The Audiotrak MAYA 44 USB: Multitrack Audio For a Song

When the "Mic In" is No Longer Enough
So you're rockin' and rollin' with GarageBand, mixing AppleLoops with your own melody lines hammered out on that nifty USB keyboard you picked up for less than a hundred bucks. You've spun a few genre-bending "Country Techno" ditties that, suprisingly enough, have generated you quite a following on MacJams.com and made you the hit of the party wherever you go (since you export all your jams to AAC and carry your iPod with you everywhere.). You're ready for the bigtime and think that incoporating some recorded sounds -- vocals, audio snippets from C-SPAN, maybe even some of your little brother's band's rehearsal tapes -- is your ticket to fame.

It's time for you to leave your iBook's headphone jack behind and dive headlong into the obsessive-compulsive gadgethead world of digital audio gear. You need to get yourself an I/O (input/output) box.

Digital audio hardware interfaces come in a variety of shapes and sizes, each with its own set of bells, whistles, and loyal devotees. An I/O box can run you anywhere from 30 bucks to more than a Kia Rio Cinco would set you back, and can give your Mac the capacity to anything from record yourself singing through a proper microphone to churn out fully mixed, pro-quality CDs encoded with 7.1 surround sound.

What these boxes have in common is that they convert analog signals (sound, in this case) into digital data that your computer can work with, and then reverse the process on the way out so you can play your digital audio through headphones or your stereo system. Your iBook or PowerBook has a modest built-in system for doing at least part of this process, as all Apple laptops have a headphone jack (and many have an audio-in port). However, adding a hardware audio interface will improve your Mac's audio quality and can also add multitrack recording/mixing, digital and surround sound output, and MIDI capabilities. Don't worry if that reads like Greek to you ... We'll explain as we go.

A Recording Studio in Your Messenger Bag
The most basic audio I/O devices, like Griffin's popular iMic use standard USB and 1/8" stereo "minijack" connections to convert one stereo signal from analog to digital and back again with CD-quality results. You can use a device like this for recording vocals from an inexpensive microphone or digitizing cassette tapes or vinyl records (make sure you get a device rated for phono line-level in if you want to work with a turntable), and it'll set you back around $35.

Very sophisticated I/O devices designed for professional recording studios can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and often feature full-sized mixing desks with lots of buttons, knobs, and slider controls that interface directly with your computer. These systems utilize high-speed PCI card or Firewire interfaces to handle the recording, mixing, and playback of multiple channels of audio information simultaneously. Professional systems are used to record full bands to multiple channels so that individual instruments, vocal, and effects tracks can be independently mixed and tweaked after the recording is over. Digidesign's ProTools system has become the industry standard for digital audio recording, and is used in recording studios worldwide. The system's ability to let engineers and producers quantitize and otherwise manipulate "live" music to acheive a melodically or rhythmically "perfect" final product has changed the face of pop music over the past few decades.

In between these two extremes of digital audio hardware lies the prosumer or "home studio" category of hardware and software. Home studio systems harness the computing power of your Mac and augment it with I/O boxes and other hardware designed to handle tasks specific to the digitizing, mixing, and playback processes. Prosumer digital audio has matured rapidly over the past five years or so, to the point where a Mac owner can turn his machine into a multitrack digital recording studio for a thousand dollars or less. The development of high-speed USB and Firewire data transfer has brought these capabilities to the laptop user now, as well. Much as ProTools changed the way we record and listen to commercial music, affordable home and portable studio software has given rise to the "indie" musician and a cottage industry growing around him/her.

My own band, for instance, is gearing up to record our first CD. Where only a few years ago we'd be doing everything we could to get a record label -- any label -- to sign us and foot the enormous bill for studio time, now we have the option of doing it ourselves. Many studios in the New York City area where we live offer full-fledged digital recording studios -- complete with an engineer manning the controls -- for as little as $25/hour. For around $500 and a day or two of our time, we could walk out with a professional-quality CD (or five song EP, at least). Of course, for not much more we could buy or rent the equipment to do it ourselves, as well.

Later in this series we'll take a look at portable home studio options from two leading digital audio companies. Digidesign's MBox and M-Audio's Firewire 410 are high-quality multitrack interfaces suitable for working with vocals, live instruments, electronic music, and/or pre-recorded samples. Both systems can form the core of a great Mac-based home studio and are small enough to travel with. And both sell for less than $500.

Since $500 is a big chunk of money to lots of bedroom musicians, let's first take a look at a very inexpensive introduction to multitrack audio production: The $129 Maya 44 USB from Audiotrak.

Four Channels on a Budget: The Audiotrak Maya 44 USB -- $149 list / $119 lowest price
Audiotrak is a division of Ego Systems, a Korean company, and has its US headquarters in San Jose, CA. They primarily make sound cards for gaming and surround sound systems and most of their market has been amongst PC users. The PR contact I spoke with was quite excited to reach out to the Mac user base, as well he should be: The Maya 44 USB is a very easy-to-use, cost-effective way to get into multitrack digital audio. With its small size and USB plug-and-play connectivity, it's a great upgrade for the GarageBand users who wants to bring high-quality audio into his system or, more pointedly, musicians and DJs who want to add easy, portable multichannel capabilities to their Mac laptop.

