ALESIS IO-26 FireWire

[Curse9]

Hi guys,

does anyone of you know if its possible to run more audioinputs than these standart inputs. Is ADAT able to do the job? Is this piece able to record, lets say, a Drumkit with 13 Mics?
http://www.alesis.com/io26

Do you have any experiences with this one?

 

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

Hi guys,

does anyone of you know if its possible to run more audioinputs than these standart inputs. Is ADAT able to do the job? Is this piece able to record, lets say, a Drumkit with 13 Mics?
http://www.alesis.com/io26

Do you have any experiences with this one?

One of the bands i play with have this one their studio; it does the job okey and as far as i know its expandable via ADAT.

 

[Line666]

Bought one last week, finally got it set up today, yes it does do adat but you cant get more than the standard 8 outputs - no adat outs, you can have up to 24 simultaneous ins with adat though and 2 with spdif - hence the name 26, I'm running it with an ada8000 and it seems it must be clocked to the other units clock (bleh). Make sure you get something with a TI chipset, I bought a TI but got sent a VIA by accident and its dropouts central but connected it up to the TI on my laptop and it seems fine.

 

[Curse9]

not more than 8 outs....uhmm, I have to look after another unit then when I want to record drums?

 

[Line666]

Nah you can still attach another adat preamp or whatever for more inputs.

Less outputs just means you can't have more than 8 monitor outs or (for speakers) or hardware inserts wired at any given time, for recording its not actually a problem.

 

[Curse9]

Allright, I see, thank you very much! How are you satisfied with the sound? I'm on this Mackie Satellite right now. Want to go a bit higher. I never heard Alesis did trash.

 

[Line666]

It sounds alright yeah, not my place to give a super qualified opinion because as I said, I only just got this thing, but its not too bad at all.

 

[drew_drummer]

Did they ever fix the shitty ASIO drivers?

 

[Melodeath]

www.myspace.com/horrendousdeathmetal

Those three tracks were recorded using an Alesis io26 (snare and kick were replaced, though)

This interface gave me plenty of problems, but it sounds fine. It has ADAT in but no ADAT out, which is super annoying. If it had ADAT out I'd probably still use it for its preamps

 

[Curse9]

because of the shity soundquality I only can imagine how it sounds, sorry mate. But a good mix it is! I don't have much experiences in adat, to be honest..none! Please explain why do you want adat outs?

 

[Melodeath]

Without ADAT Outs, theres no way to get the line-level signal out of the io26 unless you use the analog outs, which is useless to me bc I would still need an A/D converter

 

[Curse9]

If I get this io26 my needs are: recording a drumkit with 10 tracks... all other instruments will be recorded as well with this one.
So I will have to buy a ADAT unit I think? If so, it doesn't matter 'cause all other interfaces have only 8 inputs for audiosignal. I think this would be right for me?

 

[Line666]

This is pretty much the most fully featured interface you will get for the sort of price it goes for, its cost is equivalent to a Presonus Firepod second hand but it has many more features and room for expandability, if you wanted 10 tracks you'd have to get another interface to tack on but as you say thats the same thing for all the similar units as well. A good optional add on would be the Digimax FS or the Focusrite Octopre (with the adat board installed), I realise this is all rather complicated though.

Drew, the ASIO latency could be better - bit of line 6 syndrome going on with 16ms total in/out at 128 buffer, I will have see have to see how it reponds to asio4all.

 

[idiotbox919]

I'm not really able to comment on the audio quality cause I'm a n00b and still suck pretty bad, all I know is it sounds good enough for me....but I've got the iO26 and had an absolute nightmare with the Alesis drivers, both under XP, Vista and 7.

Under 7 I've started using Asio4all and not only is it way more stable than the Alesis drivers, but I checked the latency using one of those latency checker things, and it's down to 0.4 ms now. Compared to between 320 - 2400 with the Alesis ones. Could get it down to 320 if you had only one track in the project and no plugs. If you wanted plugs, or more than one track, then the latency went through the roof, and normally the whole thing would crash anyway and need a reboot....

 

[ahjteam]

Just get the Profire 2626 and spare the headaches. It's only 100 more.

 

[drew_drummer]

Yeah agree with AHJ; I had one of these units a few years back (actually it was about 5 years ago iirc!) and it sucked. Wouldn't keep a connection with my PC, even though I had a very good spec pc, texas instruments firewire card, etc... etc...

Profire is very hard to beat for the price.

 

[Jmathews7999]

saffire pro 40 is a great buy too, check it out!!

 

[AllanD]

Year old thread, I'm sure he has already chosen something by now.