Recommended Firewire Audio Interfaces

sirbergersworth · Post by **sirbergersworth** » Sat May 09, 2009 8:22 pm

I have had my Mackie Onyx 400F for about a month and I am loving it. Drivers and firewire stuff was done by echo on this unit and it has even performed very well with my laptop that has a ricoh firewire chipset. Sounds great to my ears. 4 pres with inserts. Pres sound very good for being built into a unit.
Some have said the high end is "crisp", but for me the high end sound accurate and not muffled.
MF had B Stock of them for $399 as well. Mine has been working flawlessly.
On a side note, anything echo will be a great choice. I used a echo gina20 for years and it still soumnds better than the Maudio stuff IMHO.
Good luck with your search. My advice is to take your time making a decision.

antilog · Post by **antilog** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 10:28 am

dparrish wrote:Presonus FireStudio?

Bad, bad, bad, bad.

Bad, bad.

Ditto. My Firestudio Project fried yesterday. Had it for less than 2 years, only got it working about 1 year ago.

fedexnman · Post by **fedexnman** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:11 pm

+1 for echo, i also want to say i owned a presonus firebox and i noticed my recordings had a slight whine, thought it was computer noise but it was the firebox, ( so i replaced it) tried out an apogee duet n echo audiofire4, i returned the apogee duet, echo makes good stuff they just dont advertise and hype there product like other companies do.

CurtZHP · Post by **CurtZHP** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:38 am

grockvt wrote:so what about this prism orpheus...who is using one and how good does it run with sonar 8.xxx????

4 mic pres on it too...

Well, it lists for about 4 or 5 GRAND(!), so are you still wondering if it works with Sonar?

By the way, I did a review of the Focusrite Saffire PRO 40 several months ago for a radio industry magazine. Nifty little box, and it sounded good, although the headphone amps were a tad noisy. Lots of cool features too. Very stable drivers, easy installation, and priced under $500.

oilcanstudios · Post by **oilcanstudios** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:35 pm

profire 2626 is killer for the money

then just add on a rosetta and an rme adi 8 and you are good to go for a while

mvollrath · Post by **mvollrath** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:54 am

I went from a Firebox to an Audiofire 8 this year.

The Firebox's noise floor definitely has a whiney pitch to it that makes it sound awful. I also had problems with the power transformer during the summer; it was starting to make an audible whine in the room, then when I pressed +48V, poof! It dropped dead. After letting it cool off, it powered up again, but the same thing happened. The temporary solution was to use the provided wall wart instead of 1394 bus power, no more transformer problems. Now it works fine on bus power again, so I blame temperature/humidity for that. Also, presumably due to dirty power in this house, I was getting a lot of clicks and pops, both in my monitors and in my recordings. Then there was the issue of the Firebox going unresponsive at random times, forcing me to cycle the power to reset it. When I had to cycle the power 10 times during a mix session, I decided it was time for the Firebox to go.

I got a good eBay deal on an older model Audiofire 8 (no ADAT) and paired it with an ATTY to control the volume of my active monitors. The D/A conversion is night and day better. Everything sounds so good now, it's almost scary, because I know my mixes can't sound this good on any consumer system

No more pops or breakdowns. I have done just enough recording with it to decide that the built in preamps are quite limited. I compared Tambourine -> 57 -> GT Brick vs. built-in, and the Brick was clearly deeper with less distortion in the tippy top end. Toast from a toaster, right? Now that I've finished mixing the live show I was working on, I can finally begin to realize the tracking benefits.

