PreSonus Quantum 2626 Thunderbolt 3 Audio Interface

I needed 8 inputs to record drums, so the 2626 was the least expensive way to achieve this. I hadn't researched enough to hear the issues others were having, across all platforms and software, including dropped notes, notes randomly "bouncing" when playing a chord. Also, I had random note drop-out with any notes faster than 8th notes. My heart sank as a week of research, tutorials and tweaking latency times in Logic Pro failed to solve it. Butch is the sole tech guy at Presonus, and he started off great but as soon as I bought up latency...crickets and have never heard back. So I took it back today and am buying a MOTU.

Great product. There were driver issues in the past that have been remedied. For example, switching audio output sources (ex. spotify, youtube etc.) would crash the sound card unless Studio one is running. This problem has been fixed. Low latency, preamps sound great. All the knobs, inputs, outputs etc. work as expected. High quality build.

Live recording and software based recording.

When I first started recording music, (early 2000's) to record a band, high quality; with zero latency would cost a studio and/or engineer $100,000's worth of studio equipment and software. Basically, what I'm trying to say is (thanks to Presonus) now the middle class can have the tools to do what was once only reserved for the elite few.

I've had a 2626 for a few years now and I've used it on multiple different computers. When it works, it's awesome. Very low latency. The problem is that it continues to have extremely buggy drivers that will cause the audio to just stop. You will need to restart the unit or, in some cases, restart the computer to get audio back. I would estimate this problem will happen about once for every 90 minutes of use. It is a well known problem and is complained about quite a bit on the Presonus forums, but after years of complaints form countless users, Presonus are still pretending it's not happening. I only use Win 10 64 bit systems, but I've seen Mac users in the forums with this problem as well. The bottom line is Presonus are not going to fix the issue. Unless you are OK with restarting every 90 minutes or so, I wouldn't bother with a 2626. It is an exercise in frustration.

Positives: The 2626 seemingly has a lot of features, and was the only TB3 interface I could find at < $1k with enough inputs to track drums. Negatives: The 2626 comes with its own internal software mixer (not the problem). I've not been able to get this to launch after several re-installs, etc. I wrote to Presonus' Support and just get one sentence answers that they don't support the software, only the hardware. So I have to do unnatural workarounds to plug in physical compressors and pre-amps etc because I can't adjust the Presonus' internal routing that's controlled by their "Universal Control" mixer app that they don't support. Surprisingly terrible customer service for what I thought was a more premium brand.