a few questions on firewire interfaces

[rhythm]

I'm considering the following for a first interface:
Echo Audiofire 4
Presonus Firebox
Focusrite Saffire or Saffire LE
TC Electronics Konnekt 8

In general, I'd appreciate hearing any comments about strengths/weaknesses on these units from those of you who have used them. If you've used more than one of these, then even better since you can offer up comparison-type of comments. I'm assuming that, being in the same price range, the quality of the mic pres, converters, and signal routing capabilities are similar in all of them, but I may be wrong about that and perhaps certain things are truly better with some over others. It may even come down to differences in the bundled recording software that comes with each: Tracktion, Ableton Live, and Cubase LE are the ones involved here. Any comments on these?

Lastly, is the DMP3 mic pre a noticeably better mic pre than the ones built into these units? If so, I could consider getting a DMP3 and the Audiofire 2, which doesn't have mic pres on it.

Thanks for the comments and help,
Greg

 

[dgatwood]

I'm considering the following for a first interface:
Echo Audiofire 4
Presonus Firebox
Focusrite Saffire or Saffire LE
TC Electronics Konnekt 8

TC Electronics gear is largely DICE II based (they designed that chipset, I think) and thus can be pretty problematic. I'd steer well clear of that. Avoid it like the plague. The same goes for other DICE II gear (Preosnus FireStudio Project, etc.).

The FireBox is a plain jane FireWire AVC device, so software-wise, it's not too bad. Hardware-wise, though, it has a buggy power supply design that prevents it from powering up when attached to many computers unless you use the external power supply to "jump start" it. For this reason, if you're thinking about using it in a mobile fashion, I'd avoid it. If you're going to be tethered to a desk anyway, it's probably not substantially worse than anybody else's gear....

AFAIK, the Echo and Focusrite are both okay, though it's always risk to interpret a lack of people screaming "It burns! It burns!" as a sign of quality, so I can't be certain.

 

[TimOBrien]

I've been using a Motu828mkII daisy-chained to a Glyph firewire drive on my XP laptop for a couple of years with ZERO problems.

Their 8Pre is a huge bang-for-the-buck.

Whatever you get, make sure you use a firewire card with TexasInstruments firewire chipset. (Best compatibility with sound interface manufacturers.)

 

[dgatwood]

Their 8Pre is a huge bang-for-the-buck.

Hear, hear. I'm running two of 'em.

 

[rhythm]

Thanks for the feedback so far. I've also read good things about the MOTU products, but I will likely only need 2 mic preamps, and possibly only 1 most of the time.

Too bad about the DICE II issues - I've read a couple of negative comments about it too, but still wanted to hear whether or not people had positive comments on the unit. If it weren't for the DICE II problems, the Konnekt8 unit would be pretty tempting. I think the inclusion of several front panel knobs would be pretty handy to have.

I'll continue to comb forum messages to try and get a feel for the consensus on the preamp comparison. They're probably all about equal, but I'm still curious about how an inexpensive outboard such as the DMP3 compares against them.

Thanks again,
Greg

 

[Carter]

TC Electronics gear is largely DICE II based (they designed that chipset, I think) and thus can be pretty problematic. I'd steer well clear of that. Avoid it like the plague. The same goes for other DICE II gear (Preosnus FireStudio Project, etc.).

Once again you crack me up with your statements, I dont think there is nothing wrong with the DICE II chips, if you had problems you need to look at YOUR computer and the way YOU have it set up I have an off the shelf laptop that runs the Firestudio 26 x 26 just fine for my mobile rig. my workstation I built and it also runs fine.

Your comments and feedback is great but dont put down a piece of kit just because it does not work for you and your set-up. thats just plain wrong

P.S. I wont be the spelling police

 

[pipelineaudio]

Once again you crack me up with your statements, I dont think there is nothing wrong with the DICE II chips

The funny thing is that tech support staff across a wide variety of companies will disagree with you heartily

A few people have gotten DICE-2 devices to work somewhat OK on their systems, the vast majority have not.

