whats good in the way of audio interfaces at the moment?

so, my trusty focusrite Saffire proplus 26 has stopped working all of a sudden, the firewire simply will not recognise the computer. So ive got the option of sending it off to get it fixed, or maybe splashing a bit of cash on something new.

what im asking is, will there be any discernable benefit to a more modern card in sound quality etc, or might i aswell just stick with my 9 year old 26 i/o.

its looking at costing 40 quid an hour + delivery and parts to get repaired.

If yer happy with it then stick with it ! Though firewire is a becoming a bit of an obsolete interface now - iI had an absolute nightmare nowadays trying find a lappy with one and when I did get one it turns out that the particular chipset of that fireware card was shite so moved to a Focusrite USB2 audio interface

yeah i had to seperately install a firewire pci-e card on this pc to get it working. spent about an hour plugging the firewire socket on my PC case into all sorts of places on the motherboard only to realise that my (pretty expensive) motherboard doesnt use firewire.

i have this http://www.akaipro.com/product/eiepro

don't recommend using it if you're on windows as the drivers straight up dont work and akai has apparently stopped updating them

works lovely on a mac though

whats the difference between any of these interfaces aside from the amount of inputs and mic preamps? my mobo audio input records at up to 192k and its quiet.

Technically probably the D to A converters, quality of mic/line-in and speaker (and headphone) amps - in reality pretty much nowt.

What's your budget?

if its actually worth upgrading, about 500 quid. This is what i was mainly asking, has 10 years advancement in technology actually changed much that im gonna care about, as opposed to spening 70-120 to just get mine fixed.

i'm eying the tascam us-16x08(successor to the us-2000 methinks): http://tascam.com/product/us-16x08/for $300

was announced about a week ago. seems like it'll be out around nov. 5? i'll probably end up purchasing in early 2015 so hopefully if there're any catastrophic issues they'll be noted in early reviews.

I love my RME Babyface and always recommend it to everyone. (: Awesome transparent sound, extremely easy to use, and super solid encasing. the drivers/support is also top notch. A little pricey for consumer-level interfaces (around $750 usd), although it can certainly pass for pro-level in terms of conversion imo. Also, it's only got 2 mic inputs and 2 instruments inputs (i think), so if you need more than 2, prob not a good idea.

I have the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra which I'm really happy with, have gigged with it a lot so it's very sturdy, but I mainly got it because it one of the few sound cards that was within my price range that had the necessary outputs for live work (6 in/6 out).

  On 10/20/2014 at 10:10 PM, messiaen said:

if its actually worth upgrading, about 500 quid. This is what i was mainly asking, has 10 years advancement in technology actually changed much that im gonna care about, as opposed to spening 70-120 to just get mine fixed.

Yaaah, you can pretty much buy anything decent with that budget. I don't think new is necessarily better with regards to audio interfaces, as I don't know of any new ultra tech that's been realized in the past 10 years. Maybe you can buy an old or used interface, save money for hobagz and ganj.

The only pooossibly ever so slight advancement that I can think of, is maybe unit power consumption efficiency and size-- with the unit, anyway. Also, USB3 might have some benefit that I don't know of.--> Cuz what I do know of the original Firewire, is that there seems to be some inherent issue with the way the system was setup to send/receive power, that could cause shorting. I've had a Firewire audio interface kill a FW port, but I think this only happened from not using an external power supply.

I'm babbling at this point, but if I had 500 quid to spend on an interface-- buy a trustworthy old school ting released in the past 7 years-- save rest for hobagz and spliffage.

how many in/outs do you need?

I made do with 8 so far, an upgrade to 16 wouldnt be useless.

For your budget I'd say check out the MOTU interfaces. If I was you I'd save up some more and go for an RME. I've heard a lot of people say they're the best converters in the lower price range.

I started off with the Soundblaster soundcard that came with my Gateway 2000 years ago, then upgraded to a MOTU 828MKII. It was pretty decent but I had major problems with its Windows drivers, lots of audio drop outs and crashes. Once I switched over to OSX it mostly worked fine. Then its two mic preamp inputs stopped working properly, making loud crackling noises when I used them which turned out to be a common MOTU problem.

After that I got a real job and saved up a bit for a Burl B2 ADC which sounds incredible.

The technical changes over the last 10 years would probably just be interface type (firewire->usb2->usb3) allowing for better (smaller) latencies and possibly higher sample & bit rate. The SNR might be better/cleaner on the inputs and outputs too - though how noticeable that'd be is debatable. I'd imagine the evolution is somewhat comparable to speaker & headphone changes over the years (i.e. very very slow with good 'phones from the 70s being just as good today)

I don't think any USB3 interfaces have surfaced that don't offer the same performance on USB2.

the biggest problem i've found is after recording things, they always seem to sound duller. i mean what the f is that about?

  On 10/23/2014 at 4:30 PM, skibby said:

the biggest problem i've found is after recording things, they always seem to sound duller. i mean what the f is that about?

<>>> insufficient data for meaningful answer

  On 10/23/2014 at 4:30 PM, skibby said:

the biggest problem i've found is after recording things, they always seem to sound duller. i mean what the f is that about?

Did you record with a flat EQ?

Is the EQ on your mic flat? What's the signal response on your mic?

Is the EQ flat on your speakers? What's the signal response on your speakers?

Are your wires good? Is your studio balanced? Is the mic damaged?

ok its just a freak problem then, cool.

  On 10/23/2014 at 8:05 PM, skibby said:

ok its just a freak problem then, cool.

btw you can make cheap gear sound good, if that's what you're driving at. It just needs more work. though, a mobo input (?) probably sounds really weak to begin with..

i want a 'what you hear is what you get' interface.

i currently have a tascam us-100 and in no way shape or form do the levels match at almost any stage where there's a meter, just for example.

i want to know that what i'm hearing in the cans is whats getting recorded, i don't want to hear the veil of crappiness plus surprise-noisefloor when i play back my recorded track after i thought it sounded perfect.

Sounds like your settings might be weird if there's a drastic difference from what you're hearing being recorded and what's been recorded...

I think I'll be needing a new interface soon as well, after recently getting my gear all setup again I'm pretty sure my Mbox 2 is on it's last days. I get a weird audio degredation while using it during sessions now... Like you can actually hear the audio quality degrading until it becomes pretty close to just being digital noise. I can fix it sometimes by closing my DAW and re-opening but sometimes I have to unplug and re-boot the whole system (in either case it's pretty damn annoying.) It's not an issue I expect to find a fix to anytime soon and I think is just a matter of the box itself having driver compatibility issues and just becoming obsolete... Time to update I guess.