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In addition to b.l.'s post.....

Posted by doodlebug (A) on July 23, 2009 at 04:17:19

In Reply to: Multichannel Audio Interfaces - Best sounding? posted by Presto on July 17, 2009 at 13:04:04:

I'd suggest you add the Presonus FireStudio audio strip to your list. They've finally become stable and are in the pro-sumer range of pricing.

A couple of other things for you to consider:

- Multiple mic pres: Why are you wanting them? If you're planning on playback only, why go there?

- Stability of drivers: This is where the rubber meets the road with many, many of the pro-sumer audio interfaces, IME. That is many of the producers of pro-sumer level gear do not have a good track record of delivering stable, functional and robust drivers especially for the PC world - I don't have a Mac so can't comment there.

Go to places like Gearslutz _and_ the vendor's own forums to see the complaints and functional requests being made to get a idea of the issues here. Generally, Motu, Presonus and many of the smaller pro-sumer vendors are only now getting reasonably stable and latentency-efficient drivers onto their respective platforms - even while they've expanded their product lines. I believe one of the problems here has been that they've not been able to hire really knowledgeable driver developers until the economy turned down.

- Hi-rez: 24/96 or 24/192, etc: Unless you are making live-on-site multichannel recordings, I can't see why you'd want to do far more than 24/96 at this time. I would be nice to do better, but it will depend on the resolution you need. For playback of prerecorded material, this is pretty much controlled by the source which you have no control over.

- Consumer/Pro-sumer/Pro: Generally, I bucket these 3 segments in this way:

- Consumer: the little 2-mic input boxes marketed to a guy with a guitar in his bedroom. Generally, not over $300 or so.
- Pro-sumer: That market for multichannel mic-pre-laden audio interfaces that come in blocks of 8 preamps per strip. Motu/Presonus, etc fall into this category. Some, like the Presonus have add-on devices like the Monitor Station Remote, that makes the guy in his bedroom feel like he's operating a 'real' studio with talk-back, etc. Its still a romper-room sort of thing in that it is used casually but _could_ be put to good use in the proper skilled hands. Prices here will not exceed $1,000.
- Pro: This gear is designed, marketed to and sold to those very skilled hands. They are priced accordingly and will start in the high hundreds of $$ to well into the 5-digit range. RME, Lavray and other devices you see discussed at places like Gearslutz fit into this category. The focus here is on recording capabilities first rather than playback.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

David

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