Presonus AudioBox VSL Series

[DM60]

Has anyone any experience with these? I have the Audiobox USB, but there is latency issues with that box. My understanding is the VSL series improves the processing to reduce the latency.

I liked the Audiobox USB, just hated the latency (buffers lower than 1024 make it glitch). I am considering getting an 8X8 channel interface, so I am starting to investigate now (I am still considering a Tascam DP24 or similar for flexibility, like live band recording or remote recording).

Any thought would be appreciated.

 

[Bane01]

Hi DM60,

I don't know if you heard about it, but there is this dude who hangs out on Gearslutz and has his own website. He does a lot of benchmarks and the like with audio equipment, particularly the latency performance of audio interfaces. You can find his site here: DAW Bench : DAW Performance Benchmarking

The above has the latency data for the Audiobox 44VSL.

Now its surprising that a lot of the brands that are tossed around here as recommendations either don't appear on the chart or have very inferior latency performance. A lot of the high end units like RME, UA Apollo, Metric Halo, and Apogee's tend to do a lot better in this field.

What these budget units are really setting out to do is kind of make latency more tolerable with the DSP based direct monitoring capabilities so that you can monitor audio zero latency, and keep your buffer high for mixing tasks. Of course when you start monitoring your VSTi's, the latency is again taken into account, and the unit's ASIO latency abilities come into play. Eventually the serious musicians move on to more impressive high end units that boast solid performance at lower buffers. That said, your latency performance is still very dependent on your computers capabilities.

I made a mistake myself by upgrading a Steinberg CI1 unit (very solid latency performance, no DSP) for a Focusrite Scarlett, (worse latency, DSP software). Still regret it, but I would bet the Scarlett has worse latency than the Audiobox.

 

[DM60]

Thanks, this was very good information. Seems like if one has a desktop, the PCI(e) is the way to go, but I was looking at their top dog and that costs upwards ~$1500. But I think to me if I upgrade, I may bite the bullet and go that route.

Thanks for sharing, while the VSL was better than the one I have, it was rather low on the chart. So, it answered my question.

Thanks again.