Audio interface update:
MOTU M2 arrived today. Excellent build quality. Everything solid and tight. Backlit LCD screen is super easy to read, although missing numeric level indicators.
Sound quality is outstanding. Lowest-noise source ever to my KRK monitors, and HP and has plenty of juice to drive my Senn HD650s loudly and cleanly.
If you are looking for an external audio interface, just buy this. Trust me, I've tried lots of them. This is the way.
^ side note:
Win10 needs to get its act together and put *all* system settings in one place.
For example: you can't adjust I/O sample rate in Settings. You have to go through the old Control Panel. If you didn't know this, you'd be limited to 48 kHz (the default) whereas the M2 can do 192 kHz.
It's a similar situation with network adapter settings.
Please, MS: either kill the newer Settings and make us use Control Panel, or really fix this. New Windows users would have no clue.
@voltronic This irks me as well tbh, like they actually put effort into making it less user friendly on purpose.
@soulasassin
I skipped from 7 to 10, but I suspect this happened in 8 when they tried to make everything touch-friendly. It seems that translated to limiting options that could be easily accessed, but with 10 they supposedly were moving away from that.
With all the tinkering they've done with Win10, it's especially frustrating that they haven't addressed the Settings / Control Panel issue.