thebigcheese
"Hi, I'm in Delaware."
I ordered mine a while ago and they are finally here! I haven't had a chance to do a full recording session, so take my impressions with a grain of salt. Here is what I have noticed since hooking them up yesterday:
First impressions: Very solid. A lot of this review will be comparing them to the Firestudio, which is what I am replacing (and also, I imagine, what many people here are using). Unlike the Firestudio, the knobs all line up--that is to say, when I turn them all fully counterclockwise, the lines are all pointing at the same spot on the dial. On the Firestudio, the knobs were all slightly different from one another, making it difficult to match up a pair of mics. I encountered the same problem with the M-Audio Profire 2626, which, despite being more expensive, felt a lot cheaper. Especially the knobs. The Blackbird's knobs are plastic, but they feel good. Same knobs they use on their mixers.
The Blackbird only has one set of ADAT ins and outs, however, while the Firestudio has two. On the other hand, I have two Blackbirds, so I now have a total of two ADAT ins and outs plus the 16 pres on the units themselves. There's no way to bypass the preamps on the Blackbird, though, which is kind of a bummer, so I am using a MOTU 2408 connected over ADAT to do that. You do get two separate headphone outputs on the Blackbird, which is nice, especially since I don't need my Behringer headphone amp now. The Firestudio only has the one, which also hisses a lot. I believe that one of the headphone outputs on the Blackbird mimics one of the back pairs of outputs, but I think the other one is independent. Final thing on the hardware side is that the Blackbird only has six outputs on the back, which are all labeled for a specific purpose, unlike most other interfaces. If you need a lot of outputs, that could be a bummer for you.
Installation is fairly straightforward until you try to hook up a second unit. I have never tried daisy-chaining firewire interfaces before and was a little disappointed to discover that I can't sync the two via wordclock. They just sync over firewire. I suppose it can't really be that much different, and it does save me some clutter, so... whatever, I guess. Windows 7 is a little finicky with the hardware. Although you can change which unit is the master, Windows seems to have decided all on its own which one it is going to send audio to. There may be a way to switch it around, but I gave up and decided to just go with it. What that means is that the Blackbird connected directly to the computer is not the one Windows sends outputs to. I would've thought it would be, but whatever. As long as it all works, I'm happy.
There was also a weird issue when I started up my computer today. I thought it made sense to turn on all my gear (since I just hook it up to a Furman conditioner) and then my computer as I had been doing with the Firestudio I was using. But when Windows booted up, I couldn't get any sound output and the mic I had plugged into input 3 was showing levels in input ADAT3 in the software mixer. So I turned the units off and back on and everything worked again. Weird, but now it works. Maybe I just have to turn them on after the computer.
One thing I really like about the software mixer is that it actually gives you access to ALL of the inputs. Both the Firestudio and the ProFire 2626 give you access to a limited number of them, which I found annoying.
Once I got them all going, I started plugging stuff in and playing back audio files. First I played back some mp3s in iTunes. No big sound difference from the Firestudio. I plugged my guitar directly in--I was happy to hear that the preamps preserve the detail of my playing. One thing I always look for when trying out guitar amps is whether or not the amp preserves the sound of the strings instead of just the pitch--the Blackbird does. I mean, it isn't the greatest sound for an electric guitar, but the detail is there.
Today I tried the units with a band practice. I like to practice with headphones so we don't piss off the neighbors. For some reason, the software mixer defaults the inputs to being panned alternately--input 1 is left, input 2 is right, etc. So I had to go through and center them all. The sound was very good, though. I noticed that my cymbals were brighter without being harsh--more shimmer than the Firestudio. Right now, I have just been using two overheads and a kick mic for practice. I noticed that, even during practice, I could hear the panning of the toms better than I could with the Firestudio. In fact, I could never really hear myself much at all in the headphones with the Firestudio. So that was nice.
I finally listened to a mix I had done for my band and... wow. HUGE difference from the Firestudio. Much like during practice, the panning is more evident. The sound is less muddy and brighter, too. I can hear everything much clearer than I could before. I was expecting it to sound a little different, since all interfaces do, but I wasn't expecting it to be such an obvious improvement. I am quite impressed.
One final touch that I like is that if I just flip off the power conditioner, to which the Blackbirds and my monitors are connected, the monitors don't get hit with a spike like they did with the Firestudio. They are completely silent. I like that because now I can just use the Furman's switch instead of having to turn off the monitors first to protect them from the surge.
For the money, I think the Blackbird is a great choice. It's the same price as the Firestudio Project, but easily trumps in sound quality, build quality, and expandability. You may have to fiddle with the setup a little bit, which is kind of annoying, but on the other hand, you can get two of these for less than any other set of 16 inputs and it will sound better than anything else under $1000.
