M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface 

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

It is an amazing product with one major flaw: the phantom power supply is ridiculously unstable. Tap the tiny cord and the whole thing freaks out, and your ears get sabotaged with a loud pop.
I have been using this on a daily basis in apartment bedrooms for about two years now for home-recording purposes.
It does work. and doesn't disconnect entirely. But I'd highly recommend taking into account the irritation that the power supply connection port can produce.
It isn't snug, it's tiny, and generally does not inspire confidence in the whole experience. I can imagine that others with this product have had something actually break in regards to the phantom power port.
Other than that - five stars.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

Please, whatever you do, DO NOT waste your money on this piece of junk. I fell into the trap myself when I saw the low price on the interface/ProTools package, and have had the biggest headaches ever since I made the purchase.

While the instructions rightfully warn against "hot swapping" (turning off the interface before turning the computer off, and vice versa), the negative effects of doing this seemed to happen anyways. After using it for about 4 months, I turn the interface on to find a very loud, rapid clicking sound coming from it. Also, every last light on the thing was flashing very quickly. Sensing something was wrong, I shut my computer down, turned off the interface, and tried restarting everything all over again. No dice. Out of nowhere, the thing was rendered completely unusable.

Then, calling up M-Audio support, I thankfully was able to get this covered under their 1-year warranty (apparently this is a common problem, the guy seemed to know exactly what I was talking about right off the bat). After waiting for about 3 weeks for the interface to come back, it finally returned in apparently working condition....until about another 4 months later, when the same exact issue happened all over again.

Now, my first thought is that there's a very good chance this was just poor workmanship on the repair. Because of that, I decided to bite the bullet and trade it in for a brand new one once I got the original interface back from a second repair. While this one seemed to be working OK at first, it has been a total of 10 days that it has been in my possession and there's already a short in the first input.

I really don't know what I was expecting with such a low price tag; if it's dirt cheap, it might as well be dirt itself. This just seems remarkably terrible after going through all of these issues. Without a doubt, this is the LAST time I buy an M-Audio interface, and I highly recommend you don't get yourself caught in this same mess as well.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

Well, I sold my mbox 2 Pro and pro tools 8 le and decided to go with the Fast track ultra and avid pro tools 9. The fast track is a good mobile unit for on the road and it work good with pro tools 9. However, the signal to noise ratio is not. I recorded a sweet little contemporary gospel tune and it turned out nice. But, I had to remove all dead space in my vocal track because fast track produced slight noise. After, editing the vocals the song turned out great and the tracks were nice and clean. I think that the fast track ultra is a good unit if you can't afford a more expensive mbox 3 gen and if you need portability, but if you can I highly recommend its big brother the fast track rack instead. The features are great, especially the 6 i/o and the price is fair.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

Ok so i got this joker for my 15th birthday,This was two years ago from today, I am 17 now and the preammps just quit working on me, I have had numerous problem after problem with this box, first the two mic imputs stopped working on mine,also the 2nd headphone jack stopped working, its not that big of a deal though because i only use one anyway.Although i have been successful with this box, It did sound very good when i hooked my fender jazz bass into it, Also it sounded good with the Kurzweil and the Yamaha MM6 i own,And also my drums.So it does have a very good sound and i was able to get over 100 songs made but that is it. This thing is not built to last and after reading other reviews, i know i just didnt get a lemon, this is a porely made product. Also i didnt mention that everytime i shut my computer down, it crashes with this thing and it has to reboot.To avoid that problem i disconnet the divice from the computer before it shuts down, which is a pain in the but and i should not have to do that. Also when i would plug instruments into the preamps it would just shut itself down and not pickup any signals and i would have to shut it off and turn it back on. And when the preamps did work there were times when i would turn the volume controls and it would crackle so bad as if it havent been used in over 20 years.I warn all people that is thinking about buying this product, It will not last and you will be very dissapointed like i am now and i will be returning mine ASAP. You have been warned.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

I've used a M-Audio Delta 1010 for about 8 years and have generally had good luck (although some driver issues). I bought the Ultra to do mobile recording and am very disappointed in the quality. Initially one preamp went out so I sent it back for repair. They sent me new one back. Now one of the microphone outputs stopped working and I'be sent it back again. Each time I am out of commision for 5 weeks. If they send me back a new one this time I'll Ebay it and get something else.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

I was originally going to buy one of those Behringer mixers that hook up to USB, but the dude at Guitar Center said that those only output two channels (left and right). He told me about this thing which can track multiple channels. I think that it can do 8, but it only has four microphone inputs, so I think that I will just be using the first 4.I am using it with fruity loops and after updating the drivers (because windows 7 64-bit was not able to), everything worked fine. The only problem I was having was the 3rd input (I'm only using three mics currently), was not working while only having it plugged into USB. I found out that you have to have the power plugged in to get all the inputs to work.As far as the sound is concerned I've heard a lot of local recordings that friends have done, this thing (without mixing or equalizing) blows those out of the water. I'm definitely no recording engineer by any means, nor am I a good drummer (I'm a guitarist), but the sound of my crappy Sound Percussion set through this made it actually sound good!! I'm using that audio-technica 3 mic, 3 cable, 3 stand package with this. Therefore, if you have a small home studio or just want to multi-track some of your stuff, I highly suggest this.After installing the driver, fruit loops interacted with it well.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

Ive owned this for about a year. It does take some tweeking to get it running right, but with that being said, It works well. Im not sure why its getting bad reviews from others, but mine is working fine, and the recording quality is pretty good. The only thing I would say is bad with it, is the software. The internal mixer looks BASIC, and doesnt look that good, but it does work. Hey for $300 bux, I think its pretty good. If you buy this, just go to the M-Audio website and download the NEWEST DRIVERS, cause the ones on the CD that comes with it are out dated.And by the way, this thing runs on USB 2.0 and will record at 96k, and has several ins and outs. Its hard to find an interface for this price to do that.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

This thing looks really cool. Four pre's and two headphone jacks, wow! I got one and set it up. The pre's do sound very nice. However, the driver is complete garbage for W7-64. The software that comes with it looks so antique. I had to uninstall and reinstall drivers every time I wanted to try it. Frustration level through the roof and I'm a computer guy by trade. Save yourself the frustration and look elsewhere. I sent it back and got a Sonar VS-100. This was my first M-Audio purchase, I'm not sure about any future M-Audio gear in my rig because of this thing.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

I am a 17 year live & recording engineer & have been thru many many gear & give this one a big thumb down. I had a fast track pro as a backup & I loved it so decided to buy the FT ultra, what a mistake. I read many bad reviews on the ultra and thought that the reviewers did not know what they were doing & they had little experience but I was wrong. It?s been almost a year since I had it & it was hell for the whole time, I had one problem after another, luckily I have other gear to get my work done. My one year warranty will be up in one month & I have a return authorization from m-audio but I don?t think it is worth sending it back to m-audio to fix, I think they just went wrong when they built the Ultra or I got one of a bad batch. This Unit left a very bad taste in my mouth, I will take my lost & move on.

Comments about M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 Audio Interface:

The Fast Track Ultra is an excellent device with features that are great for any music producer but as soon as you install it on your PC, you'll immediately change your mind. The Fast Track Ultra comes with a Control Panel that is complete garbage, producing music is a complete pain because of an overload of bugs, sometimes out of no where the device won't be recognized and if you enjoy listening to music with crackles, that's the perfect product for that. I'm seriously thinking of downgrading my PC to my older Audigy 4 Pro card until M-Audio fixes all these problems.