A.R.T Tubefire - 8 Tube pre interface, $399 ?!?

[darthjujuu]

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/TubeFire8

I've been torturing myself over my purchase plan regarding the age old question: what does an engineer upgrade to when it's time to lay the firepod to rest.

I'd never even heard of this little bugger til the new sweetwater catalog arrived at my doorstep. i couldn't find even so much as a mention of it on this forum (after minimal searching) and found a few good reviews, but none bad. 8 tube channels?!?!

 

[JonWormwood]

Prob gonna get alot of shit replies due to the fact it's art.

 

[darthjujuu]

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/low-end-theory/161501-art-tubefire-8-a.html

Joel patterson and 3 pages of gearslutz disagree o_0 i dunno guys, i'm pretty tempted. A.R.T hating aside, anyone USED or HEARD one of these units?? $399 is pretty tempting coming from a firepod, especially when people seem pretty excited about the preamps/conversion (which is 99% of my priority)

 

[Erkan]

$399? You lucky bastard. If I would get one, it would go for 759€ via Thomann. Fuck that!

 

[ItsAFugazzi]

I've seen plenty of positive comments on gearslutz.

I've been tempted to purchase this also. I'd actually been meaning to ask if anybody on here had any experience with it.

 

[darthjujuu]

n00b question: why does it have wordclock i/o if it isn't even expandable (no adat)? for syncing two tubefires daisy chained??

 

[Metaltastic]

SPDIF, I guess, or just using it as a master clock for some other unrelated gear (not like I can see why anyone would want to, but hey)

 

[darthjujuu]

looks like there's no spdif, either o_0 the firestudio tube isn't expandable either, apart from using the balanced outs of a digimax into the 6 line-ins (seems silly to me). I don't need a TON of i/o, being able to mic up a big drumset and still have a DI guitar and talkback is the most i could ever think of needing. and i s'pose i could just get a central station and that'd cover the talkback...hrm.

sigh. selecting an interface is like trying to drag a pregnant water buffalo up a spiral staircase.