Presonus Quantum 2626

My intention getting the Persons Quantum 2626 was to replace an (excellent) USB desktop device with a Thunderbolt rack-mounted device, for neatness and good sound quality.

The good:
- Awesome sound, sample rates and (audio) latency specs are through the roof.
- Good quality device, connectors and knobs have a reliable feel to them and look neat.
- Split Phantom power for simultaneous use of condensers and ribbons, pre-amp controls, 2 head set jacks, enough inputs, etc ... all great!
- Universal Control software gives nice insights in what you're recording and looks awesome.

The bad:
- The gripe several reviewers are having is real: it doesn't automatically route the inputs to the outputs and the UC software doesn't let you. Just playing something to your mic for fun without the intention to record won't produce any sound, you NEED to enable your DAW and create appropriate tracks. Quickly worked around with a Logic template and you get used to it, but the first days i had to fiddle and refiddle and refiddle (and i don't mean with the violin).
- It's a rack mounted device, but it has some pretty annoying design choices. The on/off button is on the back, so very hard to reach.
- Also, there are no jack inputs on the back. So, when mounted together with my synth, i can't use some short patch cables to make neat mess-free audio connections. Instead i have cables going from the back of my rack around to the front to reach the jack inputs on the Quantum. Hmmm.
- For some reason, the MIDI ports are just bad. Laggy, irregular events, dropped events, note-on without note-off, etc ... Felt entirely unusable to me. It COULD be a setting somewhere, but the UC software has as good as no settings, and i couldn't find anything in Logic (also, why would a thunderbolt device need to make compromises on transfer speeds?). My Quantum replaced a Fortrite device which worked perfectly MIDI-wise with my exact same setup. I ended up buying a rack mounted dedicated MIDI device and that again works perfectly, same cables, settings, same everything.

So, in conclusion: i bought this device so i could put sample rates and buffer sizes on MAX without worry, get the cable mess off my desktop, and finally use that cool T3 port on my iMac, and it delivers. It looks nice and i'll keep it for sure. But ... it's clumsy to rack-mount, and the MIDI connectors are somehow useless.

The sound quality is really good but I lack the features for re-routing that exists in other models. Especially the ability to route phones to individual outputs which seems to be available in earlier models. Instead the both phones output are routed over main and that is not possible to change.

There is also no integration with Studio One where other models would have some control room features enabled. I was expecting software level of Dim and Mute. That is however not available either.

So if you're looking for a low latency 8 preamp card with high end preamps, no more no less, this is probably a good buy. But if you're looking for at least the ability to reroute monitoring, this is not an option. For me that was the dealbreaker.