audio interface advice

[Cpl. Fatty]

hi guys i been looking around for a new interface and need a little help finding one. i need one with 2 mic pre's, as many trs inputs as possible but nothing too much but around 8 would be nice, midi ports aren't necessary but just future proofing, maybe a s/pdif in so i could buy an octopre later, direct monitoring and a couple of outputs for monitors. if you think you own this or know of one that would suit me, please speak up and tell me about quality and such. i don't need pro-tools so any interface will do as i run cubase and the budget would be around say <$400. thanks for the help

[chazwood]

I was going to say pick up an Apogee Ensemble until I saw your budget....never mind.

[space2012]

drivers are verry important:
Lynx AES16 has best ASIO drivers true 32-samples stable at 80% cpu load,
RME pci/pcie has second best,
Sonic Core pci ,
"havent tested orpheus, digigram or the new Xite-1"
...
dsp mixer is also important.
Sonic Core best DSP mixer.
Ensoniq Paris DSP
EMU E-DSP nice, but verry dsp limited and most plugins dont sound good.
RME hdsp, eficient but only routing, no plugins.
Lynx dsp mixer, useable.
...
clock is verry important
get a lucid genx192 minium with clean & stable power and silver cables or true 99.997% OFC minium.
...
AD/DA converter chip and analog circuit design, they all are "close", but that 5%-10% perceptible diference for some pleople is like night and day "everything", for some others is nothing.
...
mic.pres, mics, also depends in the music style you want.
some music styles will sound verry annoing with some converters and some equipment.
...
with 2 stores you can get monthly payments.
AMS and/or zzounds.
...
midi?
RME has one of the "less worse" midi drivers.
Lynx AES16 has no midi IO.
Sonic Core, has midi, old 15-DSP cards had a too hot sensible midi input, some Roland machines had a too hot midi signal for old Creamware 15-DSP midi Input, but was easy to fix with a midiman thru 1x4 or merge 2x2 box.

*the best midi interface search... can you help?

the death of midi, volta kills

[Sascha Franck]

Which format are you looking for? PCI, FW, USB? OR doesn't that matter?

- Sascha

[Cpl. Fatty]

thanks for the replies, i know all that stuff matters but i'm just looking for something to record several tracks at once. i have all the mics and such, as for the rest like pre's, clocks and all that, you don't really take that into consideration until your at studio level. and i would like it to be fw or usb but definately not pci.

[Sascha Franck]

PCI would still give you the best latency figures.
Anyway, as you're on a budget, have a look for the Presonus Firepod. 10 I/O, including 8 mic ins (2 of them switchable to inst.), digital I/O, MIDI.
There's also the Edirol FA 101 and the Phonic Firefly.

If you have a proper FW chipset, it's the way to go as it keeps your USB busses free for other things (should better be a TI FW chipset in case you're on Windows).

- Sascha

[Cpl. Fatty]

the edirol fa 101 looks absolutely perfect for me and i already found a place that sells for in my price range. just a quick question though, if i buy another pre that has a digital out can i plug that into the 101 and get those channels plus the 10 on the 101?

(should better be a TI FW chipset in case you're on Windows)

i googled this 'ti fw' because i am on windows but can't find anything on it......can you tell me what this is?

[civilization3]

Originally Posted by Cpl. Fatty

the edirol fa 101 looks absolutely perfect for me and i already found a place that sells for in my price range. just a quick question though, if i buy another pre that has a digital out can i plug that into the 101 and get those channels plus the 10 on the 101?



i googled this 'ti fw' because i am on windows but can't find anything on it......can you tell me what this is?

if you go firewire/'FW' get a Texas Instrument chipset PCI card to run it off of.

[Cpl. Fatty]

do you know what the difference is between the TI and any other brand?

mine is ricoh

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by Cpl. Fatty

do you know what the difference is between the TI and any other brand?

There's numerous cases reported when anything else but a FW chipset wouldn't work, the problems ranging from high CPU load and audio crackles to complete disfunctionality.
Not too much of a problem in case you're using a desktop machine, though. As civilization3 said, you can always buy a PCI card with a proper TI chipset for rather little money (we're really only talking 20 bucks or so here). On a laptop, you could probably get a PCMCIA/ExpressCard to FW adapter.
Regardless of what interface you go for, it'd better be one you could probably return for free should things go wrong.

Sorry, no idea whether the digital I/Os of the Edirol would add up to the onboard analog I/Os or replace a pair of them. I'm sure there's a manual somewhere (maybe they even have the digital I/O included in their 10 I/O specification...).

