FireWire 24-track recording, fewest units/simplest setup. (considering PreSonus)
dastrick
huh???
Ah ha, I don't want to turn this into a petty Presonus vs Motu debate, but I will drop in with the answer to this
You could probably do a very similar thing with two 896mk3 chained via firewire, each with 8pres attached via ADAT.
A more stable setup would probably be based off their PCI interfaces... one PCI-424 card can connect to 4 of the interfaces (including the 24 i/o), giving a maximum total of 96 inputs and outputs for the card.
But yea, 96 tracks is a bit more than the 24 the OP wanted, or even the 32 Vinnydude asked about
Oh no. A debate is definitely not my intentions. I just post what I've seen. I've researched Presonus so that's what I know.
And you're probably right about the PCI interfaces for that many channels. I like the RME that was posted earlier. How much are those things?
mattr
Resident moody teenager
The RME card is very pricey (around £520 in the UK I think) considering you then need converters / preamps on top of it, but I've done stuff at a studio with a digital mixer hooked up to an older version of the card and it was absolutely rock solid whatever you did with it. Didn't even put a thought to what soundcard was in there to begin with because it just worked. Definitely an option I'll consider in the distant future if I ever do a more permanent studio setup
TyphoidHippo
1Trillion K Platinum User
A couple of points that I think you are overlooking or forgetting, and definitely should consider - (I didn't really thoroughly read all the posts in this thread, so if these have been covered...my bad
.)1. Despite looking almost identical, and having a very similar feature-list: The FireStudio and the DigiMax are fundamentally *different* devices. "Simply missing firewire output" is not a simple matter at all - The DigiMax is completely missing any way to communicate with a computer. It is not a DAW interface - it's a preamp strip and converter combo-box. The FireStudio, on the other hand, is all those things, plus a DAW interface - and you definitely don't wanna overlook differences like this when you're picking out your gear.
2. The DigiMax has real insert points, which the FireStudio, and most other preamp/converter combos do not. The only way to use outboard gear, that has line-level I/O, while recording is to insert it between the preamp and the converter - this is, also, definitely not something you want to overlook if you have any intentions of using outboard stuff. Without insert points, the only other way to use outboard stuff while tracking is to have your preamps and your converters in physically separate devices that you can manually "insert" something in the middle of while running a cable from one to the other...and even then, the DigiMax is a step-up from that setup, in the convenience department, because it will reduce the amount of cabling you'll have strewn all over the place as you swap out what sits between preamp and converter on what channel for what situation. It's not a full-blown patchbay, of course, but it's better than nothing, and worth considering, I think.
Hope that helps -
edit: Granted now, more and more people are using less and less outboard stuff - but I don't know that I, personally, would be willing to completely rule it out. I know some will say "you don't need any of that old shit", but... some of that stuff is pretty awesome, and you might find yourself someday wanting to add, say... a Distressor into your chain, but not wanting to repeatedly send the audio through a D/A conversion, out to *whatever*, and back through an A/D conversion back into your DAW to use your outboard stuff. It'd be kind of a bummer to find out you need to buy a whole new set of preamps and converters just to stick a stupid compressor between them.
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