I need a consensus on an interface purchase...

[AudioPhile777]

I'm going to be upgrading from PT8LE to PT9 and would like to move away from my 002R (starting to become buggy and troublesome)...

I'm looking at either of the following:

Mackie Onyx Blackbird FireWire Recording Interface

or

Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 I/O FireWire Audio Interface

I've heard more people using the focusrite, but I've heard that the mackie onyx preamps are nice too... so, I'm at an impasse.

What say you?

 

[Wisheraser]

Trevoire520 posted a blind preamp shootout about a month back that involved both Onyx and Saffire pres. It didn't involve these exact models, but the preamp circuits may be the same. I'll see if I can find the thread.


EDIT: Here -> http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equipment/709337-low-end-preamp-shootout.html

 

[AudioPhile777]

Thanks.

EDIT: I can't hear a difference between the Onyx and the Focusrite... guess I'll just flip a coin.

 

[acappa]

My two options would be Saffire 56 or RME UFX...the choice is yours!

 

[AdamWathan]

Don't buy the Mackie. They have a bad habit of discontinuing products very early and no longer supporting them.

 

[Proggm]

RME FF800 or UFX, they are a more expensive but way more reliable than any other choice.

 

[MatrixClaw]

RME FF800 or UFX, they are a more expensive but way more reliable than any other choice.

Yeah, 3-4 times the price

 

[acappa]

I believe nothing can beat Saffire 56 for that money, reliability, sound performance...

 

[guitarguru777]

Bro,

Trust me and go with the Saffire. I LOVE mine! Its sooo fucking versatile! The pres and converters are MILES above anything else in its price range!!

 

[MatrixClaw]

I love my Saffire Pro 40, except for the fact that I cannot get reamping to work on this fucking thing to save my life.

I'm running out of output 7, with a separate mix made for it. The output is not tied to the Monitor Volume knob at all, yet, when I play any DIs through the output into my X-Amp and into an amp, it's always severely undergained, with a TON of noise. In order to achieve the same level of gain through the amp as I could by just plugging the guitar directly into it, I have to nearly double the gain, and at that point, the thing is feedbacking like mad, so forget turning it up to any decent volume. I've never in my life had so many issues with routing and reamping as I'm having with this thing, it's seriously pissing me off and making me consider getting rid of it to buy a different interface.

The preamps might be super clean, but it's not very user friendly when you start trying to do anything fancy with it. Plus, as far as I know, you can't route the monitor volume knob to the S/PDIF outputs, so I can't control my monitor's volume unless I manually load up Mix Control and adjust the volume fader on the mix I have setup for them (since the monitors are running on digital inputs, because the sound quality is more crisp, plus I like that they go on standby when I turn the interface off), which is a hassle as well.

I have to be doing something wrong on the reamping, but what, I have no idea. It's just pissing me off, because I've been constrained to amp sims for months because of it and having a $4600 amp going unused is pretty useless. Plus, the fact that I have to turn up the gain on the mic preamps to ~7 to even get a decent amount of volume out of them is sort of ridiculous, practically everything below 6 is completely useless on the mic inputs.

 

[WarlockStudios]

Sorry to but in off topic....

when I play any DIs through the output into my X-Amp and into an amp, it's always severely undergained, with a TON of noise. In order to achieve the same level of gain through the amp as I could by just plugging the guitar directly into it, I have to nearly double the gain, and at that point, the thing is feedbacking like mad, so forget turning it up to any decent volume.

We've got a discussion going on here: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equipment/717061-reamping-problem-redeye-3d-faulty.html FYI and if you have any input.

 

[drew_drummer]

Yes. Saffire. For the reason Adam mentioned.

 

[guitarguru777]

I love my Saffire Pro 40, except for the fact that I cannot get reamping to work on this fucking thing to save my life.

I'm running out of output 7, with a separate mix made for it. The output is not tied to the Monitor Volume knob at all, yet, when I play any DIs through the output into my X-Amp and into an amp, it's always severely undergained, with a TON of noise. In order to achieve the same level of gain through the amp as I could by just plugging the guitar directly into it, I have to nearly double the gain, and at that point, the thing is feedbacking like mad, so forget turning it up to any decent volume. I've never in my life had so many issues with routing and reamping as I'm having with this thing, it's seriously pissing me off and making me consider getting rid of it to buy a different interface.

