Best Firewire interface for $800 or below

Best Firewire interface for $800 or below

  • MOTU 828mkII

    Votes: 30 23.8%
  • Presonus Firepod

    Votes: 55 43.7%
  • Echo AudioFire 12

    Votes: 22 17.5%
  • Mackie Onyx 400F

    Votes: 19 15.1%

  • Total voters
    126
guttapercha said:
There are many excellent options for you. The best choice will depend on if you EVER forsee recording more than one track at a time.

If nay to that question, there are good, easy-to-get-started options starting at around 150 (tascam US122).

Best,

JD
If you never anticipate more than two tracks at a time, I'd give a hearty recommendation to the Audiophile 192 card I'm coming from; it's very easy to install and use, and rock solid stable. The dongle has 2 1/4" in, 2 1/4" main outs two more monitor outs, and MIDI IN/Outs.... $179 most places.

Of course, if your'e a laptop user, then never mind. :)
 
Llarion said:
As I learn more about it, I'll let you know. Apparently, you can slave 3 more of them through ADAT. I can't even envision myself needing more than 8 simultaneous tracks though, I got the thing so I could record acoustic drums and be able to edit at the track level rather then being stuck with an early mixdown choice.

Cool! I have 8 inputs now, I can cover the drums pretty good with that, but that's all I can do at one time. Damn drummer has five tom's :D

Let me know how you like that thing when you get a chance.

F.S.
 
trdn1 said:
So for a solo guy recording only 1 track at a time, what would be a good option? I'm looking to upgrade from the 1/4" outputs adapted down to a stereo line-in connection I use now. Thanks!


Just to throw it in, The M Audio Fast Track has one mic input & on line input. You can actually use them both at once (my brother has one). Only $99.00.
It has no phantom power though, so any condensors would need to be battery powered or have thier own power supply.


F.S.
 
trdn1 said:
So for a solo guy recording only 1 track at a time, what would be a good option? I'm looking to upgrade from the 1/4" outputs adapted down to a stereo line-in connection I use now. Thanks!
What's your budget? On the low end I'd recommend the Tascam 122L or 142L ($150-$200) as cleaner sounding than anything else I've tried in that prce range. On the high end, I'd recommend the Apogee MiniMe ($800). Expensive, but worth it if you want real quality sound.

G.
 
What's your budget? On the low end I'd recommend the Tascam 122L or 142L ($150-$200) as cleaner sounding than anything else I've tried in that prce range. On the high end, I'd recommend the Apogee MiniMe ($800). Expensive, but worth it if you want real quality sound.

G.

Just to update SouthSIDE Glen's info from May 07- Apogee just released the Apogee Duet for $500. This replaces the mini-me and is well worth looking into. Cheers, Rez
 
I've got a Firepod running with XP and Sonar PE 6...haven't had a single problem yet (again, if you take the time to actually learn how to properly configure and run your PC, you won't have any problems). I got mine at GC for $400 with a ton of other stuff (it was the display model without a box, so they cut some of the price back :D). IMO, you can't go wrong with the FP. Yeah, some other FW interfaces have better pre's, like the 400F, but a buddy of mine had one for about a year, then it just went haywire on him. We're not exactly sure what the problem was, but he returned it and got an 003 with LE 7. The Mackie sounded amazing, though. Just not too reliable, as you can see in other forums.

Get a Firepod man. $400, glitch-free, smooth running....how could you go wrong?
 
Get a Firepod man. $400, glitch-free, smooth running....how could you go wrong?

Until the FireWire hardware suddenly goes dead or a firmware update leaves it lobotomized, not much. BeBoB gear is generally pretty reliable as far as software is concerned....
 
Well, I finally picked up my MOTU 8pre today, and just got it hooked up. HOLY COW. I'm coming from an M-Audio Audiophile 192 with a Mackie 1202VLZ as the input, which sounded brilliant; and this is like an order of magnitude smoother. It just sounds, well, expensive. I had no idea; I really though my system sounded pristine. This is just amazing. The noise floor is 30dB lower too. I have a little ground loop somewhere, that ran about -50dB on the 192, and it's about -80dB on this. I presume that it was the Mackie, which I'd ground lifted to help it out already. Think I should ground lift the MOTU?

I don't recommend ever lifting the ground on equipment. If you have to do that, something is wrong, and you are making your rig significantly less safe. Instead of removing grounds, you really need to add grounds to one or more pieces of gear---whichever one has a poor ground in its power supply (or if you have any pieces of two prong gear, probably those... maybe wall-wart-powered gear also).

