Need your input on Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56

[kvoid]

A buddy of mine who does live sound wants an interface to pair with Smaart and some good measurement mics (possibly Earthworks) and needs something that will get along nice with his Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro has a six pin large firewire connector. He requires four onboard mic preamps but six are preferred, and also needs a lot of physical outputs (The sapphire's 10 are cool but more would be better).

Is the Liquid Saffire 56 a good choice? Any other high quality alternatives suited to this task?

 

[-Noodles-]

two questions;

why does he need six inputs?
and why all the outputs?

Smaart works on a measurement input (microphone) and a reference input (usually pink noise from desk).
Add a few more measurement inputs perhaps, but six is a lot! Also - the 56 uses liquid channels, so he'd want to switch them off while measurements are happening.

Why not something like a Motu Traveller? 8 inputs, 8 outputs and uses firewire. Bus powered too.

 

[JamesNorman]

Saffire has Adat in and out so up to 28 in and outs. That's more than enough.

The liquid preamps are only the first two. The other six are not emulation pres.

 

[kvoid]

The bare minimum is four, left, right, front and back situations. He is a live guy, and does a lot of cinema surround type gigs, plus the two extras for remote (wireless mics) would come in extra handy.

The multiple outs are for running into different speakers or better yet, sending different feeds to a live console.

How would it fare in this role in your opinion? I've heard horror stories about MOTU's driver/customer support. In fact I've only seen unconditional praise in these parts for focusrite.

 

[JamesNorman]

The bare minimum is four, left, right, front and back situations. He is a live guy, and does a lot of cinema surround type gigs, plus the two extras for remote (wireless mics) would come in extra handy.

The multiple outs are for running into different speakers or better yet, sending different feeds to a live console.

How would it fare in this role in your opinion? I've heard horror stories about MOTU's driver/customer support. In fact I've only seen unconditional praise in these parts for focusrite.

Would fair fine, used it live sending different drums pads from my kit triggering from ableton live. Very simple and there is no spill between any of the outputs.

The only downfall to the Saffire is the mix control software, but once you have your settings saved to default it is easy.

 

[kvoid]

Thank you Mr. Norman that's exactly the sort of info I've been looking for