The preamps might be super clean, but it's not very user friendly when you start trying to do anything fancy with it. Plus, as far as I know, you can't route the monitor volume knob to the S/PDIF outputs, so I can't control my monitor's volume unless I manually load up Mix Control and adjust the volume fader on the mix I have setup for them (since the monitors are running on digital inputs, because the sound quality is more crisp, plus I like that they go on standby when I turn the interface off), which is a hassle as well.

I have to be doing something wrong on the reamping, but what, I have no idea. It's just pissing me off, because I've been constrained to amp sims for months because of it and having a $4600 amp going unused is pretty useless. Plus, the fact that I have to turn up the gain on the mic preamps to ~7 to even get a decent amount of volume out of them is sort of ridiculous, practically everything below 6 is completely useless on the mic inputs.

bro dont listen to him this is USER ERROR. I reamp all day long with my Pro40 with NO ISSUES! He just hasnt set up mix control properly.

 

[MatrixClaw]

bro dont listen to him this is USER ERROR. I reamp all day long with my Pro40 with NO ISSUES! He just hasnt set up mix control properly.

I'm sure it is user error and that I'm just overlooking something simple, but the fact that I've heard quite a few others having the same issue to me says that Mix Control isn't very user friendly. I wasn't so much posting that it can't do reamps, just that he might have difficulties setting it up to do them.

For everything else, I am more than happy with the Pro 40, the preamps sound fantastic for the price - But there's still the issue of routing the Monitor Volume knob to the S/PDIF output (which still might be possible, but I haven't found a solution), not that many people need that anyway, and the fact that the volume pots on the mic preamps are extremely logarithmic. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be able to fine tune linearly than have to turn up to 7 and have barely any range of volume towards the end. I could literally put any of my mics an inch away from the biggest crash cymbal on my drumset, put the volume on the channel to 5 and bash the thing as hard as possible and it wouldn't come anywhere near clipping.

Don't get me wrong though, the preamps have plenty of gain, and I've never been in a situation where I didn't have enough, but in most cases, the only usable range on the knobs is from 7-9, which is extremely small, but usually ranges from somewhere around -25db to +6db, which I don't understand why Focusrite and other companies would ever do this. Obviously, if you have a cranked tube amp blasting into an SM57, the volume is going to be lower on the mic preamp than this (depending on your volume), but for vocals and drums, I've found this to pretty much hold true across the line.

Also, thanks for the post in the other thread, I'll get on Skype later and see if you can help me figure out the deal with reamping. The issue is definitely not the X-Amp, because I've used it on my friend's Firepod recently to reamp at his house

 

[guitarguru777]

Ya man, hit me up we will get it working!

 

[jangoux]

I have a Saffire and a RME FF400. While the Saffire is a very good interface, I can't get the same performance (latency) that I get from the RME on none of my computers. But it is cool..

 

[AudioPhile777]

I have been leaning toward the Pro40... won't know for sure until mid-October.

I've stopped recording bands (mostly mixing now) and its just mainly for my own stuff/bedroom awesomeness now.

Recently had my XP mobo die (after 5 years, which is typical for me) and had a hell of a time trying to replace it just to get back to a project. I've decided to upgrade the whole system to new Sandybridge i5 and PT9, new interface et al... so, thats a thing.

 

[setyouranchor]

Pro 40 for sure

 

[nervirasme]

Even though I own the Saffire Pro 40 (and I'm VERY satisfied with it!), at this price range you're really going for the features and not the sound... When I was in the tedious process of getting an interface I was too obsessed and concerned with the quality of preamps and converters, but after a while I realized that most of those answers "get either of those" are not so ignorant after all. My own consensus is this:
at the low price range you're going for the usability
at the mid price range you're going for the features
and at the high price range you're (finally) going for the sound

But, if I can help you with your decision I can also add that the Pro 40 is really a fine piece of equipment. As for the problems that MatrixClaw had with reamping - I've being there one day, it just takes some time to get used to routing within MixControl, but then you also realize that it gives you plenty of options...

Good luck!

 

[RLab]

Another happy Pro 40 here, I track my DIs with the first input, and they sound great (at least good enough to avoid spending over 100€ in a DI box). And I also do reamps (actually, I just reamped bass for now but well ) with the guru's method, and it works great.