There is one nitpicky thing I don't like about the Audiofire vs. the Firebox. The output seems to be exclusive between ASIO and Directsound. By that I mean that if I'm playing something in Winamp and I open my DAW, I can't get any output on 1/2 from the DAW. Vice versa, while DAW is open I can't get audio from Winamp, web browser, etc. This is annoying because I like to turn on some music while bouncing tracks. Eventually I'll break down and get some cheap powered speakers for media and route Directsound audio through 3/4...

antilog · Post by **antilog** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 11:14 am

I received my Allen and Heath ZED R16 yesterday. Quick setup, no driver fuss. Sounds great, and amazingly simple to use. So easy to switch from tracking through it to DAW, to sending the recorded audio tracks through the analog mixer channels for analog mixdown. Just hit a button on each channel...

timh · Post by **timh** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 12:02 am

liftyrfists wrote:
Also, in regards to the saffire, since it only has 1/4" inputs, is it cool to run XLR to 1/4"s? I've been under the impression that that isn't the best idea, though I don't know where I got that impression (probably from a faulty xlr-1/4" cord ). Or would that be something that you'd be running the mics into preamps first and then the saffire?

no one answered this (that i know of) and ive been asking myself this same question.
can someone confirm this?

woodhenge · Post by **woodhenge** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 5:24 am

timh wrote:
liftyrfists wrote:
Also, in regards to the saffire, since it only has 1/4" inputs, is it cool to run XLR to 1/4"s? I've been under the impression that that isn't the best idea, though I don't know where I got that impression (probably from a faulty xlr-1/4" cord ). Or would that be something that you'd be running the mics into preamps first and then the saffire?

no one answered this (that i know of) and ive been asking myself this same question.
can someone confirm this?

If you're all talking about the new Saffire Pro 24, 24DSP, or 40, the inputs are in fact hybrid 1/4" AND XLR connectors. They'll take either cable.

timh · Post by **timh** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:19 am

woodhenge wrote:
timh wrote:
liftyrfists wrote:
Also, in regards to the saffire, since it only has 1/4" inputs, is it cool to run XLR to 1/4"s? I've been under the impression that that isn't the best idea, though I don't know where I got that impression (probably from a faulty xlr-1/4" cord ). Or would that be something that you'd be running the mics into preamps first and then the saffire?

no one answered this (that i know of) and ive been asking myself this same question.
can someone confirm this?
If you're all talking about the new Saffire Pro 24, 24DSP, or 40, the inputs are in fact hybrid 1/4" AND XLR connectors. They'll take either cable.

in his quote he said saffire but i meant the audiofire12. sorry! i shouldve specified.

Manny Rivers · Post by **Manny Rivers** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:29 am

Just balancing out the negative experience of the previous poster.
I love my Firestudio. Sounds Great. The Control Panel Software is amazing. Super routable and expanable. nice pre's and converters. There were some driver issues but they have been corrected for some time.

Thanks Tape OP!

ctmsound · Post by **ctmsound** » Sat Nov 07, 2009 8:55 pm

I'm switching to a few Steinberg MR816 boxes. They make two different ones at different prices. There is also $300 rebates going on right now with them. I have a apogee ensemble that I'm selling.

Bryantx512 · Post by **Bryantx512** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 9:13 am

timh wrote:
woodhenge wrote:
timh wrote:
liftyrfists wrote:
Also, in regards to the saffire, since it only has 1/4" inputs, is it cool to run XLR to 1/4"s? I've been under the impression that that isn't the best idea, though I don't know where I got that impression (probably from a faulty xlr-1/4" cord ). Or would that be something that you'd be running the mics into preamps first and then the saffire?

no one answered this (that i know of) and ive been asking myself this same question.
can someone confirm this?
If you're all talking about the new Saffire Pro 24, 24DSP, or 40, the inputs are in fact hybrid 1/4" AND XLR connectors. They'll take either cable.
in his quote he said saffire but i meant the audiofire12. sorry! i shouldve specified.

Audiofire 12 inputs are line level. As long as you're sending it a line level signal, no problems. There are no mic pre's in the it. BTW, I absolutely love my audiofire12.

b3groover · Post by **b3groover** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 6:54 pm

ctmsound wrote:I'm switching to a few Steinberg MR816 boxes. They make two different ones at different prices. There is also $300 rebates going on right now with them. I have a apogee ensemble that I'm selling.

I'm really tempted by those units. Everything I've read about them concerning the audio quality has been stellar.

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