ESI WaveTerminal 192M

ESI's WaveTerminal 192M is a 24-bit, 96kHz input A/D convertor, 24-bit, 192kHz output D/A convertor sound device. It has a headphone output, 24-bit, 192kHz sample rate S/PDIF and 24-bit, 96kHz optical output.

The WaveTerminal series of cards can also come with the optional MI/ODI/O add on card which adds to any WaveTerminal device a coaxial I/O, 16 channels of MIDI I/O and an optical input.

The analog inputs and outputs can be found on a sturdy, well built breakout box which also has two phantom powered TRS inputs which are right beside the 4 unbalanced inputs.

As the vast majority of the ESI line, the WaveTerminal 192M comes with ESI's E-WDM driver package which supports Microsoft's WDM standard driver as well as ASIO 2.0, MME, DirectSound and their own DirectWire™ technology. The device works with Windows 98SE and later operating systems and Mac OS 10.x.

Installation

Installing the main card and the daughter card was a nice simple task, fit was good and the mate up nicely. The connection to the daughter card (which carries the midi i/o as well as the optical i/o) is made via a small flex connector. And again a very good solid connection unlike some I have seen on the market. The main card installs in an open PCI slot, while the daughter card simply resides next to it and connects as I said via the flex connector. So you essentially lose the use of one PCI slot, which is not a big deal unless you have alot of PCI cards onboard.

The driver installation was smooth as any I have dealt with. Be aware though it is a multiple driver installation, so you will need to be patient and let windows take the time it needs to install the drivers. At the time I installed the card with the standard issue drivers that were on the install CD. I will make a note here that they were a a very good driver set and ran almost flawlessly. The only issue I had was in Sonar and soundforge it had a mix up on the output designations, swapping 3/4 and 5/6 around. This however was simply fixed by uninstalling the older driver set and installing the newer version from ESI's website. The newer drivers come with ESI's own uninstaller. I was a bit wary as I had heard of crash issues with it in Windows XP Pro. I did not however have that issue appear, the uninstall went fine and windows upon rebooting went right about the task of wanting to install the new drivers. I would recomend making sure you point to the exact folder you extract the drivers to though to insure a clean install.

Set-up

Setting up all my software to use the Waveterminal was again a very simple task. Sonar found the card without any problems at all. The set up for ASIO was straight forward and without problems. SoundForge was basically the same set up and away I go. Wavelab did take a few moments to set itself up as it didnt want to accept the driver change at first. This however was really a problem on my end. It seems the M-Audio drivers didnt want to play nice with the ESI drivers. Uninstalling the M-Audio drivers fixed that right up. I did notice however with the install of the original drivers from the factory CD that it set itself up automatically to be the windows default card. This however did not happen with the updated drivers.

Performance

This is were the card began to sway my choice for making it a permanant piece of gear here. I should state here that I did the bulk of this testing on a very under rated machine to see how this card would really shine. The systm was an older PIII 667 Coppermine running on a Tyan MB with 768 meg of ram. And the Waveterminal was forced to run alongside a SoundBlaster card just to see how it played with others. I will explain that in a bit as it refers to another great ESI bit of software, DirectWIRE 3.0.

First shot running the older drivers I got a latency of about 8.5ms, which on this old box is pretty good and beat the M-Audio latency by about 5ms. After installing the newer drivers the latency went down to 5.8 using the EWDM and 2.9 using the ASIO drivers. On my newer machine running an AMD Athalon XP at 2.4ghz with only 512meg of ram both the EWDM and ASIO drivers were at 1ms latency. For me this is a big bonus as I run software synths frequantly and latency can be an issue there. It is also a plus if you plan on running any FX plugs live while recording a track.

After a bit of tweaking I got the EDWM drivers or in Sonar they are listed as WDM/KS drivers running at the same 2.9ms as the ASIO 2.0 drivers on the older PC. In all the driver configurations the audio was clean with no dropouts running a stack of 16 tracks of audio with the latency buffer in the the Waveterminal control panel set at 128. Running the softsynths was just as pleasant with no missfires in the system at all. Playing them live was just as clean as running them with a midi track. ESI's specs show a very good SNR and in comparing the noise floor of my old interface against the Waveterminal, the Waveterminal was visably cleaner by about 19 to 23dB.

Just a short note on DirectWIRE®. I found many uses for this neat little application, including sending a final mix straight to SoundForge or Wavelab without having to first export the mixdown. For me this was handy for mixing in External hardware synths into the mix as it went to SoundForge or WaveLab without anyproblems at all. This saved having to export once and finding something amiss in the mix and then deleting and redoing another mixdown.

The digital portion of the interface was as well flawless. I easliy piped out of the main card with both the optical and the s/pdif with only a couple of clicks on their control panel. And the same for both in and out of the optical on the daughter card. And the midi was spot on and kept up nicely even when sending out all 16 channels with a fully loaded symphony going to one of my external synths.

DirectWire®

DirectWire® is a software based "virtual wiring" system developed by AudioTrak, a division of ESI. It is used for some more advanced routing options using the standard driver types WDM, ASIO and MME. And these can even be used simultaneously. This DirectWire® system can also route signals output via GigaStudio.

Without getting in to a great deal of detail here, since it is beyond the scope of this review, I leave it at saying that DirectWire® can be looked at as a sort of software patchbay between drivers and devices on your PC. I better tutorial for this system can be found at the AudioTrak web site.

Driver Technology

The "E-WDM" drivers supplied with this card is an ESI-developed standard that is what Microsoft's original WDM standard was supposed to do, that is, create a single driver type that supports all devices. This driver, which is now shipping with almost every ESI sound device, supports standard WDM driver specifications as well as ASIO 2.0, GIGAStudio, MME, ESI's DirectWire® technology, DirectSound and much more, all rolled in to a single device driver. The result is a very high performance, low latency driver that well out performs my previous card. Their implementation of the WDM driver spec is the best performing that I have seen in any of the dozen or so devices I have played with in my life.

Conclusion

Pros:
Very steady interface, easy to get up and running, configures easily in most applications. And excellant cost for performance value. I would recomend this before many of the more expensive interfaces. ASIO performance is outstanding. WDM is as well.

Cons:
When running the normal EWDM drivers in Sonar I did have several crashes when trying to use outputs 7/8. Also with Waveterminal MultiChannel drivers selected it swapped outputs 3/4 and 5/6, which could have been an issue in Sonar. I also noticed the meters in ESI's control panel for inputs 3/4 dont come on untill I click the moniter/HP button and then click it off again and the meters stay on from then on out. But the digital inputs meters also bounce even though I had no signal to the digital inputs. This is an issue I am sure will be resolved easily.

I have to admit this interface is as rock steady or steadier then what I have used in my studio through the years. I have made the Waveterminal 192M a permanant addition to the PigPen, and am looking at adding one of their newer larger interfaces as well. I put many hours on thsi card so far without much problems so far, and I look forward to putting many more on it as well as another in the near future. For the price I will be recomending this card over several others I have recommended over the years. I look forward to doing more business with ESI in the future. And I will be eagerly awaiting the forthcoming ESP1010 for the next review of their gear.