The latency is so incredibly high on these things that it should put them out of the running anyway. Run Centrance Latency Test Utility on a Dice-2 unit WITHOUT any DSP mixer cheating and lets see what you get

With the DICE-2 devices I have tested I see

12.5msec @64 samples 15.5 @128 and 24.5 @256 at 44khz

For the motu or RME devices its 5.3, 8.1 and 14 msec respectively

if you are getting different results, please let me know as Im working on a page comparing soundcards

 

[Carter]

The funny thing is that tech support staff across a wide variety of companies will disagree with you heartily

A few people have gotten DICE-2 devices to work somewhat OK on their systems, the vast majority have not.

The latency is so incredibly high on these things that it should put them out of the running anyway. Run Centrance Latency Test Utility on a Dice-2 unit WITHOUT any DSP mixer cheating and lets see what you get

With the DICE-2 devices I have tested I see

12.5msec @64 samples 15.5 @128 and 24.5 @256 at 44khz

For the motu or RME devices its 5.3, 8.1 and 14 msec respectively

if you are getting different results, please let me know as Im working on a page comparing soundcards

Pipeline,
I will download that software and run that test tonight, and I will post my results...

 

[pipelineaudio]

Pipeline,
I will download that software and run that test tonight, and I will post my results...

Thank you! If you can get 32 buffers on your card please try that too. So far I dont have any Dice 2 cards to test with drivers that allow a 32 buffer setting, but there may be some now

 

[Carter]

Thank you! If you can get 32 buffers on your card please try that too. So far I dont have any Dice 2 cards to test with drivers that allow a 32 buffer setting, but there may be some now

You got it I will test it on my mobile rig also, then i will post the spec's of both computers too

 

[therage!]

The funny thing is that tech support staff across a wide variety of companies will disagree with you heartily

A few people have gotten DICE-2 devices to work somewhat OK on their systems, the vast majority have not.

The latency is so incredibly high on these things that it should put them out of the running anyway. Run Centrance Latency Test Utility on a Dice-2 unit WITHOUT any DSP mixer cheating and lets see what you get

With the DICE-2 devices I have tested I see

12.5msec @64 samples 15.5 @128 and 24.5 @256 at 44khz

For the motu or RME devices its 5.3, 8.1 and 14 msec respectively

if you are getting different results, please let me know as Im working on a page comparing soundcards

I'll have to double check it but I believe my Yamaha N12 uses Dice-2 and my latencies are VERY low, about like the MOTU/RME numbers. I'll check back on this later tonight when I get home.

 

[Carter]

I'll have to double check it but I believe my Yamaha N12 uses Dice-2 and my latencies are VERY low, about like the MOTU/RME numbers. I'll check back on this later tonight when I get home.

I agree, I know my Firestudio's arent putting out latency numbers like Pipe posted, But I will post tonight.

 

[pipelineaudio]

The Firestudio, last time I tried had an 11 msec "safety buffer", so you add 11msec to whatever buffer setting size you show and it should give about what the Centrance LTU tells you.

 

[therage!]

I'll have to double check it but I believe my Yamaha N12 uses Dice-2 and my latencies are VERY low, about like the MOTU/RME numbers. I'll check back on this later tonight when I get home.

I checked it out...

6ms at 256 samples
12ms at 512 samples

I'm not 100% certain the N12 I have uses Dice II.

Let me add too that using this N12 mixer I can monitor with VST plugs out of cubase and have no noticeable latency. I can track with reverb and hear absolutely no echo. I've not been able to do that in the past.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I checked it out...

6ms at 256 samples
12ms at 512 samples

I'm not 100% certain the N12 I have uses Dice II.

Let me add too that using this N12 mixer I can monitor with VST plugs out of cubase and have no noticeable latency. I can track with reverb and hear absolutely no echo. I've not been able to do that in the past.

I dont think this is correct. Are you doing 44.1khz? It MIGHT be possible at 96khz but I don't think so.

at 256 samples, even before any sort of processing whatsoever that is 5.8msec in each direction so the minimum possible should be 11.6 msec.

Please recheck and make sure you are at 44.1khz and that there is no dsp mixing going on providing a shorter path

 

[Carter]

The Firestudio, last time I tried had an 11 msec "safety buffer", so you add 11msec to whatever buffer setting size you show and it should give about what the Centrance LTU tells you.

