Best Audio Interface?

Which Systems?

  • Aardvark Q10

    Votes: 42 6.5%

  • Echo Layla24

    Votes: 42 6.5%

  • M-Audio Delta 1010

    Votes: 146 22.6%

  • Digidesign Digi-001

    Votes: 54 8.4%

  • RME Hammerfall Multiface

    Votes: 99 15.3%

  • Motu 2408mk3

    Votes: 62 9.6%

  • other... please specify

    Votes: 200 31.0%
  • Total voters
    645
bgavin said:
Thanks to dgatwood, blazingstrings, pipelineaudio, and the other members for the excellent discussion on these interfaces. Reps are enhanced, thanks again.

After digesting all the information, it looks to me like the MOTU 8pre is the interface of choice for our needs. It appears to be rugged, well made, good electronics, and DICE free.

I will make sure to use a quality FW interface card with a TI chipset.
Click to expand...

My Motu 828MKII was anything but rugged the thing died shortly after
one year of light use. I bought a Berry AD8000 at the same time it still works
fine.

I've come to the conclusion forget all the FW stuff and go back to PCI.
I'm making the switch to Lynx Two and the Lstream cards.
 
If you see a piece of gear that gets lots of advertisement, it's usually a price point device with low cost components.
 
I'd say definitely the Aardv..... um, never mind. Been fkn out of business for five or six years, that's all.
 
I just got myself a Phonic Firefly 808 and it works just fine, just oredered a 2nd one for 16 tracks live input. It got plenty of I/O options, good enough preamps, 2 Instr. Inputs and what I have recorded so far just sounds fine. Very good price - performance/options ratio!
I do not really like the fetishing of a lot of other brands, especially if anything produced on those devices ends up to be listened to as 128 kp/s mp3 through lousy earphones or noisy environments.
 
ProFire 610 - High-Definition 6-in/10-out FireWire Audio Interface with Octane Preamp -- Seems too work best for my hatebreed/throwdown style of music!!
 
I have had a Delta 410 and a Mackie VLZ 1202 mixer for about 9 years, and through various computers have been pretty good. I have not been able to devote too much time to recording, but I'm starting up again.. (hopefully) Lately the Delta 410 seems seems very noisy and just not right, so I just ordered a 1010LT. While waiting for it to be delivered, I went to the site to get the latest drivers, and I was a bit surprised that the 1010LT latest and greatest driver is the actually the same exact driver as the "Legacy" 410.
I already have a MOTU 5 in and out midi box, and the Mackie mixer has great mic preamps, so I am just hoping I will enjoy SOME benefit from the 1010LT. Maybe I will finally use all those additional ins and outs... for .... something....
Just ranting... any thoughts?
 
RoadKingRick said:
... I just ordered a 1010LT...
Click to expand...

I have a Delta 1010LT and it's a bargain for what it is. The Delta Control Panel it comes with is very useful - you can use it for monitoring while you are recording and it has no latency issues.

The Mic Pre's on Ch. 1 & 2 are so-so (plus provide no phantom) and I'd imagine you'd want to use your Mackie's pre's instead. It's got MIDI in & out. You can use I think up to four Delta 1010LT's in a computer... that's a lot of tracks.

The Delta is set up to send it's main monitoring L & R outs from Ch. 1 & 2 out so you will probably have them going to your amp/speakers. I find that a bit odd but it's ok, as result I end up really only getting 6 audio outs from individual channels.

It's worked well, there's been very few glitches. I think once I had to reinstall the drivers. Overall a good unit.
 
Thanks for the reply!

I never really exploited the extra outs on the 410, and hope to get some ideas for all those inputs and outputs on the 1010LT!

I hope I don't waste all my time playing around with the card, and not making any music!

Love your Beef Stew, by the way.
 
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jake-owa said:
It comes with a bunch of different configurations so the cable will be different for every model. It is a standard 25 pin D-sub connector. The digital connectors are on a 10 pin D-sub.

I've found the lynx two for as low as $899. Or the lynx one for under $600 which has the same type of conversion.

Beats the pants off a digi 001 or Motu where conversion is concerned.
Click to expand...
Cool,... I didn't read up too much. I was looking at the cables and it looked like ADAT and XLR's only. It appears to be a great card to own. Didn't check for reviews, but if you get one soon let us know how it performs.
 
I have a MOTU 424-based system with a 24 i/o and a 2408 mk3. I have found the sound quality to be excellent, so I voted for it.

There is a lot of flap and gossip about preferences, Black Lion mods and the like (claiming sonic superiority due to the clock and op amps), but I have not seen even ONE valid blind perceptual test. There are many things that can affect your subjective sense of quality, not the least of which is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a result of the mind's proclivity for consistency. If you invest a lot of money in something, you are ceteris paribus more likely to rate it better than if you invest little in it. Thus, without being able to do side by side comparisons, holding constant such things as loudness, dynamics, and EQ, there is no way to know just why some people feel that the MOTU stuff is sonically inferior (unless you like to defer to authority and wealth, which has never been my tendency).

