Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56

[Whitecat]

The Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 Multi-Channel Firewire Audio Interface is a 2U size multi-channel firewire audio interface. Liquid technology combines with Saffire PRO firewire interfacing to deliver a host of authentic pre-amp flavours, seamless software integration, excellent routing flexibility and future-proof, rock-solid driver stability.

Two of Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56’s eight pre-amps utilise the third generation of Focusrite’s Liquid Pre-amp, each providing a choice of ten different pre-amp emulations. These include emulations based on the Neve 1073, Pultec MB-1, Telefunken V72 and seven more. A harmonics dial on each Liquid pre-amp allows the user to compensate for variance in vintage originals of the same model, or to creatively add levels of 2nd, 3rd and 5th Harmonic distortion to shape the pre-amps performance.

The Liquid pre-amp analogue front-end allows for huge flexibility in resistance and capacitance parameters. With a flexible signal path and variable impedance value, it can mimic the interaction characteristics of different classic mic-pres. Combined with comprehensive dynamic convolution data, the Liquid pre-amp captures all the key variable elements of different mic pre designs.

Liquid Saffire 56 doesn’t just offer pre-amp variety; sonic integrity is also guaranteed throughout. Both the Liquid and Saffire pre-amps ensure low noise and distortion, whilst quality digital conversion and 'JetPLL' jitter elimination technology ensure pristine audio quality as your audio flows between the analogue and digital domains.

Liquid Saffire 56 also comes bundled with the Focusrite plug-in suite. The latest Focusrite Compression, Reverb, Gating and EQ VST/AU plug-ins provide a significant upgrade from standard sequencer effects, bringing a touch of class to your session.

The Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 Main Features Include:

2U Size
10 different pre-amp emulations including: Neve 1073, Pultec MB-1, Telefunken V72
Firewire audio interface
'JetPLL' jitter elimination technology
2 Liquid Preamps
6 Saffire Preamps
10 Analogue Outputs
16 channels of ADAT I/O
Stereo S/PDIF or AES I/O (on RCA phono)
MIDI I/O
2 virtual ‘loopback’ inputs
Word-clock I/O is Provided on BNC Connectors
18 x 16 DSP Mixer/Router software
Front Panel 5-LED Metering for all inputs, including ADAT and S/PDIF
2 Instrument Channels featuring -9dB Pads for Additional Headroom
2 Independent Headphone Buses

Price TBD.

[Stiff]

Could be cool. I'm interested in their new plug-ins as well.

[Gordon]

Wow, if nothing else it gives me and excuse to procrastinate regarding buying a Firewire interface

[Koed]

Originally Posted by Gordon

Wow, if nothing else it gives me and excuse to procrastinate regarding buying a Firewire interface

I got a feeling there will be some more NAMM anouncements that will justify your procrastination.

[Whitecat]

The Liquid Saffire 56 has shown up on at least one UK dealer's site for £649.99.

[Tomer1]

Wow!
Will you be able to use the FX on just internal routing\inputs or as VST aswell?

[gimboid]

The effects are a plugin suite for your DAW in VST/AU format, not running on the unit itself.

Am very interested to see what these "3rd generation liquid preamps" sound like... at this price point, sounding like the originals is irrelevant compared to just sounding good...

[noiseflaw]

Looks interesting - pricewise if it is £649 wow!

[jaglesis]

Looks Great

Could well be my next purchase.

The Price im wondering about, but if it is 650 thats not bad
2 ADAT's is very handy

the Plug in Suite to be honest i think alot of people will ignore i know i will..

anyway be interesting to see more of this

[jaglesis]

well the difference is that only 10 pre's are available on this

while 40 different models to chose from on the liquid 4 pre and channel

unless im mistaken..

[Whitecat]

Originally Posted by DaTone

LOL... yeah it seems that the price is going to be somewhere around 700 euros and pounds. Difficult to say the dollar price because of the worth of dollar.

It's listing at at least one UK dealer for £649.99 right now, available for "pre-order" at that price.

[gimboid]

Jag: it specifically says "3rd generation of liquid preamps". So they won't be the same preamps used in either the liquid channel (1g) or liquid 4pre (2g). I imagine they've refined the process so that they're cheaper to make, as well as cutting out the analogue circuitry that was necessary for the additional emulations.

