Why I buy this one ?
- 2 x 2 16-bit/48kHz analog I/O w/ preamps
- 2 microphone inputs (XLR balanced) with 48v phantom power
- 2 high-impedance instrument/line inputs (balanced/unbalanced 1/4" TRS)
- Zero-latency hardware direct monitoring (mono/stereo) with software level control
- USB-powered for total mobility

Streamline Audio Video offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $104.99 Usually ships in 24 hours

Amazon.com offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : Too low to display Usually ships in 24 hours

J&R Music and Computer World offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $108.88 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Music Bay offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $115.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

audioMIDIcom offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $115.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Musician's Friend offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $149.99 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Music Bay offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $149.95 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

American Musical Supply offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $129.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

BSW offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $129.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

SameDayMusic offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $129.00 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"If you want something solid - do not buy this!", Bought one of these a while back. on my first system i was running windows xp pro, the drivers then were bad. since then I've changed to vista 64 bit operating system. big mistake m-audio has no support what so ever. in their forums they have lied to people that they would have a driver out in a couple of weeks. That was nearly over half a year ago. So their strategy is to say this every three or four weeks just to keep you on the edge of your seat. before you buy this just go to their forum on their website and search for mobilepre usb 64 bit and see for your self. stay clear of this company!

"great home studio builder", any electronic musician who wants to record some vocals and sequenced music will love all the features of this device. Plus the version of Live is great.

"VISTA Support updated", Update: Looks like they actually came through with the VISTA drivers, which were released on 8/22/2008. Since I returned mine, I would love to hear if you have it working on Vista SP1 or better.


**** Previous review ****

Looked like a decent product, however.... Turns out that the drivers for VISTA are still in Beta after 1 year (last release of the driver is over a year ago). To make matters worse, it is known NOT to work with Vista SP1, as of May 2008. They don't expect to have a driver update until October. However, since the last driver update is over a year ago, I put the chances of a real driver update at near zero. Too bad, looked like a good product.

Didn't work on any of my VISTA machines. Sending it back.

"poor audio quality", I bought this preamp for "boosting" my voice as I record video tutorials. I own a Shure SM-58 microphone with XLR inputs, and my Intel MacPro has no such inputs, so I thought this would be just the thing. After installing the latest version of their drivers for Leopard or OS 10.5.1, I thought everything was going to be great. In System Preferences I changed all the proper input settings for the Mobilepre. Cranked the input volume all the way up on the hardware side and the sound that came out of there was simply DISAPPOINTING. It was so soft. I even tried turning on the Phantom power switch to see if that was the problem.

I guess the most disappointing aspect of this whole experience is that the M-Audio website was plain bad. I registered so I could sign on and contact tech support. Their website apparently was having problems and there were folks like myself posting that they couldn't log in. Somewhere on their website, they had a notice that said they were aware of that and apologized for that but no word on how or when they expect to have that fixed.

I don't mind having to jump through hoops to make something work but when there is no help in sight, and a company doesn't address tech support issues quickly, I'm going elsewhere. Perhaps this product works with Windows machines. I couldn't get it to work on an Intel MacPro running OS 10.5.2

"I like it", This is great for a laptop, because your music sounds so much better through it than through a puny laptop sound card. Like night and day. I am very satisfied with the recording sound quality for basic music recording. The controls are easy to access, everything is simple, and all I have to do is plug in the USB and it automatically switches between my computer sound card and the MobilePre.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"works great", works awsome for what I need it to do. Being USB powered lets me do things with it I wouldnt be able to do with other mic preamps or external sound devices

"Perfect", This item is perfect. it does what the manual says it does. I opened this box about two hours ago and I can't stop recording music with it. I installed the drivers, plugged it and it worked. I didn't have to do any configuration changes except for changing the input settings on Garageband. Sound is clear and I didn't have any flow in the sound or recording. I was able to record two instruments at the same time guitar and vocals. Preamp works a lot better than I expected. I would give it a 5 out 5. I recommend this item to anyone. I tried other items such as Tascam US-224 (good luck if you can make this thing work) and Tascam 788. A mac and this item is everything you need to start recording your own tracks. Also, they don't make it in blue color anymore like shown on the picture above. The new color is metallic gray with a black front. It matches the color of my Macbook Pro. Check out the new Mac Laptops they start at $1100 or the Mac Mini at $700. They both very powerful, but if you can afford a Macbook Pro buy one. You can't go wrong with a Mac it does more than windows base computers. You can also install windows if you like. but after using Mac OS X, you can't go back to windows.
Macbook Pro, Mac OS X 10.4.7
1.8 GHz, Dual Core Intel
I Gig Memory
Garage Band

"Bought it to Rip my LP collection", Since I don't do live music, you will probably look to other reviews from musicians from that standpoint. I am just an audiophile looking for a good external audio card that gets me away from the interference that happens to an audio card insided your PC case.

In the first two weeks, I discovered a couple of things. Out of the box the product seems to be well-constructed, BUT getting it loaded into Windows XP has proved a hassle.

First of all, I tried loading it on a new XP Media edition laptop, and that ended up being a failure, because you can't run this product through a USB Hub. On a USB 2 device (newer computer) it has to plug directly into the computer, and I had other uses (like wireless keyboard / mouse) that took precedence.

So, I decided to run it from a 5 year old XP Pro Dell desktop that actually serves my music collection, because it was built with USB 1.1 ports, although I added a USB 2 card and hub to it.

The Audiophile is a real "bear" to install in XP (at least for me on two different computers) -- it actually loads what appear to be two distinct drivers, and does a partial install and completes it on the re-boot. After 5 attempts, I am still trying get a complete good install. I usually get a partial install, which I can't correct -- even in XP "safe" mode, and have to strip the install and come back and try a re-install.

Now I'm not going to say this is all M-Audio's fault -- I am running SP2 with all the security fixes installed, and it may be a problem with a Microsoft update. Tech Support at M-Audio is not particularly helpful.

One of the interesting features is that the headphones jack does not monitor input -- rather they monitor playback only. That was a disturbing discovery.

I would recommend considering alternative cards if you are just looking for capturing music from other media. It may be a great MIDI recording source.

UPDATE after living with it for a few months, I did find I finally was able to connect it through a USB hub, so that's a plus. The headphone monitoring feature is still a nagging design disappointment. After all, we corrected that on analog tape decks over 35 years ago. You can't tell if you are clipping or underdubbing a source until you have finished and go back to listen to the whole thing. If you misjudge, you can't correct on the fly and you have to completely redub the recording.

"Great product!", The Amazon.com price is better than most that you will find out there, and the unit itself had no problems (I only use it with one microphone) The software that they included is a bit complicated and is just a trial version, so you shouldn't expect this to come with a fully functional mixing program. One thing that I didn't expect was that whenever my Mobilepre is plugged in, my computer automatically uses it as the audio device, so I have to plug my headphones into the Mobilepre, but this shouldn't be too big of a problem. The unit itself is extremely light! and I'm not sure if the blue and white version you see above is an older model or something, but the one I recieved and asked others about is a metallic silver color (which looks much cooler, so its a good thing!)

"You get what you pay for.", Great price for a portable usb mic pre. But you definitely get what you pay for. The audio quality is extremely poor, and it quite often crashed the system. If you are doing simple recordings like podcasts or just getting scratch tracks for song ideas, this is the item for you. Otherwise, save your pennies up for the Lexicon Omega, or the paragon of portable audio interface: the Mbox 2.