Upgrade m-audio

[carvedones]

Ok i only have an m-audio 2496 card but have been thinking about upgrading.

I would like to end up having around 24 tracks. My idea is to get 3 m-audio 1010lt cards and then get some mic pres for them. Is this a better idea than buying 3 presonus (or similar) interfaces? The idea is as i get better and have the money i can just upgrade the mic pres.

What are your thoughts.

I am looking at SM pro PR8E as mic pres for now. (Only recording demo stuff presently) any opinions on these also?

 

[AdamWathan]

I'd go with one of the 8 pre Firewire interfaces out there right now, you can always add more pre's via ADAT that way. You could get a Presonus Firestudio or a Focusrite Saffire Pro or something for $500-700 and you'd have 8 preamps and 16 channels of ADAT that you could add pre's to later...

 

[carvedones]

But wouldn't the m-audio card be better to upgrade mic pres later?

 

[AdamWathan]

I don't think so... The A/D is probably not as good on the M-Audio stuff as the Presonus or Focusrite... I think your best bet is a Firestudio or Saffire Pro and then add a couple of ADAT 8 channel pre's down the road like an M-Audio Octane, Focusrite Octopre, Mackie Onyx 800R, Presonus Digimiax, etc, etc, etc... Or even buy a dedicated A/D converter with an ADAT out and run some higher end pre's like API, Vintech, Great River, Purple Audio, etc. into that and run the ADAT out into the Firestudio or Saffire Pro since it would already be a digital signal and bypassing the A/D in the Firestudio or Saffire... Cheaper as well. Buying three Delta 1010s is a complete waste of money I think for the purposes you are looking at it for... You'd be much better off buying one dedicated unit that has like 26+ inputs like the Saffire, Firestudio, Onyx 1200F, M-Audio Profire 2626, etc. and only having to run one soundcard at a time because chances are you are going to have limitations or run into conflicts when trying to run three separate interfaces...

 

[carvedones]

I have been offered a Digi 001 pretty cheap whats your opinions on this. Can extra pres or 001 be connected together?