E-mu 1820M
A PCI soundcard whose converters embarrassed systems costing many times more - provided you could live with the breakout box on your desk.
Overview
The 1820M was the flagship hardware piece of E-mu's Digital Audio Systems line. It topped a five-product family that also included the 1212M, the 1820, and the two Emulator X bundles. It came as a PCI card plus an external AudioDock breakout box, connected over a lengthy Cat-5 cable that carried both signal and power. That two-piece arrangement shaped the ownership experience as much as the spec sheet did. The pitch was simple and, by most accounts, accurate: E-mu's "m" series cards used the same 24-bit/192 kHz converters as Digidesign's multi-thousand-dollar Pro Tools HD systems, and the 1820M had the high-end converters and the most I/O of the bunch. Sound On Sound (February 2006, p.31) put the dynamic range at 120 dB, a figure that had no business showing up on a card in this price class.
The analog side was generous. There were six balanced line inputs and eight balanced line outputs on ¼-inch connectors, two mic/line/high-impedance preamps with phantom power, a dedicated turntable input, and four stereo ¼-inch outputs meant for surround monitoring. On the digital side you got switchable ADAT and S/PDIF optical, coaxial S/PDIF, word clock, SMPTE, and MTC sync. The last two came from an additional daughterboard, and that board is what separated the 1820M from the plain 1820. Two sets of MIDI ports and a headphone output rounded out the panel, and a FireWire 400 interface sat alongside the PCI connection. Sampling rates ran 44.1, 48, 96, and 192 kHz at a maximum of 24 bits.
The onboard DSP is what made the system more than a converter box. The 1820M's hardware-accelerated effects ran inside the PatchMix mixer application. PatchMix shipped with dozens of presets, including routings that sent audio out of the system and back in again, and an option that let any VST host use the hardware effects. Sound On Sound (June 2004) called the combination of flexible routing, onboard DSP, and a virtual patch bay the real power of the system, and the reviewer flatly refused to send the review unit back. The effects were also packaged as E-MU Power FX, promising sixteen simultaneous effects inside a sequencer with no CPU hit.
Owners report the usual PCI-era headaches. The breakout box ate desk space, the Cat-5 tether limited where it could sit, and the drivers were a Windows affair through and through — ASIO for full channel counts, with the included WDM drivers supplying a maximum of only two channels. Emulator X, the software sampler bundled with the Studio version of this hardware, had a documented bug in early releases where trying to access external FireWire or USB drives through the Library tab would dump the user out of the program and close it; E-mu was reportedly working on a fix for the next release. None of this was unusual for 2004, but it dates the 1820M firmly to the era when a "soundcard" meant a card, a box, a cable, and a driver installer you ran more than once.
The 1820M was sold both as hardware alone and as part of the Emulator X Studio bundle. The bundle added the Emulator X sampling application, built on EOS, the operating system from E-mu's hardware samplers, complete with the company's Z-Plane morphing filters. It also included Cubase, SFX Machine Lite, a file-format converter, and a pile of sample libraries. Buyers who started with the hardware-only version could add the sampler later for $149, which reviewers at the time called one of the better deals going. The system was also sold through Carillon as part of package deals with boxed Steinberg Cubase, and Carillon's own literature made the Pro Tools HD converter comparison its lead argument.
Reception was unusually warm for a soundcard. Martin Walker, reviewing for Sound On Sound (June 2004), wrote that after more than sixty soundcards over eight years he was rarely surprised anymore. He said E-mu was the first company to get the versatile-I/O-plus-DSP-effects formula right, at prices that would drop competitors' jaws. Computer Music (May 2004) singled out the fidelity, and the Recording review awarded the bundle its DAW/audio-interface honor for the year. The consensus was that the integration of hardware and software from a single manufacturer was the point, not any single spec. That meant hardware-accelerated effects that didn't tax the host CPU, a mixer with real routing depth, and a sampler with genuine pedigree.
Today the 1820M is a period piece. The converters still have their defenders, and the DSP effects remain usable from a modern VST host, which is more than most 2004 interfaces can claim. But it is a PCI card, so it needs a desktop with a free slot and a Windows machine willing to run drivers from that era. The AudioDock's Cat-5 cable is a proprietary dependency, and if the box or cable goes missing, the system is finished. Collectors and home-studio tinkerers pick them up for the converter quality and the Emulator X bundle rather than for convenience. The smart ones insist on the breakout box, the cable, and the driver disc being present before handing over money. It is not a plug-and-play purchase in any sense.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.