must-have ! E-MU Systems 0404

Emu's DAS (Digital Audio System) range has proved extremely hot since the flagship 1820M and 1212M interfaces (both with 'mastering'-grade converters) and the slightly cheaper 1820 version were first released in 2004. Later in the same year we saw the budget 0404 model, with less exotic converters, like the 1820. These PCI-based interfaces were supplemented in 2005 by the 1616M/1616 models, both of which shipped with a PCMCIA Cardbus adaptor for use with PC laptops. All these models featured the same set of DSP effects, courtesy of Emu's EDSP chip.

Despite the almost identical names, the 0404 USB 2.0 interface under review here is a different beast from the original 0404 (the numbers merely specify the numbers of inputs and outputs). For a start, it's the first Emu audio interface to employ a USB 2.0 connection, the first of the range to abandon DSP effects, and also the first to offer cross-platform Mac OS X as well as Windows XP and x64 drivers. I was supplied with Windows XP so