FWIW, I’m here at the Steinberg forum because after 18 months of trying to make my E-Mu 1616m PCI Microdock work again with non-ASIO software, I gave up and went all the way to a UR824, chosen because other products either don’t have DSP FX or don’t have enough analog I/O. My first impression is that the UR is pretty, and its on-screen “board” is easier to read, but as for FX, I’m unimpressed. And although I got Skype to work correctly a couple days ago, thanks to a post that said “turn on Loopback,” today if I have loopback on and the slider volume up, I get continuous echo. [UPDATE: You need loopback to be on (red), but that produces the echo. I made the echo go away by checking (or was it unchecking?) “Allow apps to take exclusive control of this device” in the Windows line properties pop-up (whether in Recording or Playback, I don’t recall either offhand). Why that should matter, I have no idea yet. It’s still not perfect, because the other party (the Skype test-call lady) is coming in on my channel, with a touch of lag, so I at least still have some routing to sort out. (Sigh. With the 1616 it was a no-brainer, I used it for years, it worked and knew none of this stuff.)
That and at one point the software froze, and I had to reload it. But I digress, that’s for another post.
Yes, if your 1820m is like the 1616m, it works with Win7 if you use the Beta driver. But the wide range of E-Mu product owners have had varying results, with no apparent pattern. When I upgraded from XP Pro to Win 7 Ultimate in 2013, the 1616 worked fine for 10 months, and life went on. Then suddenly in Nov 2013, non-ASIO programs couldn’t hear the “WAVE” signal. So no Skype, no Audacity, no talking in webinars, etc. I’m not a tech expert, but from this and other symptoms and imput from people who know more about this stuff, it seems totally like a driver problem. For some people the product still works, for others, it doesn’t, for me it works fine except for the non-ASIO output. Some posts have suggested that the 1616 doesn’t get along with more than 4G of memory. I finally got fed up and moved on.
But I never realized how much I’d become accustomed to E-Mu’s PatchMix DSP FX being able to tailor my computer’s speaker output. So far, the 824’s included FX doesn’t hold a candle to it in ease of use, and I suspect it might also fall short in the range of effects, or at least presets. Does the 824 have a “stereo reverb” and chorus? (I used them a lot for giving mono ambiance a stereo feel.) And with a single click, I could listen to a poor-audio webinar even while doing the dishes, no problem.
If you want to persist in trying to kick E-Mu’s football, you might find some tips at other forums, such as productionforums.com. It seems a lot more active and current than E-mu’s at Creative.com.
Personally, if the beta driver doesn’t work from the start, I’d start shopping. Except there is still nothing out there exactly like my 1616 (at least not under $1,000), and believe me, I’ve searched.
Now if only I can get Skype to work with the 824. But that’s another post.