I am a huge fan of my Delta 1010 audio card (by M-Audio).  I love the card and its driver so much that I’ve made sure to keep a PC with a PCI bus in my house and haven’t made the move to a Mac Pro because I’m concerned that the Mac driver isn’t as powerful and feature rich as the PC driver.  Indeed, I was incredibly disappointed when I bought the M-Audio Firewire 1814 card for my Mac and discovered that the driver was lacking at least one of the features I love most (keep reading and see Delta 1010 and Skype: a powerful combo for this podcaster).

Last night I upgraded my Delta 1010 driver to the most recent version, Delta_V32_5.10.00.5065.exe.  To my horror, M-Audio has decided to remove all of the flexibility and power I have come to enjoy with my Delta 1010 and dream to have in my 1814.  They have removed a series of audio routing options that have wiped out the ability to record the mix-monitor track without sending it back through the audio chain — a feature that allows me to record a local microphone and the input (or monitor mix) as separate streams in Cubase.

If you are a Delta 1010 owner, I highly recommend that you do not upgrade beyond Delta_WDM_5.10.00.5057v3.exe.  That driver is solid, powerful and feature rich.