As far as the sound quality goes, 24 bit resolution is 24 bit resolution. Latency jitter is only an issue during monitoring. Preamps and analog compressors (I like tube compressors, personally) are important, because you need to be able to take advantage of the 24 bit resolution. If you drive too hot, you'll introduce digital clipping, which is really awful. If you don't drive hot enough, you can magically transform your 24 bit-width to 20 or even 16 bit quality. This does matter during mixing, because quantization error is cumulative.

I imagine that these devices are comparable sonically, so it boils down to design and feature issues that impact work flow. This is a matter of taste, I suppose.

I recorded my first two albums with a 20 bit Darla card and was happy with the sound quality. The main MOTU advantages are multiple channels, multiple monitor mixes, VST plugins, and an impressive near zero latency monitoring capability with cuemix software. This streamlines my work flow, but in the final analysis, sound quality differences are not that great.

If anyone has access to scientific literature that compares these units systematically, please forward it to me. Thanks... John
 
I am a big fan of the Presonus Firepod's warm preamps... Other than it being firewire, I dig it!
 
The results are in ?

In 1998 I purchase Motu's 2408, 20 bit, RCA I/O's, recording into Apple's Power Mac G3 all-in-one computer running Motu's Audio desk software. In 2005 I'm using Apogee's X16 I/O units, plus their PCI card into Apple's Power Mac G5 Quad running Motu's DP-5 software. In mid 2006 a fire destroys all of my equipment , however my Powerbook G4 is spared and I have a number of saved music files including music files from the 2408. Soon after the fire I purchase motu's traveler (first version) and resume recording. Today I'm still using the same traveler into apple's iMac Quad running DP-7. I have over 10 + years of music files, using three different interfaces, so one might expect the Motu 2408 to be the lesser and you would be right. And one might expect the Apogee x16's to be at the top, and the Motu traveler to place second in this interface race. The results are in and the 2408 is out of the race, but what's very interesting is that it's hard for me to compare or tell the difference, considering the fact I was monitoring the motu traveler and the Apogee X16's with similar Genelec speakers and AKG headphones. my intellect tells me that the Apogee should be far superior, however my ears can't be sure who wins the race. the playback from the apogee files and the Traveler files to me, are indifferent.
 
IMHO I think the Prism sound Orpheus is the "best" quality interface out. I have owned the MOTU 2408mk3 and it was nice. It strives on expand-ability and is a very stable system (for me anyway) but doesn't sound the "best". Don't get me wrong I've made many an excellent recording with it but there are better interfaces available. I currently use a RME multiface 2 and it is really nice in sound quality but lacks visual feedback. It prevails in stability and portability however. It also has MIDI. For the price of the orpheus though, one could get say a RME interface, a decent mic pre (Eureka) and an Apogee Rosetta 800 for higher conversion. I think this is one of those you get what you pay for senerios, which is pretty much every senario when it comes to audio gear. Though I think one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the orpheus and a MOTU with Lavry converters. But the orpheus has pretty much all of the ladder in one unit. Just sayin'...IMHO
 
I can definitely hear a different between all of my converters, absolutely.

The issue, to me, is not specifically subjectivity or cognitive dissonance or whatever, but simply time and the ear/brain. Thinking about it, it is subjectivity itself that a properly calibrated listening test should strive to eliminate. If you don't have both interfaces hooked up to the same easily switchable monitoring system, calibrated to reproduce the same material at the same perceived loudness (the most difficult part of the matter), you'll never really know and it will be a guessing game. Under normal conditions the brain only has an auditory memory of about 5 seconds. Beyond twenty seconds, it may as well have been fuzz you were listening to.

I have three different high quality D/A's from different eras and there is definitely a marked difference between them. Could I tell between them in a double blind test? I don't know. Perhaps. All I know is that when I calibrate them to each other I can really make a confident call between sources and the intrinsic quality of the D/A itself. The faster the switch, the easier it is to differentiate them.

The problem we face when comparing interfaces on the USB or firewire protocol is that they can't easily be switched on the same computer because of the limitations of ASIO. ASIO does not allow multiple interfaces to run simultaneously. You could use WDM but you would still have to navigate to some sort of setup menu to switch between drivers. Even if you could get both interfaces to work it would take too long to have to plug, unplug (if necessary), switch drivers and make sure you were back to the listening position in time. What a shlep.

So yeah, this chestnut is getting old anyway. As always, it's almost never the tools, but who's applying them and how. The biggest issue over sound quality is probably reliability, too. \

System stability = happiness. Instability = absolute bone breaking blood curdling eye gouging hell.

Cheers :)
 
Oops, didn't see the last post was about a year old. Sorry.

IT SAID IT WAS A NEW POST! IT WAS BOLD! BOOOOLLLLLDD, I TELL YOU!!!!!

Cheers :)
 
Mo Facta said:
Oops, didn't see the last post was about a year old. Sorry.

IT SAID IT WAS A NEW POST! IT WAS BOLD! BOOOOLLLLLDD, I TELL YOU!!!!!

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

LOL! Polls always do that to us. I am not a fan of them actually. I shall unsubscribe from this one now myself. :)
 
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