- Sascha

[Cpl. Fatty]

Sorry, no idea whether the digital I/Os of the Edirol would add up to the onboard analog I/Os or replace a pair of them. I'm sure there's a manual somewhere (maybe they even have the digital I/O included in their 10 I/O specification...).

i looked it up and it looks like i can only have 2 channels per digital in. which makes it 2 mic/inst, 6 mic/line and 2 spdif which makes the 10. but i spose them being the same price as 8 pre's i could just buy another one when i need to expand, but that brings me to a new place. if i wanted a different flavour of preampage, could i buy another FW interface and daisy chain them or does it have to be the same?

[Cpl. Fatty]

as i just found out, you cannot link 2 different interfaces together. another way to do this is get an interface with an adat port. but i can't find an interface with adat for less than $1500. is there a cheaper solution to an interface with adat?

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by Cpl. Fatty

as i just found out, you cannot link 2 different interfaces together. another way to do this is get an interface with an adat port. but i can't find an interface with adat for less than $1500. is there a cheaper solution to an interface with adat?

For less than 1500 you should find plenty.
As an example, M-Audios Profire 2626 offers up to 26 I/Os for around €560. Comes with 8 onboard mic preamps already, SPDIF I/O and 2 Adat connections. Quite a great deal for the money. And M-Audio usually provides pretty good drivers, too.
The Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 is around €100 less, almost the same features, just that it only has 1 Adat port (still giving you 18 channels of I/O in total).

- Sascha

[Sascha Franck]

And fwiw, you *can* link two interfaces together. Under Windows this can be achieved by using the ASIO4All driver, under OSX the Audio MIDI Setup will allow you to create an aggregated device.
None of the two (especially the ASIO4All) methods is exactly recommendable, though. You will have to sync the two interfaces digitally (often a source of problems on somewhat more affordable systems) and you will almost always experience quite some CPU hit, working at lower latencies becoming an issue, etc.
So my advice would be to avoid any such a scenario.

- Sascha

[Cpl. Fatty]

i just read it on a sound on sound review, 2 of the same or similar model interface can be linked together only if there are multiple device drivers for it, you CAN link the ones that don't by ASIO4ALL but risk spending alot of money for 1 interface at a time. 2 different interfaces cannot be linked. thats what i read anyway, correct me if i'm wrong.......i would love it if i'm wrong haha.

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by Cpl. Fatty

i just read it on a sound on sound review, 2 of the same or similar model interface can be linked together only if there are multiple device drivers for it, you CAN link the ones that don't by ASIO4ALL but risk spending alot of money for 1 interface at a time. 2 different interfaces cannot be linked. thats what i read anyway, correct me if i'm wrong.......i would love it if i'm wrong haha.

Actually, at least under Windows, it's easier to link two different interfaces together, as they both would have different drivers, showing up separately (in both Windows and ASIO4All). With two interfaces of the same model/brand, you'd probably be in trouble to even see them recognized properly (unless they're made for stacking, but that's an entirely different thing already - plus, most are not).

As said, I'd highly recommend to not even think about fooling around with such things. I had my share of fun doing so in the past, but that was merely because I wanted to see whether it could be done - the actual results were quite less than what you'd expect from some even remotely professional solution. You will most likely run into any sort of dubious things, starting at performance loss and probably ending at one of the interfaces not even working in whatever environment anymore. Interesting from a tweakers POV, no need to fool around with in case you just want to work.

- Sascha

[Cpl. Fatty]

so then what would you reccomend for a beginner interface with the capability of expanding.......the interfaces listed before with adat are too expensive....my budget is $400 not 600pounds

[stag]

Manufacturers | Firefly 808 | Audio Interface | Studio Recording Pre-amp and 192kHz FireWire Interface
With this one you got USB, FW and standalone operation.
I never used one. Nevertheless, i´m thinking of buying one to record band rehearsals.
As it as standalone operation, unless the I\O is really bad, it might get its use on the studio too.

For your budget, probably, it can´t get better than this:
ESI - ESP1010e

Check the USB and FW line too.
The best drivers ever.

[Sascha Franck]

Originally Posted by Cpl. Fatty

so then what would you reccomend for a beginner interface with the capability of expanding.......the interfaces listed before with adat are too expensive....my budget is $400 not 600pounds

Well, if that is really as much as you can spend, you probably better forget about expandability for now. But then, the Focusrite isn't all that much over your budget (you could probably find one for US$500).

- Sascha

[Cpl. Fatty]

thanks so much for the replies, really been alot of help but as it stands i think the phonic firefly 808 is the closest thing to what i need. it's everything i need at the price i want. phonic may not be the best in preamps but there is an option to expand later with better ones.

[manning1]

Cpl. Fatty
the problem with all in one units, includeing mic pre's is gear is all smt these days.
not something you can fix like in the old days.
n if the manufacturer goes outta business , and you get a fault you might have a dead
unit for good.
my recommendation would be keep the mic pre's seperate from the sound interface.
so i would recommend mebe a couple of vtb1 mic pre's , n then start checking out sound interfaces.