this Core Audio issue once I really sit down with it.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go order one of them there hexacore Mac Pro towers that came out today.