It'll be very interesting to see how it sounds. Personally I've think this price point is much more appropriate for the liquid preamps - if you have £2k to spend you're probably going to buy a good "real" mic pre, whereas at the upper end of the project market, the product could be fairly competitive...

[jaglesis]

ya good point..
i know if i have 2500 im sure as hell not gonna buy an emulation of the real thing..

still its a step up from the pro 40

and not too much of an added cost

[Whitecat]

Originally Posted by gimboid

It'll be very interesting to see how it sounds. Personally I've think this price point is much more appropriate for the liquid preamps - if you have £2k to spend you're probably going to buy a good "real" mic pre, whereas at the upper end of the project market, the product could be fairly competitive...

Indeed. I believe that Focusrite has righted some wrongs with the Saffire stuff - it's actually pretty decent kit for what you pay. Where they failed with the Platinum stuff the Saffire lineup more or less makes up for it...

[KeithMoonwannabe]

I think this unit looks pretty cool personally. I may save up for one.

It looks like it's about $1000 USD.

[dickiefunk]

This does look interesting but I'm not sure it would be a step up from what I already have?

I am currently using an Echo Layla 3G and have an ART MPA Gold, M-Audio Tampa and DMP3 for my pres. I'm then using an SM Pro Audio M-Patch 2 as my volume controller.

If I were to go for one of these I'd have to sell all of this to get it. Not sure if this would be a good move

[AnalogBob]

anybody know if it will work in standalone mode? The sapphire pro 40 won't, but the 26 I/O will.

[lukejs]

Focusrite may TOTALLY redeem themselves with this unit if drivers are stable, and pre's sound as described !

[gimboid]

The Saffire Pro 40 is of the "new generation" of Saffire interfaces - so my guess would be that most of the innards are the same and therefore it wont run standalone. I would be more than happy to be proved wrong, however...

Originally Posted by AnalogBob

anybody know if it will work in standalone mode? The sapphire pro 40 won't, but the 26 I/O will.

[mattsearles]

I would think, at the higher price points of the liquid pre.. that even if you're talking about emulations.. between the quality of the emulations and the flexibility of it.. it might make very good sense. Am I wrong here? Particularly as I can't afford all those classic pres.. and it would be good to have some sense for them.. just as a matter of my personal development. Or maybe I've just fallen too in love with Liquid mix to be quite objective.

I def want to hear more about this 3rd generation liquid stuff though..

I feel like this interface is probably a little overkill for me.. or may be a lot over kill for me.. but.. I also feel like the bases it covers might make it more then worth the $1K for me.. and probably makes sense for the future of my studio, when it might feel less over kill.. but I do feel like I really need to hear a good deal more commentary on it

[Big_Bang]

So...

When is this available?

I'd love to give it a try...

[Chrisc_o]

Seems interresting, but is no one else worried about the headroom on those pres?

Two channels are clipping in their own promotional photo!

[Big_Bang]

If it helps, I found this...

Performance Specifications
Microphone Inputs 1-2
Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz +/- 0.1 dB
Gain Range: +13dB to +60dB
THD+N: 0.001% (measured at 1kHz with a 20Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
Noise EIN: 128dB analogue to digital (measured at 60dB of gain with 150 Ohm termination (20Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
LIQUID TECHNOLOGYTM Mic-amp emulation*
Input Impedance: variable, set in software by pre-amp emulation chosen
Harmonics Distortion Range: 0 to 15 where maximum (15) = 10% of 2nd-, 20% of 3rd- and 10% of 5th-order at 0dBFS (level-
dependant distortion)
Microphone Inputs 3-8
Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz +/- 0.1 dB
Gain Range: +13dB to +60dB
THD+N: 0.001% (measured at 1kHz with a 20Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
Noise: EIN: 128dB analogue to digital (measured at 60dB of gain with 150 Ohm termination (20Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
Input Impedance: 2k ohm
Line Inputs (Inputs 1-8)
Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz +/- 0.1dB
Gain Range: -10dB to +36dB
THD+N: < 0.001% (measured with 0dBFS input and 22Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
Noise: -90dBu (22Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
Instrument Inputs (Inputs 3 and 4 only)
Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz +/- 0.1dB
Gain Range: +13dB to +60dB
THD+N: 0.004% (measured with 0dBu input and 20Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
Noise: -87dBu (20Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)
Analogue Audio Outputs (Outputs 1-10)
10 Electronically Balanced Outputs
Maximum Output Level (0dBFS): +16dBu
THD+N: 0.001% (0dBFS input, 20Hz/22kHz bandpass filter)

