Mic preamps on the Fireface 800?

[sunflute]

Hello Fellow Forum members,

I am considering buying the Fireface 800 as my first personal home recording rig and was wondering about the quality of the 4 Mic preamps that come built-in to the Fireface 800.

Anyone have any experience yet with them?

Should I get separate preamps?

I only have $2000 to spend on both the ad/da converters and the mic pres. I also need at least 4 preamps

Any suggestions would be welcome, Thank you in advance for your advise.

sunflute

 

[JasonB93117]

I have not had any experience with the Fireface or any of the products I'm about to mention. But... If it was me with 2000 to spend on conversion and pre-amps I would get the RME multiface and PCI card and a 4 channel sytek pre-amp with 2 channels with the burr brown mod. This combination would run you about 1600 and leave you with 400 for a FMR RNP pre-amp for added flavor or a couple FMR RNCs for compression if you want it. Just some different ideas =) I think either way the quality will be very useable.

 

[adam]

I have not had any experience with the Fireface or any of the products I'm about to mention. But... If it was me with 2000 to spend on conversion and pre-amps I would get the RME multiface and PCI card and a 4 channel sytek pre-amp with 2 channels with the burr brown mod. This combination would run you about 1600 and leave you with 400 for a FMR RNP pre-amp for added flavor or a couple FMR RNCs for compression if you want it. Just some different ideas =) I think either way the quality will be very useable.

+1 - I still love my multiface - was thinking about updating to the fireface, for the convienence of it, but now have thought otherwise. The drivers were immature - though that seems to be fixed or improving. there is a comprehensive thread on gearslutz.com on the ff, including thoughts on pre's etc. Unless you need more i/o or more than 96k or all in one packaging the multiface + separate pre's would be a good deal. Sytek is a good idea, and you have other options too for varied flavor. Have you considered the firepod? heard good things about it, maybe not quite as good converters as the multiface, but likely good, and it includes some pre's so you can have even more options, or put the $$ towards other things.

 

[apl]

The pres are excellent and come from their Quadmic. The drivers may be immature but RME has a reputation for stability and I'm sure they'll get it worked out.

 

[Solafide]

I just am in the process of hooking up my fireface that I picked up last night. My first impressions of the preamps are very good. I wasn't expecting anything spectacular, and they aren't that. They just seem to be very clean, with a fairly smooth sound. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the voicmaster pro, but my first impressions were that this has a similar sound, but maybe just a little "thicker."

Mind you this is not from exstensive use, just trying a couple mics on vocals.
I have other pres I will use (demeter, grace, fmr, etc) but my first impression was that these preamps will work well when I need the extra chanels.

When I work with them more, I will try to give you some more info.
(This unit is amazing by the way! The sound is great, and latency down to 1 ms without drop outs!!)

I don't know where you are looking to get the fireface from, but I know where you can get a very good deal on one, that would leave you money left to maybe even get that sytec.

Shoot me a PM if you want to know more.



Buy the way, what do you have for mics?