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Originally Posted by ThatOlBluesSound  I'm back! 
Hum...Oh doubt, thy shadow dost remain...  Important things? Hum...Let me put it this way, having to resort only to your FF800 for a routine recording (those you make a living of...?) would you say the quality of the recordings would be distinctly inferior? |
Let me put it this way: there is a clearly noticeable difference between a truly "high-end" preamp and a fireface 800 preamp. Running an electric guitar or vocal mic (male and/or female vocals over rock and alternative music) through a Mono GAMA has an "energy" or "electricity" to it that I can't get out of the FF800. For acoustic guitar and bass, I love the sounds of the P1/Pacifica. It's fuller, punchier, and has a nice clarity to it on the acoustic.
The FF800 sounds a heck of a lot better than the pres in the other gear I owned before it, though. Compared to the FF800 pres, digidesign gear or Mackie mixers or any other mid-grade preamp sounds thin and flat. They sound almost washed out to me by comparison.
I would say Slaytex put it best... they clean and have the gain you need to get a good signal, but they don't add anything. They don't give you "magic". In my opinion they're a perfect middle ground. Not a thing bad about them, but nothing that's gonna knock your socks off time and time again (after the initial wow of new gear wears off).
The fireface's strengths lie in other areas, though, IMHO. The A/D and D/A converters made a huge difference for me. I couldn't hear how great my other gear sounded until I ran them through quality converters. Also, the routing flexibility combined with just about every kind of input and output you could want (sans AES/EBU) is fantastic. RME just did a very thoughtful job of engineering the whole product, and I think it shows.
My last thought is basically this: It works for me because I need to be able to run 8-10 channels at a time into my rig, and needed the good quality A/D plus several very useable preamps. If I were solely going to be tracking 2 channels of acoustic guitar and/or vocals, I would probably buy a Pacifica or Great River preamp and a Mytek Stereo 96 ADC and just run the digital output of that into any cheap PC interface (since you're bypassing all the analog stages and most of the digital circuitry at that point as well). I realize that rig would cost about $1000 more than the fireface 800, but for that purpose you're not gonna outgrow it.
For what it is, and for the money, the FF800 really is great. But it all depends on your total needs.