The Microtrack 24/96 was a product that Guitar Center asked us to make. I'm certain that they asked may manufacturers to make such a product as the market was soon flooded with similar products 6 to 12 months after the release of this one! However, being first allowed us quite a bit of sales and other products had to match our feature set and price point to compete. At the time CD recorders and MiniDisc recorders were the standard. Merantz had a very high-end product that would record .wav files to a Compact Flash (CF) card, but there was nothing affordable, small and mobile on the market.

Normally this product would not have been a good fit for M-Audio, but they had recently hired a man named Jeff Hastings who had worked for RIO, makers of the popular MP3 player at the time. He hooked us up with the team that created the player and they set off developing their "first" recorder! This was a pretty risky endeavour  for M-Audio, but it worked out. It came with a unique stereo microphone that connected to an 1/8" TRS input. It also featured two 1/4" TRS inputs and true 48V phantom power for connecting standard condenser microphones. A coaxial S/PDIF input was also provided for digital recording. The  analog input gain structure wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but it actually worked quite well. The battery was an internal, rechargable type and a USB power supply was included

One of the most challenging issues was finding compatible CF media to recommend. But in the end the product worked quite well. M-Audio even made a MKII version a couple of years later.