FireStudio Project or Saffire Pro 40 or _________?

T

Thisnameistaken

New member
Hey everyone. I'm still new to this home recording fiasco, and still fairly unknowledgeable but especially so when it comes to interfaces. Here are the 2 i'm considering.

Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 | Sweetwater.com

PreSonus FireStudio Project | Sweetwater.com

Opinions as to which you think would be the better choice for me and why!

Here's my deal. I want to be able to make decent sounding recordings of my music, and some friends bands and stuff probably. Drums/guitars/vocals. I know I need an audio interface to plug mics and guitars into my computer. But I know they do so much more. I'm just not sure what. If someone can give me kind of a basic rundown that would be awesome!

I know you can get audio interfaces that have mixers and/or control surfaces and other things integrated. I'm just not sure if I need one that has all that. Should I just worry about the interface and worry about that other stuff once I get more comfortable with the gear I have or what?

Lastly

https://homerecording.com/bbs/equip...ace-800-focusrite-liquid-saffire-56-a-330389/

This post is talking about upgrading from a firestudio project to one of those higher end ones.

Basically, I have no idea what I want. If someone could explain to my why I would want an interface with its own mixer or one of the higher end 1000+ dollar ones as apposed to the 2 I listed, that would really help me come to a decision.

Any info helps! Thanks a bunch!
 
Hey,

You're right. You can get interfaces with mixers or control surfaces built in.
I reckon if you're not sure about needing that, then you don't need that.

My view on this is that it can be hard enough to get the room, the instrument, the performer and the gain right without introducing eqs and stuff like that.

Anything that a mixer can do can be done through your computer software, but without the need for commitment; You don't have to get it right during that crucial 'perfect take', you can do it after.

The main differences between £200 and £1000 interfaces are going to be two things IMO

Quality of the actual hardware. The preamps and the converters are likely to provide more gain and cleaner gain.
And connectivity/routing. You might find the more expensive ones have a greater number of outputs and more digital options than cheaper ones.

Fireface 800 is advertised as a 56 in and out unit, whereas saffire pro 40 is 20 in 20 out.

If you just want 8 mic pres in an interface and a few outs for monitors and headphone amps, take a look at something like a presonus firepod.
I found them to sound nice and be very very well built.
Tascam units get good rep on here too and are much cheaper. They might be worth a bit of research too.
Hope this helps.
 
The top two interfaces you listed are fairly similar. 8 inputs/preamps. 8 outputs. There are some subtle differences though. I like the metering on the Focusrite more than the Firestudio. However most of the pre's on the Focusrite are on the back of the unit, and that may be a hassle unless you have an xlr patchbay or something of the sort. I think the Focusrite has direct monitoring, and that's a plus! I have a friend who has the firestudio, and I will tell you, I don't like their preamps. They sound so tinny to me. But if you buy external preamps that shouldn't be a problem. It all comes down to preference.

Regarding the mixer/interface/control surface combo. Bear (Bare?) in mind that when there is a product that has more bells and whistles, as opposed to just preamps and the converter, more money has to be put into those things. Which will probably degrade the quality everything else. If you don't need the extra things, I would recommend against it.

And finally the higher end converters you listed. I only heard great things about the RME converters. As well as Focusrite. There are more substantial differences between the Fireface 800 and the Saffire 56 compared to the first two interfaces you listed. More than I want to write. You should do some research to see what features you like best.
 
Hey, thanks a lot steenamaroo! I'll probably forego anything with a mixer to start. I would like to be able to record jams with my whole band aswell. Could the

Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 | Sweetwater.com or PreSonus FireStudio Project | Sweetwater.com do that just fine?

I think i'm going to go with either one of those two or MOTU 8pre | Sweetwater.com

I read on another forum MOTU's have better A/D/A conversion.

As for TASCAM units. I believe they only make USB audio interfaces which I heard were not as good as Firewire ones. More "jittery" or something about them dropping some signal sometimes? I kinda forget, but if someone can confirm it awesome.

So i've narrowed it down to these 3. Does anyone have any experience they can share? Pro, cons of each? Would either suit my needs fine? Thanks again!
 
Well, when you say record the whole band jamming, how many microphones are you talking about?
That's the limiting factor.
Each of those interfaces have eight mic preamps built in, so if eight simultaneous channels is enough, then yes, any one will do fine.

I dunno about the USB jittery thing. You always find complaints and bad reviews about anything, but if usb wasn't capable of carrying eight or sixteen channels of audio, they wouldn't make the unit with usb.

I imagine a lot of the complaints come from people who have a bucketload of devices using up usb bandwidth. HDDs etc.
 
