Sanderxpander
M Audio Fast Track Pro.

I've got a couple of these at school and will probably need to replace them pretty soon. With each update to Win7, they become a bit more unstable. They are also legacy at this point. Avid's site for the drivers states that they will not be compatible with Win10. 
 
http://avid.force.com/pkb...Fast-Track-Pro-Drivers
 
I've got an older RME BabyFace at home on my Win10 machine. It's a beautiful thing (it also worked flawlessly with Win7 64 bit). The best drivers I've seen. SPlat loves it.
 
OTOH, I've also got a MOTU Midi Express 128 midi interface. Cakewalk often will not recognize it when starting. After I re-plug in the USB cable, it's stable, but I have to adjust the midi connections in SPlat for the blip. I can't speak for the audio interfaces, but I've always had the impression (especially after talking to their "support staff") that Windows is generally a low priority for MOTU. Maybe that's changed, but I wish their driver for the Midi Express 128 was solid.

outland144k

Sanderxpander
M Audio Fast Track Pro.

I've got a couple of these at school and will probably need to replace them pretty soon. With each update to Win7, they become a bit more unstable. They are also legacy at this point. Avid's site for the drivers states that they will not be compatible with Win10. 

 
Ha, that was my first interface and I put that little box through some real hell. When I upgraded, also to a MOTU box, I gave it to a friend and he's still using that thing. It wasn't top of the line but it did the job and did it well.
 

outland144k
OTOH, I've also got a MOTU Midi Express 128 midi interface. Cakewalk often will not recognize it when starting. After I re-plug in the USB cable, it's stable, but I have to adjust the midi connections in SPlat for the blip. I can't speak for the audio interfaces, but I've always had the impression (especially after talking to their "support staff") that Windows is generally a low priority for MOTU. Maybe that's changed, but I wish their driver for the Midi Express 128 was solid.

 
I have a MOTU 8pre, the firewire version, running on my home-brew computer on Windows 10 x64. The original MOTU was about 10 years old and worked pretty damned well for me until just recently when I got a little ham-fisted and broke the multi-function knob on the front panel. Fortunately MOTU has an awesome program where you send them the out-of-warranty old unit and $99 and they'll ship you a factory-refurbished unit of the same model/series. I took advantage of that late last year and I expect I'll get another ten years out of it. In fact, I expect firewire to become unavailable before the box gives it up.
 
After a major OS update odd things tend to start happening and I have to uninstall and reinstall the drivers to restore it to normal operation. I've also never been able to do real-time monitoring with this interface, but I don't really need to so I can't say I've tried very hard to get it working well. (I use guitar rig in standalone mode for monitoring while recording bass and guitar and nothing at all for vocals, but the interface has lots of routing options built in that could do the job if I ever needed to do that.) It has settings for as low as 64 samples but I usually run it at 512 to get stutter-free playback, and sometimes higher when mixing/mastering. It has worked very well with both Sonar and Reaper.
 
I hasten to add that I've never really tried hard to optimize my computer or the OS for low latency operation. My computer, while powerful isn't specifically designed for real-time audio, but I've never really found that to be a problem for me. I do agree that MOTU places less emphasis on Windows in general, but this interfaces has been a real workhorse for me despite it's quirks. It's been a very solid device for my home studio. If I had to depend on an interface for my living I'd personally opt for an RME device but the 8pre is most certainly capable of handling that workload, particularly when coupled with a Mac.
 

JonD
On your Quad-Capture, do you have the most recent system update 1.04 (Different from driver update)?

 
Yes, both the sytem program and the driver are up-to-date (1.5.2/1.04).
 
 

Cactus Music
And second before shopping sit down and make a check list of what features you need, for now and for the near future. Here's a handy dandy check list of common features;

 
Thanks for the list and the other advice. I’ll definitely check the list.
 
 

Cactus Music
PS all these threads you've started really belong in Hardware sub forum where you'll find dozens of similar threads and all the same answers.