Maya 44 USB is a rectangular black box about the size of two iPod Minis if you laid them end-to-end. It weighs less than a pound. The box has a single five-foot long USB cable on one end, a combination headphone/optical digital (TOS-LINK) out jack on the other end, and a series of eight RCA-type jacks along one side. Four of the RCA jacks are black and four are red -- the black ones are for Analog Out and the red are Analog In. Maya 44 gets its power from the USB bus, and when you plug it in, a red LED indicator illuminates. Additional LEDs display activity on each of the analog I/Os and the headphone/Optical port.

The box is truly plug-and-play. A control panel app is available for download from the Audiotrak website, but this actually isn't necessary to get the box up and running. OS X (10.3.3) recognized the device as both an input and output option in the Sound preference panel and GarageBand recognized and initalized it, as well. The Maya control panel adds the ability to independently adjust input/output volumes on each of the tracks, which is nice if you want ultimate control over your input and output levels.

Maya 44 is ASIO compliant, which means that it plays nicely with most major audio software including Live, Logic, Reason, and a host of others. The four analog input channels are actually routed through the box as two stereo pairs, which means that you can't record or control all four channels separately, but rather that you work with them as two stereo pairs. For $129, this is more than acceptable -- you can do a lot with two simultaneous stereo audio signals, whether you're recording live instruments, working with prerecorded or electronic music, or mixing the two.

Now, GarageBand can't handle recording multiple tracks at once, so you'll need to upgrade to other software (a well-received alternative to more costly recording apps is Tracktion, which was such a big hit as shareware that it's now being distributed by Mackie). But once you do, the fun really starts.

For instance, you could connect a mixing board to one set of stereo inputs and a DAT or mini disc to the other for recording/mixing of live instruments (through the board) and digital samples (from the DAT). You could run microphones through pre-amp boxes, a mixing board, or a PA and record two vocal channels at once and then mix them down separately. Or you could use a mixing board with sub-grouping capabilities to record a live band to one stereo channel and a vocalist to the other channel, giving you the ability to do vocal overdubbing later. Once you move from one track to two simultaneous tracks of audio recording, you gain a lot of flexibility, and the Maya 44 lets you do it.

Beyond that, the ability to route your output channels is great for musicians and computer DJs alike. Using an ASIO-compliant program like Live, I could run two stereo signals through the Maya and out to two separate channels of a powered mixer, allowing me to smoothly cue, mix, and fade different audio sources during a live DJ "performance." Well, if I had skills I could do this ... the fact that I can't quite pull it off certainly isn't Maya's fault. Seasoned DJs and electronic musicians will have even more creative ways to take advantage of all eight audio channels, I'm sure.

The RCA outputs found here aren't the standard 1/4" or XLR interfaces used on top-quality PAs and mixing boards, but they allow for the Maya's tiny size and should be compatible with virtually any system with the use of a readily had RCA-to-1/4" adaptor. If the thought of using an adaptor offends your audiophile sensibilities, then you're probably willing to spend more than $130 on an I/O box, anyway.

Sound Quality
Maya 44 USB uses an 18-bit processor to produce 16-bit audio across a full 20-20,000 Hz spectrum at 44.1 or 48 KHz sampling rates. This is also known as "16/48" audio, which is basically CD-quality and fine for most home recording projects; more sophisticated systems can produce "24/96" or even higher-rate signals. Full technical specs are available on the product's home page.

I used the Maya to run audio in and out of my PowerBook using GarageBand, Live 3, and Reason 2.0. I also used it to play digital audio through my home stereo via iTunes. In all cases I used the standard analog RCA jacks and the headphone port. Sound quality was very good, and the built-in headphone amplifier helped deliver a nice, clean signal to both sets of phones I tried.

Using Maya with Live was great because I was able to record multiple tracks, mix them as I pleased, and then route two separate channels of stereo output as well. The more I learn about digital audio and software-based sound applications, the more I'm amazed. Those who argue about the superior sound quality afforded by analog recording equipment and full hardware-based mixing boards have a point, I'm sure, but for the hobbyist the digital audio revolution is nothing short of amazing. For $225 you can add a Maya 44 USB and Tracktion studio software to your Mac and have a recording setup capable of four simultaneous tracks of recording and virtually limitless tracks of mixing and playback. Add another $100-200 for a small mixing board and you can record a live band with separate vocal track all at once. Amazing.

Overall I was quite impressed with the Maya 44 USB. I wish there was a way to route the four inputs as four separate channels of audio and not two stereo pairs, but for this price beggars can't be choosers. Audiotrak would do well to package this little wonder with a limited version of a multitrack recording app so users can take full advantage of the system right out of the box. Maybe Apple will include support for two simultaneous tracks of recording in their next GarageBand update. Now that would be something.

The Audiotrak Maya 44 USB is available from many music stores and computer audio specialists. It lists for $149 and as of press time was available for as low as $119 plus tax and shipping.

In the Next Part of the Series
Building a Home Studio: Advanced Systems For Under $500 from Digidesign and M-Audio

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Noah Kravitz runs the Technology and Culture blog Threebase.com. He is an educator, musician, and writer who calls Brooklyn, NY home and the author of the forthcoming book, Teaching and Learning with Technology.