• Digital Performance
A/D Dynamic Range = 110dB (A-weighted), all inputs
D/A Dynamic Range = 110dB (A-weighted), all outputs
Clock Sources:
Internal Clock
Sync to Word Clock on SPDIF Input (RCA)
Sync to Word Clock on optical SPDIF Input (when enabled)
Sync to Word Clock on ADAT input 1 or 2
Sync to Word Clock on BNC Word Clock Input
JetPLLTM PLL technology providing superb jitter reduction for class leading converter performance.
Clock jitter:250 picoseconds
Supported Sample Rates
44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz and 192kHz

[Big_Bang]

Anyone got a chance to check this out this at Messe?

[soundpro69]

Originally Posted by AnalogBob

anybody know if it will work in standalone mode? The sapphire pro 40 won't, but the 26 I/O will.

For the features' comparison including standalone mode for each Saffire model see:

Specification comparison chart between the Saffire Pro 10, 26, 40 and the Liquid Saffire 56 .: Focusrite Answerbase



Have a good one!

SoundPro69

[nick66]

I think there is a mistake on this page. The review in this month's sound on sound clearly shows the PRO56 as having wordclock input and output.

Also, from what I can tell from the manual (p19), although there is not an automatic stand-alone mode, you can route any input to any output so it could in the future be used with another interfaces but unless the software/firmware is updated it would need to be connected to a computer to set up the routing. On that subject, it says on the website that the liquid pres introduce 11 samples of latency but it doesn't say about the DSP mixer.

[3rdeyeKnight]

The Liquid Pre emulations cant be used on the DI or for insert effect within the DAW-Almost a deal-breaker for my overall needs....I did say almost.

[Bratwurst]

Got mine yesterday. Installtion is dead easy, and the saffiremixer is simple to use. But one thing: The original firewire cable within the box is faulty!!!
I noticed this, because for a first try, I hooked up the Pro56 to my home computer (ASUS Terminator), wich has only a "small" Firewire Port. Therefore I used my own FiWi cabel. I went over to the Studio and hooked up the Pro56 with the original FiWi Cabel and...NOTHING. So if you have problems with the connection, the original FiWi cable is probably to blame.
I played around for about three hours with the Pro56 and hooked a Behringer ADA8000 via ADAT to the unit too. Everything is working like it should. I will do some test recordings in the next days.

Best Wishes
Chris

[Tim Abraham]

I have no interest in this box at all, but I have to say, this is probably what the future of recording rigs will look like (Once the emulations are indistinguishable from the originals, who wouldn't want 8, 16, 24 channels of whatever you want all in one box).

[snsguy]

Originally Posted by Bratwurst

Got mine yesterday. Installtion is dead easy, and the saffiremixer is simple to use. But one thing: The original firewire cable within the box is faulty!!!
I noticed this, because for a first try, I hooked up the Pro56 to my home computer (ASUS Terminator), wich has only a &quot;small&quot; Firewire Port. Therefore I used my own FiWi cabel. I went over to the Studio and hooked up the Pro56 with the original FiWi Cabel and...NOTHING. So if you have problems with the connection, the original FiWi cable is probably to blame.
I played around for about three hours with the Pro56 and hooked a Behringer ADA8000 via ADAT to the unit too. Everything is working like it should. I will do some test recordings in the next days.

Best Wishes
Chris

So how is it. Is it worth buying. I've been looking at this and the RME Fireface 800 for a couple of weeks now. One important thing is do the DI's bypass the preamps in the 56. I thought I read something that they use the saffire pres which people have been disappointed because you can't use the Liquid pres. I want to be able to bypass the pres altogether to use an exteral pre. Any problems with it so far besides the cord? SNSGUY