Fundamentally, a ground "loop" (I hate that term; it's not at all a good term) is caused by one device that generates noise on its ground plane and does not have a well-grounded power supply. Because this noise tries to take the shortest path to ground, it travels through the shield of your audio cables towards any other device whose chassis/signal ground is properly grounded, then goes to ground. When it passes through the shield of the cable, though, it is leaking a small amount of noise into the signal.

The way to solve this problem is to provide a better path from that noisy device's grounds to an actual earth ground (which can best be provided by the ground pin of an electrical power cord).

To track down the problem gear, take a three prong power cord and cut the socket end off so it's just a standard plug with a long wire attached. Cut the hot and neutral wires shorter and tape them up really well. Take the ground wire (be ABSOLUTELY sure you get the ground wire!) and touch it to one of the jack shields on each device until the hum goes away. You may find that more than one device improves things, in which case you need to ground more than one device....

The best thing to do from there is to make up a series of little audio extension cables—one each for every piece of gear you want to ground better. Each one should consist of a plug on one end, a jack on the other, and be wired just like a normal audio cable. In addition, at the end that plugs into the piece of gear, you should connect about a 10 AWG (or larger) copper wire to the ground pin on the plug.

Tie all of these grounds to the ground pin of that power cord/plug. Once you've done this, the noise should go through that heavy wire straight to the building ground instead of through the shield of your signal cable.
 
I've used 3 of the four interfaces you've listed.

The MOTU, the Echo, and the Presonus. I liked the MOTU. In fact I first heard in a studio I was was in and was fairly impressed. Enough that I went out and bought one. Problem with the MOTU is the drivers either work really good with a system or they don't. Then I heard about the Echo audiofire.

I purchased it blindly after listening to the guys over at GS and have never regretted the purchase. I have an Apogee Rosettta that I've compared the Echo to. IMHO I either can't tell the differance or the Echo sounded better.

I just joined the Audiofire club. It's pretty awesome that the AudioFire 12s can found for a mere $500 nowadays.
 
I'm not to experienced with the situation but I always do my research. I've always been recommended MOTU products so I researched the MOTU 828 MKII a little bit because it's dead sexy and i wanted to see what it was capable of.

I'm seeing nothing but driver conflictions if your running a PC.(At least according to 99% of people who leave reviews on the product) Also and more importantly you have to purchase a specific firewire card with a specific chipset in order for the unit to function properly.

http://www.zzounds.com/a--2676837/productreview--MTU828MK3

I have also researched other basic review sites and they all have problems with drivers conflicting.

Damn it was so sexy too. Its like a hot girl you thought was sweet, and she just turned out to be a bitch.

-HyPe
 
I'm seeing nothing but driver conflictions if your running a PC.(At least according to 99% of people who leave reviews on the product) Also and more importantly you have to purchase a specific firewire card with a specific chipset in order for the unit to function properly.

Hate to tell you this, but you need to purchase a FireWire card based on only certain chipsets for all FireWire interfaces. The problem is that A. a couple of companies (Ricoh, in particular) built some very massively non-OHCI-compliant chipsets that are basically unusable, and B. a couple of companies built some combination USB/FireWire cards that by nature share the same IRQ between the USB silicon and the FireWire silicon. That's a no-no. USB can seriously hog the IRQ because of its poor design, so any device that shares an IRQ with a USB part is going to be in a world of hurt. :)

In any case, as with any other hardware on Windows, it's a mixed bag. Here are some mixed opinions on it:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/345616-motu-828mk3-owners.html

The bottom line is that for most people, it just works, but if you get a system where it doesn't work, either get it from somewhere with a good return policy or be prepared to install a fresh retail copy of Windows (not one of the slipstreamed monstrosities from an OEM). That's true of any interface, really.
 
havnt used the MOTU, etc... but I just got the Fireproject and I havnt had any problems with it so far. Def. a serious upgrade over my POS Wami Rack I was using.
 
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Had nothing but headaches with my MOTU 828 mk3, "downgraded" to an M-Audio Firewire 1814 and couldn't be happier.
 
Had nothing but headaches with my MOTU 828 mk3, "downgraded" to an M-Audio Firewire 1814 and couldn't be happier.

That's funny. I had precisely the reverse experience... well, substitute an 8Pre instead of an 828MK3, but.... The FW1814 has some... ah... interesting quirks, at least on the Mac. What platform and FireWire chipset were you using, out of curiosity?
 
I'm going to give my brand new M-Audio Profire 2626 a serious spin tonight. I'm going to record 6-10 channels at once, depending on the final recording setup (especially how many mics I'm going to use on the drums). But so far I don't have any reason to believe it's not up to it.
 
Presonus

I read you can't use the outs 3-8 simultaneous on the Presonus when you are hooked up to you computer, but rather only in standalone.

Anyone know about this?
 
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