I dont get this 11 sec "saftey buffer" that you want to add on now,

2.9msec @ 64 samples
5.8msec @ 128 samples
11.6msec @ 256 samples

can I ask you why you trust that program? whats so good about it, never heard of it myself.

Both Compaq Presarios. both AMD, one Turion 64X2 (laptop) the other AMD 64 3800+ .
both 2 gig of RAM

Cant go to 32

 

[pipelineaudio]

Those numbers are impossible thru the asio drivers. There has to be a DSP mixer going carrying the ins to the outs which is resulting in those low numbers.

Centrance makes 3rd party drivers which reduce latency and cpu of many popular soundcards, they are the test standard reccomended by people like Jim Roseberry.

If you think they are in some sort of conspiracy or inaccurate or something you could turn off auto record latency offset in your app, play a snare sample out and record back in, measuring the time between the peaks.

Edited to add: oops I was looking at the yamaha numbers when I wrote this. Those numbers WOULD I think be posible theoretically, however i do not believe they would be possible thru the presonus drivers

 

[Carter]

I dont think this is correct. Are you doing 44.1khz? It MIGHT be possible at 96khz but I don't think so.

at 256 samples, even before any sort of processing whatsoever that is 5.8msec in each direction so the minimum possible should be 11.6 msec.

Please recheck and make sure you are at 44.1khz and that there is no dsp mixing going on providing a shorter path

You say this^ and then before that you say this.

The latency is so incredibly high on these things that it should put them out of the running anyway. Run Centrance Latency Test Utility on a Dice-2 unit WITHOUT any DSP mixer cheating and lets see what you get

With the DICE-2 devices I have tested I see

12.5msec @64 samples 15.5 @128 and 24.5 @256 at 44khz

For the motu or RME devices its 5.3, 8.1 and 14 msec respectively

if you are getting different results, please let me know as Im working on a page comparing soundcards

I just want to say that MY Firestudio's are just fine and I dont have any latency probems no matter what I record including a whole lot of Midi! so you might have some numbers that dont match up with mine so give it a break. I see that you have the same view on this piece of equipment over at the other place across the pond.

Im tired of this conversation,

Im out!


Nothing Personal

 

[dgatwood]

Once again you crack me up with your statements, I dont think there is nothing wrong with the DICE II chips, if you had problems you need to look at YOUR computer and the way YOU have it set up I have an off the shelf laptop that runs the Firestudio 26 x 26 just fine for my mobile rig. my workstation I built and it also runs fine.

I don't own and have never owned any DICE II hardware. I have read in a number of places that their hardware is notorious for having rather severe problems on both Macs and PCs.

I've also read tons of complaints about their driver stability. Anecdotally, they appear to have more complaints than any other FireWire audio chipset, and that's pretty damning given their relatively small market share. Heck, just do a search on Google for Dice II Chipset and the second hit is a thread ranting about the massive CPU spiking problems. gearslutz

It should be noted that a FireWire chipset/driver combination that uses DCL programs correctly should use almost no CPU, so the sort of load that these things are seeing is a pretty clear indication that the DICE II chipset's drivers are doing way too much work at one time.

Manufacturers also aren't happy with it, and basically confirm in these comments that the stock DICE II drivers have such issues.

It's also telling that the sole ZZounds and Sweetwater review for the TC Konnekt 8 was basically ranting about the poor drivers. MF has no reviews. Heck, it's bad enough that even some professional reviewers had problems. More to the point, the near complete lack of professional reviews is usually a good indication that something is very wrong with the product, as reviewers don't like to give negative reviews.

Its predecessor, the DICE, was also plagued with severe driver problems. Do a search for Alesis firewire hardware, and you'll see what I mean....

So no, this is not an issue with my system. Technically, it's not a problem with the chipset, either, except insofar as most vendors who use this chipset do not employ any driver writing staff and generally rely on the stock drivers from the chipset vendor, which suck.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I dont understand, where is the conflict between what I said?

Maybe presonus has finally, after a year or so, provided much lower latency drivers without the safety buffer. That would be cool. And if they dont drop out like mad, I'd have another look.

The Firestudio is the best laid out audio interface I have ever seen. I was stark raving mad over it when they first announced it and got a unit before they were available for retail. I gave it nine months to work, across many systems and even secured offers for other people to write working drivers for it. I wanted this thing to work BADLY