Any experience with Alesis IO 26

Hi everyone. I've been looking at buying the alesis io 26 ( ). Just wondered if anyone had any experience with it, particularly with reaper. Any pros/cons you can think of? Thanks, Jamie

Hi Jamie, I have had one of these for years, since they first came out in fact. On the whole it has served me well, though last time I updated drivers I had some stability issues. Reinstalling with earlier drivers fixed that. I especially find useful its two different headphone mix feature, that's veryu nice. Any more questions, please ask ...

I agree, I think it has a very nice feature set and has been a bit overlooked. It is good that old as well as current drivers are still available because you need to find the right ones for your machine and then stick with them. But:8 pre-amps insert on every analogue channel two independent headphone outs phantom switchable on every pair s'not bad at that price! People do say that the pre-amps are a bit quiet. I am not really in a position to judge against other units but - (i) I have not had had problems, (ii) I do need to turn the gain to almost to 10 for my dynamic mic for some applications.

Yes Jamie, just like nicholas ive had my iO/26 a few years and have had good luck with it on both Pc and Mac, some people have had problems with it because of the Dice II chipset it uses, but its been rock solid for me. As nicholas said you may have to try different dated drivers and i do believe Alesis site has them all. Right now im using the latest driver for both pc and mac and both are stable, but for a while i was using an older driver because some of the more current ones weren't stable. Its a great unit, bang for buck and the 8 pres are clean and uncolored. Also the Pc i use it on has a T.i. firewire chipset which i think is why it has been rock solid. It may not be on par latency wise with (rme,motu etc...) but its a great unit for the price. (it can go down to 64 buffer on both pc and mac, but i do believe there are hidden safety buffers) Also you might want to chack out the M-audio Fast Track Ultra 8R it has been recommened by many including Daw guru (Jim Roseberry)its usb 2.0 and i think its not much more then the io/26. Anyway hope this helps. Tommy

And yes what spikemullings says is true as well, you do have to crank the pres up quite high for most dynamic mics, the condensers are ok, other then that its a great unit for the price. My band actually uses it to rehearse through, the midi io is connected to a pad drum kit triggering either Steven Slate Drums or Superior 2, Hi hat is miked w a small condenser into one pre, bass into d.i. into line in, to ampeg svx, 2 guitars into instrument pres into Amplitube 3, 2 vocals into mic pres,and we have 2 channels open for acoustic gtr and hardware keyboards if needed. We have the buffer at 128, its rock solid,and latency is not bad at all, we are also able to record our rehearsals if we like to listen back, so its definately a cool little unit for the price. Tommy

Thanks for all the info guys. I'm getting this is instead of the Fast track ultra 8r because dv are out of stock and will probably be for the next month. I actually ordered the ultra 8r from them three weeks ago, but it still hasn't arrived at their warehouse let alone my door, and they can't get a straight answer from M-audio as to when it will arrive! The 8r has all the features I want, although I didn't particularly want a rack-mount interface (as I don't use racks), but I was willing to trade off on form factor for features. However, the IO 26 has all almost all the features I want, and the right form factor. It's just a shame it's firewire. I don't use any other firewire stuff, and I get the feeling firewire is being withdrawn from popular use (i.e. most new laptops/desktops don't have firewire ports anymore). Still, as long as it works on my current set-up I'm happy enough for now. When you were talking about latency you were talking about buffer sizes (which were quite impressive), but have you any "real-world" figures in ms? (If possible can you list in and out seperatly?)

Just to add to my previous post's PS. I do realise that my current setup will amplify the noise floor, yes. What I'm more concerned about is the level of the noise floor on this alesis. Is it just that the alesis has a higher output (when set to 100% output) than the edirol, or is it that it is just noisier?

I did a bit of research. here's what the specs say about the two devices: Edirol: Nominal Output Level Line Output Jacks-10 dBu Residual Noise Level -105 dBu or less (SN ratio: 108 dB, typ.) * Input terminated with 1 k ohms, MAIN VOLUME: 0 dB, Monitor: OFF, IHF-A typ. Alesis: (from the manual) Level: -10dBv/+4fBu nominal (switchable) SN ratio: 108dB A-weighted Residual Noise level: Not listed So... as far as I can tell, they claim to have the same s2n ration. So in theory they should sound the same. Ah, but the alesis has a switchable -10/+4db gain on it's outputs. To acheive this are they perhaps running it through a final gain stage? If so that stage could be introducing the noise whatever settings it is set to.. What do you think? Plausible? Or is it just a fault unit?

Swiftoid - Here's my guess. I'm guessing the gain control on the io26 is digital, with no actual changes in analog gain. If you pot a digital gain control down a bunch, you're still getting the full analog noise floor as if you had it at max volume. If your max SNR is 108dB and you're potted down -40dB, your SNR is now 68dB. I recommend just throwing a gain knob into the chain, it's really not going to hurt as much as you think.

I hope you can avoid the same problems I had with 2 of the IO 26's I owned... Be very careful if you leave your system on for any extended period of time. It is a known problem that these units can randomly reset and when they do they reset to MAX volume. No joke here. I nearly blew my KRK RP8's more than once(it is very random). I sent one unit back, and the new one seemed fine for a couple days and then BAM! same thing. As far as your noise issue,...it didn't seem to be excessive... I don't recall not being able to mix, so it must not have been as loud through my active monitors.