ESI WaveTerminal 2496

- What technical features/characteristics motivated your choice?
This was virtually the only card to have SYMETRICAL INS and OUTS. And to this day there are not that many that do! This has symetricals on big jacks, 2 in 2 out, plus digital coax in & out.
It's full duplex.

- I hardly used this and cost me a fortune so you could call me an idiot.

- I have an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe with an Athlon XP 2600+ and 2 GB of PC3200.

- I play mostly guitar but i've used this to transfer cassettes to pc for dehissing and other digital sources for realtime transfer.

I also have an optional sister board that provides 2 midi in and 2 midi out.

Very low latency.

UTILIZATION

Installs well, good drivers. Forget about Vista, i guess, then again who wants Vista for anything except masochists?

Works fine.

Rather easy to use though i must admit i hate PC's and much prefer working with my Roland 24 track.

Never used the manual.

GETTING STARTED

Drivers stable, dont need updating.
This card is very old now so forget about new drivers.

I used this with Samplitude & Fruity Loops.

The latency can go down to a few ms.

Never tried multitracking.

OVERALL OPINION

I've had this ages but rarely used it.

It's straightforward & simple.
But it's in the PC. If you turn the volume up real loud u can hear stuff. I don't get that on my Roland recorder. Maybe if this was outboard it would be more silent. It's not pro therefore, if you had any doubt.

Never tried any other models.

The price was 3300 Francs / 500 euros / £330 at the time. Amazing, eh?
Second hand i've seen it for about 50 euros: a bargain ! Well worth it!

- Knowing what you know now, would you make the same choice?...
No, i'd not buy one cos i didn't use this for years...would have saved me a loooot of money and i could have got this second hand for peanuts! ;-D

PCI card
2 TRS Jacks 6.35-IN AND OUT coaxial inputs / outputs
converters excellent (quality Ego Sys)
24 bit 96 Khz
Top drivers compatible any platform (also available for Mac)
ASIO 2, WDM, Direct X, MME, GSIF
No soft drinks provided

UTILIZATION

No problem installing
or compatibility
config sober and simple, the control panel is very simple

GETTING STARTED

The drivers are excellent (multiclient card completely, I'm running Orion Pro, ACID and Soundforge same time no problemo)
Regularly updated.
It runs on my Athlon XP1600 +, ASUS A7A266 motherboard, 512MB DDR, HDD 40 GB IBM 7200 + Edirol UM1 MIDI interface USB
(And she turned as well on my PIII 500 in simultaneous with ISIS!)

OVERALL OPINION

I've had 2 years and I'm really happy.
What's best is its function multiclient very developed, its drivers GSIF (Gigastudio) very effective, its very low latency ...
I bought at the same time as GigaStudio and I turn my isis ...
(And my hardware sampler ...)
Why have eight entries at the hour of samplers and synth.? ..
It is a bit expensive, but it is a quality product ...
I bought 2590 F at the time, but I think she grew