Phonic Firefly & Behringer ADA 8000

C

Cluster

New member
Despite all the discussions about Phonic and Behringer I bought myself the Firefly 808 and after trying it a bit, I am very happy with it. As I would like ot have to opportunity to do some live recordings, I am looking onto buying a Behringer ADA 8000 to connect it to the Firefly and have an additional 8 mic/line inputs.

I would like to know, if those additional 8 tracks will show up individually as another 8 tracks in a DAW like Reaper or Sonar 8? Can anyone clarify that for me?

Furthermore I'd like to mention, that I sometimes hardly can avoid at least a little mile when going through these forums; it is very very similar to reading through recording, guitar or keyboard magazines. Everybody is hunting for sound quality, headroom, clarity etc etc.... Only to end up listening to his mix as a 128kbs mp3 file in a noisy car or over tiny earphones. Does nobody notice, how funny that is??? On top of that it happened that I had an old track, transferred from a vinyl LP (these thin, black 12' discs with the concentric spiral scratch) loaded into Audacity at the same time as I had open a modern recording ..... on the old, vinyl track I could see the dynamics, on the modern recording, except for a few gaps which indicated some kind of changes in the music, everything was blue from bottom to top in the track display. And I must say, I really preferred the dynamics of the old recording instead of the compression, compression, compression of the so called modern recording. My target is to get something like the vinyl recording out of my stuff, be it other peoples music or my own.

But coming back to my original question: I really would appreciate, if someone could answer my questions, even if we possibly do not agree in regards of vintage - modern recordings and techniques!
 
Description of Firefly:
Code: Firefly808
•FireWire (IEEE 1394) audio interface
•24-bit resolution, up to 192 kHz sampling rate
•18 simultaneous inputs and outputs FireWire audio interface
•8 microphone preamps w/ trim control and individual phantom power switches
•8 analog line Inputs including 2 Instrument Inputs
•8 channels of optical ADAT I/O (4 ch. via 96k dual SMUX)
•S/PDIF I/O, AES/EBU I/O, MIDI I/O and word clock I/O
•Headphone output and Main output with volume control for monitoring purpose
•Channel meters on channel 1 to 8 for input or output
•Synchronization, sampling rate, digit I/O and MIDI in/out indicators
•Dual FireWire ports for daisy chaining and direct connection to Mac or PC
•Stand-alone Mixer functionality for field and studio use without computer
•Instrument input, pad switch, balanced TRS send jacks on Inputs 1 and 2
•Compatible with Windows XP, Vista & 7 and Mac OSX
•Steinberg Cubase LE 4 DAW software included

There you go.
•8 channels of optical ADAT I/O
Click to expand...
Don't know what this means though.
(4 ch. via 96k dual SMUX)
Click to expand...
Regardless, hook up the Behringer ADA 8000 and you have yourself 8 more channels.
The channels will show up in your options when arming the tracks and if your audio interface has a "Virtual Console" then they will show up there too.
A couple of comments about the Behringer:
You'll have to buy your own lightpipe cables.
You can link the "ADAT Out" to "ADAT In" if you want to use it just as a preamp.
The preamp knobs are graduated which makes it easier to set them at the exact same level every time. A pleasant surprise, I thought.
 
Thanks, Jim,

the last section of your reply was what I wanted to know. I got the Phonic already, and now I am going to get the Behringer!
 
No problem. Optical ADAT out from the Behringer to optical ADAT in on the firefly. Set the interface so that the Firefly is the master clock, in case you need other stuff to go into the Firefly. You'll need what is called a "Toslink" cable. There's no reason it shouldn't work. Go for it.-Richie
 
Jim Lad said:
Don't know what this means though:
(4 ch. via 96k dual SMUX)
Click to expand...

ADAT passes 8 channels at 44.1khz or 48khz rates.

The manufacturers do a little trick where they combine 2 channels @ 48k to get a 96k channel. So you end up with 4 channels at 96k on the ADAT line.

(Not that you want to use 96k anyway and certainly not with lower-end equipment...)


Yes, Cluster, Reaper will just see another 8 channels that you can record simultaneously.
That's the whole point of ADAT!
 
Thanks guys, that's what i needed to know! The ADA is ordered + two cables! I am finally going for 16 straight tracks! Next thing is if I get my Dell 1720 optimized for 16 tracks live!

Have a nice day and thanks again!
 
Cluster said:
Furthermore I'd like to mention, that I sometimes hardly can avoid at least a little mile when going through these forums; it is very very similar to reading through recording, guitar or keyboard magazines. Everybody is hunting for sound quality, headroom, clarity etc etc.... Only to end up listening to his mix as a 128kbs mp3 file in a noisy car or over tiny earphones. Does nobody notice, how funny that is??? On top of that it happened that I had an old track, transferred from a vinyl LP (these thin, black 12' discs with the concentric spiral scratch) loaded into Audacity at the same time as I had open a modern recording ..... on the old, vinyl track I could see the dynamics, on the modern recording, except for a few gaps which indicated some kind of changes in the music, everything was blue from bottom to top in the track display. And I must say, I really preferred the dynamics of the old recording instead of the compression, compression, compression of the so called modern recording. My target is to get something like the vinyl recording out of my stuff, be it other peoples music or my own.
Click to expand...

Interesting observations. In the weirdest way, I find the bar/standard on these forums to be so much higher than in the actual recording world. Maybe it's because pros in the public domain don't tell you how to do things or more to the point, they're not really available to ask and the people on HR and other forums are. Maybe I live in the past in this regard, but I came up reading about bands, artists, producers, engineers that were innovators and mavericks, always on the quest to find a new and different way of getting sounds. You know, you read about Joe Meek recording in the bathroom or making these crazy echo chambers or the Beatles using a packing case instead of a snare and utilizing backwards recording or Slade stomping their boots on the studio floor to get that sound they were renouned for or Judas Priest rattling cutlery and compressing heavilly to get an industrial metal sound or Larry Graham using piano strings on his bass and pioneering the slap technique as a result. These are just a tiny number of the great innovations that have appeared over 80 years but it seems this kind of 'dirty' recording is sometimes viewed as anathema on the home front. Still, it takes many colours to make a rainbow......(well, 7. :D)
 
warning
phonic fireflay 808 universal doesn't manage 8 separate channels for adat but only two. so if you connect behringer ada8000 (if it work) you manage only two channel. this is the phonic's swindle.
 
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