I will check back in maybe a week when I have gotten in some actual recording. I have to mic up my drum kit again...
First impressions: Very solid. A lot of this review will be comparing them to the Firestudio, which is what I am replacing (and also, I imagine, what many people here are using). Unlike the Firestudio, the knobs all line up--that is to say, when I turn them all fully counterclockwise, the lines are all pointing at the same spot on the dial. On the Firestudio, the knobs were all slightly different from one another, making it difficult to match up a pair of mics. I encountered the same problem with the M-Audio Profire 2626, which, despite being more expensive, felt a lot cheaper. Especially the knobs. The Blackbird's knobs are plastic, but they feel good. Same knobs they use on their mixers.
The Blackbird only has one set of ADAT ins and outs, however, while the Firestudio has two. On the other hand, I have two Blackbirds, so I now have a total of two ADAT ins and outs plus the 16 pres on the units themselves. There's no way to bypass the preamps on the Blackbird, though, which is kind of a bummer, so I am using a MOTU 2408 connected over ADAT to do that. You do get two separate headphone outputs on the Blackbird, which is nice, especially since I don't need my Behringer headphone amp now. The Firestudio only has the one, which also hisses a lot. I believe that one of the headphone outputs on the Blackbird mimics one of the back pairs of outputs, but I think the other one is independent. Final thing on the hardware side is that the Blackbird only has six outputs on the back, which are all labeled for a specific purpose, unlike most other interfaces. If you need a lot of outputs, that could be a bummer for you.
Installation is fairly straightforward until you try to hook up a second unit. I have never tried daisy-chaining firewire interfaces before and was a little disappointed to discover that I can't sync the two via wordclock. They just sync over firewire. I suppose it can't really be that much different, and it does save me some clutter, so... whatever, I guess. Windows 7 is a little finicky with the hardware. Although you can change which unit is the master, Windows seems to have decided all on its own which one it is going to send audio to. There may be a way to switch it around, but I gave up and decided to just go with it. What that means is that the Blackbird connected directly to the computer is not the one Windows sends outputs to. I would've thought it would be, but whatever. As long as it all works, I'm happy.
There was also a weird issue when I started up my computer today. I thought it made sense to turn on all my gear (since I just hook it up to a Furman conditioner) and then my computer as I had been doing with the Firestudio I was using. But when Windows booted up, I couldn't get any sound output and the mic I had plugged into input 3 was showing levels in input ADAT3 in the software mixer. So I turned the units off and back on and everything worked again. Weird, but now it works. Maybe I just have to turn them on after the computer.
One thing I really like about the software mixer is that it actually gives you access to ALL of the inputs. Both the Firestudio and the ProFire 2626 give you access to a limited number of them, which I found annoying.
Once I got them all going, I started plugging stuff in and playing back audio files. First I played back some mp3s in iTunes. No big sound difference from the Firestudio. I plugged my guitar directly in--I was happy to hear that the preamps preserve the detail of my playing. One thing I always look for when trying out guitar amps is whether or not the amp preserves the sound of the strings instead of just the pitch--the Blackbird does. I mean, it isn't the greatest sound for an electric guitar, but the detail is there.
Today I tried the units with a band practice. I like to practice with headphones so we don't piss off the neighbors. For some reason, the software mixer defaults the inputs to being panned alternately--input 1 is left, input 2 is right, etc. So I had to go through and center them all. The sound was very good, though. I noticed that my cymbals were brighter without being harsh--more shimmer than the Firestudio. Right now, I have just been using two overheads and a kick mic for practice. I noticed that, even during practice, I could hear the panning of the toms better than I could with the Firestudio. In fact, I could never really hear myself much at all in the headphones with the Firestudio. So that was nice.
I finally listened to a mix I had done for my band and... wow. HUGE difference from the Firestudio. Much like during practice, the panning is more evident. The sound is less muddy and brighter, too. I can hear everything much clearer than I could before. I was expecting it to sound a little different, since all interfaces do, but I wasn't expecting it to be such an obvious improvement. I am quite impressed.
One final touch that I like is that if I just flip off the power conditioner, to which the Blackbirds and my monitors are connected, the monitors don't get hit with a spike like they did with the Firestudio. They are completely silent. I like that because now I can just use the Furman's switch instead of having to turn off the monitors first to protect them from the surge.
For the money, I think the Blackbird is a great choice. It's the same price as the Firestudio Project, but easily trumps in sound quality, build quality, and expandability. You may have to fiddle with the setup a little bit, which is kind of annoying, but on the other hand, you can get two of these for less than any other set of 16 inputs and it will sound better than anything else under $1000.
I will check back in maybe a week when I have gotten in some actual recording. I have to mic up my drum kit again...