Very Possible about the bandwidth thing steenamaroo.

And well, I was thinking 7 - 10 for drums, then 1 for each guitar and bass, and vocals. soo 12 - 16?

I think id can ADAT additional i/o ports down the line with any of those 3 i listed above. I should also mention that i'm running windows 7 64 bit pro. I'm reading around and hearing presonus and focusrite have had driver issues with win 7 64. and RME products work a lot better.
 
I have the Firestudio Project. I had a problem with the first one that shipped, but they sent a new one and I've had no problems. The interface sounds great and works well. Plus Studio One is great too.
 
For the Presonus and the Saffire Pro 40, I would go for the Focusrite (SP40). I have it, Focusrite can really make preamps. The Focusrite also looks more profesional. And not only do they have a smooth sound and a very nice DI option, they have digital inputs as well. So if youre expanding sometime, when you realize you maybe want a track or two more, you have to buy another interface.. I made that mistake.. Control surfaces and etc is not a must, it takes very long time to learn if youre not so familiar with soundrecording.

I would suggest:
-Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. you have 8 analog inputs, 8 adat (digital) inputs and 2 spdif (digital) inputs. (I can't get it to be 20 inputs on this?)
-If later on you feel it neccesary to upgrade, you can just buy a AD/DA converter and viola, 8/2 more tracks.
-Control surface is just a tool for faster working, when you can use your DAW. Spend the money on nice mics/plug ins, etc, just stuff that would improve the sound and your learningprogress:)

Hope some of this helped?:)
 
Steenamaroo said:
I dunno about the USB jittery thing. You always find complaints and bad reviews about anything, but if usb wasn't capable of carrying eight or sixteen channels of audio, they wouldn't make the unit with usb.

I imagine a lot of the complaints come from people who have a bucketload of devices using up usb bandwidth. HDDs etc.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's largely caused by the brain-damaged, too-flat, too-narrow hardware interrupt architecture that Intel designed way back in the 1970s that they just wallpapered over with IRQ sharing instead of fixing it correctly. Some computer manufacturers do a halfway sane job of choosing which hardware devices should share an IRQ, some don't. When they do, you're golden with USB or FireWire. When they don't, one or the other or both could be utterly unusable.

At least in theory, the newer PCIe-based motherboard designs should have fewer problems, assuming all their outboard devices support and use MSI (message signaled interrupts). As always, YMMV.

The big difference is that hardware manufacturers mostly assume that if you're going to use FireWire, it's for multimedia, so it had better not share an interrupt with anything too obnoxious(*). By contrast, 99% of USB ports never see anything plugged into them other than a keyboard or a mouse. Thus, odds are somewhat higher that a USB chip will share an IRQ with something unholy... like your video card.

(*) I'm ignoring the vendors that put in those crap USB/FireWire combo chipsets, who just use FireWire as a bullet point item under the assumption that most people won't actually use it anyway, but as far as I'm concerned, those devices don't really have FireWire....
 
From my experience and research, the main problem with USB 2.0, is the fact that it does not share well with any other device. It needs either its own PCIe buss, or just use a 3.0 port to run it. Something like a mouse may not interfere, but you absolutely cannot run an external drive on the same 2.0 buss as a USB 2.0 interface. Horrible, nasty, evil things happen then. For a PC, a PCIe USB port costs as little as $18.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I lost the bid on that MOTU. but not biggie.

I've been seriously considering the saffire pro 40 and reading a lot of reviews. Some of them are talking about issues with latency and if i'm not mistaken that's a short delay from when you play to when you hear it out of your computer?

That sounds like a super important thing to me. Any bit would probably throw you off while preforming.
Any idea what the best low latency audio interface would be? preferably ZERO latency. 750 max price range.
 
There's no such thing as zero latency. The only way to keep your latency at zero would be to make your monitoring completely analog.
 
So i've been reading. I also read that you can get interfaces with "direct monotoring" and that pretty well eliminated latency. Looks like i'll have to look into those a bit more.
 
TC Electronic Studio Konnekt 48 does too (and I think their impact twin), and you can also add effects right through the interface so you can get direct monitoring with reverb and whatever else its got. But I don't think i'd care too much about that anyway. The Direct monitoring is the main draw. If I wanted to add effects I could add it after tracking using the DAW if i'm not mistaken.

The only drawback to the Studiokonnekt 48 is it's only got 4 pre amps...now i'm starting to wonder if I should just get something like that, and A-DAT a few more pre's.
 
The 828MK3 has the advantage of being both FireWire and USB. That way, you can try one, and if you find it problematic on your hardware, you can switch to the other. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top