EGOSYS WAMI-BOX

Category:  Products / audio interfaces / soundcards + breakout box

Added: 15-Jan-00  |  Author: admin

New price: £ 499  |   S/H price: Not listed

Company Link:  No company link

EGOSYS WAMI-BOX

Good-God almighty !!!.. I nearly swallowed me spliff when i read this !!... EGOSYS say:- "EGOSYS introduces the World's first PCMCIA Digital Audio System for Musicans on the Move" - and they ain't wrong !!!... previous to this product, finding even a decent stereo pcmcia analog-only I/O card was about as hopeful as finding an honest politician, and if you did find one they were ludicrously overpriced with crappily under-spec'd facilities - Well, hallelujiah & p-raise the Lord is all I can say... Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together and welcome the new EGOSYS 'Wami-Box' !!

Laptops are great... transportable... sexy... the LCD screens dont bore holes into your eyeballs with harmful bombardments of 'ye olde worlde' cathode-ray tube nasty type stuff, and really, overall, with a decent TFT screen and a decent processor & ram they are great !!.... My mate uses an old IBM P2 Thinkpad with VST, and also does all his editing work on it in Wavelab... He's professional, having remixed in the past people like J.Jackson & Dru Hill etc as well as endless local & unknown tracks... but for recording vocals & guitars etc, he tracks onto a tape unit, then transfers the audio into the lappy to mix using onboard DX & VST fx... it's perfect for quality demo & song preparation work, where he brings songs up to a product-quality midi backing standard with his outboard midi kit and then add's good quality, acceptable vocals on top... when the product is label-accepted, they take the backing midi and lay a master vocal & BV's etc over it in a fullblown studio with the selected vocalist for the song, decent mic's and outboard etc etc...

Now, I'm gonna tell him about this WAMI-BOX tommorrow, cos he's up for a new laptop soon so he was saying the other day, and if he can track reliably into his lappy he'll save hours of transfer work getting the vocals etc over from the tape machine, and at the same time, gain WAAAAAAY better quality analog multi I/O and s/dif for direct to DAT mixdown.... That is the sorta thing this product offers, as well as the ability to do location recording too, so he could go to the session players place to record say the guitar etc if needed with nothing more than the box, the lappy, and a decent mic & stand... and at the price of £499 it's a joke !! - blimey, you'll pay something like £200 for a decent pcmcia network card or modem !! -

On top of that, this product also would get him a midi port on the same unit !!... currently he uses a MOTU pocket-express thingy, and again, the pitifully few pcmcia audio I/O cards out there dont have midi, meaning you have to use another port for your midi thus introducing potential problems with sync between audio & midi as each is using a different address... add to that s/pdif too... heaven !!... all your editing work is covered with direct to DAT or minidisk editing etc...

That is the sorta person this product will be ideal for, and you can rest assured I'll definately use his track-record to try to wangle a test/review unit out of the distributor asap !! - but... a unit like this, (as long as it does work as stated and has LOW latency), also for the first time can potentially tempt traditional tower & desktop users over to laptops, which are actually quieter and way easier to work with in a studio especially the LCD screen and lack of power-supply fan noise... and they use less space too..


Technical Specifications

• 20 Bit A/D  D/A convertors, 98dB Dynamic Range

• 20 Bit Output resolution and Internal computations on 28 Bits 16 Bit Internal Resolution

• 2 In / 4 Out unbalanced Analog In/Out, -10dBv unbalanced Gold-tipped RCA jack

• S/PDIF Coaxial & Optical Digital In & Out with Real-time Hardware Sample-rate Converter -(48 to 44.1)

• Mic Preamp with effects, Headphone Amp, Gold-tipped 1/4" Mic Input socket and 1/4" stereo socket for headphone monitoring

• full LED Display; 9 large Activity Indicators

• Microsoft DirectSound support

• Multiple sample rates... 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz

• Full Duplex... 2 Channel Record/ 4 Channel Playback simultaneously

• Uses standard PCMCIA socket - DMA Channel not required

• High perfomance Audio DSP (not CPU dependent) based Internal Mixer Hardware & professional quality Multi-effects Processor.

• Simultaneous 4 Channel Play plus Stereo Record Multi-band Parametric equalizer

• 13 Delay lines for resonance free stereo reverb (reverb, delay, chorus, echo, etc.)

• Up to 64 voice 16 multi-timbral professional sampler (user- upgradeable GS GM XG)

• 16 Mb onboard RAM for Synth & Sampler

• 32 Channel MIDI Operation ; 16 ch internal and 16ch External

• MPU-401(UART)1 In/1 Out MIDI Interface

• Interactive 3D positioning - 4 Channel surround (will be upgraded)

• Fully programmable; Firmware downloaded to memory at power-up - Easy software upgrade

• Signal to Noise Ratio (D/A) : 108dB

• Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz

• Chip programming available to third party software companies

• Compatible with all major software ...Cubase, Cakewalk, Logic, Saw Pro, Wave Lab, Sound Forge, Rebirth RB-338, etc.

Blimey... see what I mean ??.. it really is fully featured... all I can say is, brilliant !!... IF it works, especially the drivers with proprietry brand s/w sequencers like Logic & Cake & VST, cos they ALL sound brilliant in the press-releases eh?... The most exciting thing is tho, it does give us dance techie's finally the chance to get decent audio I/O and digital transfer for studio work, and at the same time the ability to take the same machine out to do live midi gig's.. and hell, you could even playback some audio parts live too... the unit requires NO external power, and is palm size and robust... So now, if 4 analog outs & s/pdif is enuff, (and for dance related styles it certainly should be), you CAN decide to buy that lap-top to play live, yet still get decent quality results in the studio without having to buy a dedicated studio desktop or tower machine... awesome!!...

I'm VERY tempted, cos hey... with a lappy, (i do have an old DELL one), you can lie in bed and write your articles & documents... and I just thought... as this also has a built in synth, shit, you can compose on the road too with no other kit.. the sounds prolly ain't gonna set your world on fire, but to be able to power up in a hotel and create drum grooves & the rest for later remixing with your outboard 'real' kit is a great option, and at the price this thing is set at, it's pretty much like getting it for free !!...

Well, sure, we'll have to wait 'til these hit the shops and reviews appear to see how it lives up to the hype.. but all I can say is this.. sometimes products come along that force me to immeadiatly write and add them into dancetech, and some of them gimme a likkle tingle when i discover them... This is one such item... that dsp parametric eq, (full duplex), on both the stereo IN and the 4 outs as you record & playback !!.. nice if you're lappy is stressed, and that 3rd party chip programming looks VERY interesting for the future... Also, with a SCSI equipt lappy you could add a bag-rack u/w scsi array rack to plug into for further power, or have a scsi drive array at home in the studio rack, and use the onboard drive for location work.. heh heh...

The era of the serious portable studio c'est arrive !!!

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