 
I thought about posting there, but since what's important is the compatibility with SONAR, I decided to post here. Also, I assumed that not many read the Hardware sub forum compared to this SONAR forum (I very rarely visit the sub forum).

jpetersen
I sent back a Quad Capture because in Hi-Z mode it is microphonic (just tap the box to hear it) and it has a low-level hum even with the laptop on battery and a short-circuited jack plug on the input. Becomes a problem when compression is introduced. Then you really hear it.

Confirmed by many other users and a Roland person I met at the Frankfurt MusikMesse. He said it was fine in prototype, the fault was introduced in production. No fixes foreseen.

My two OctaCaptures also do not like Hi-Z mode. They make motorboat noises but are OK when plugged in.
They also are very sensitive to digital ground loops and are unusable in my studio rack; for this reason I went back to my Tascam 16x08. No digital ground loop at all in exactly the same setup.

My older generation of Roland/Edirol interfacers (UA-101, UA-25EX) show no such problems whatsoever.

 
Thanks for posting this valuable info. I didn’t realize that Quad-Capture has this issue.

ryecatchermark
I had nothing but trouble with a MOTU 828x with Sonar, USB and Thunderbolt connection, even though it worked fine with other software.

Sanderxpander
M Audio Fast Track Pro.

jacksop
For some reason the Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 and Alesis iO2 EXPRESS didn't work for me.

jude77
Roland quad-capture was a total disaster. SPLAT Windows 7

Kev999
I have used Line6 interfaces, 3 different models, and they all behave similarly. Sometimes during a lengthy session, Sonar would suddenly lose it's connection to the interface for no apparent reason. The device would simply disappear from the input/output menus. A reboot was necessary to put it back to normal. Also, Sonar would often crash while looping.

outland144k

Sanderxpander
M Audio Fast Track Pro.

I've got a couple of these at school and will probably need to replace them pretty soon. With each update to Win7, they become a bit more unstable.

outland144k
OTOH, I've also got a MOTU Midi Express 128 midi interface. Cakewalk often will not recognize it when starting. After I re-plug in the USB cable, it's stable, but I have to adjust the midi connections in SPlat for the blip. I can't speak for the audio interfaces, but I've always had the impression (especially after talking to their "support staff") that Windows is generally a low priority for MOTU. Maybe that's changed, but I wish their driver for the Midi Express 128 was solid.

kevinwal
I do agree that MOTU places less emphasis on Windows in general, but this interfaces has been a real workhorse for me despite it's quirks. It's been a very solid device for my home studio.

 
I’ll take all these into consideration. Thank you all very much!
 

It may seem too "picky" to you all, but it seems to me recommending a particular audio interface without telling your specific latency setting in the ASIO pannel and average track count, and what those tracks consist of, seems pretty useless.

Here is a list of Audio hardware:
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013101/Open-Audio-Hardware-Guide
 
This might be helpful to just see a bunch of them all in one place.

chuckebaby
Here is a list of Audio hardware:
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013101/Open-Audio-Hardware-Guide
 
This might be helpful to just see a bunch of them all in one place.

indeed useful, although some devices are recommended to use mme drivers! (maybe needs updating?)

M-audio FTP, then M-audio mobile pre, then Mackie Onyx Black Jack.
 
The FTP would hardly work properly, then it died altogether. The Mobile Pre worked a little better, but still always gave me grief. The Mackie was the worst. I never did get the drivers to work properly.
 
All the above were on Win 8.1.
 
Then I changed to a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 to trial first, then to my current 18i20. They started on 8.1, then moved onto win 10. Both have been rock solid, though occasionally I have to delete and re-install the driver for 18i20, always after a win update. But that's about as much grief as I have had. Couldn't be happier.
 
All the best.

pwalpwal

chuckebaby
Here is a list of Audio hardware:
http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013101/Open-Audio-Hardware-Guide
 
This might be helpful to just see a bunch of them all in one place.

indeed useful, although some devices are recommended to use mme drivers! (maybe needs updating?)

Well it would be nice if you helped the OP out by listing some ?
or are you here simply for your morning debate ?