Help me pick a new interface please! :)

[SubFunk]

Personally I feel a bit wary of Tascam gear after seeing two friends have gear failures and driver problems because of poor support from Tascam. Not a very rational way of picking brands I suppose. I like the I/O on that Tascam though.

Dunno I've always liked Tascam on PC's, although I've heard mixed reviews when being used with macs.

i would be vary of tascam as well, they sadly, very sadly moved down form a company where you could buy nearly blind any product with having total satisfaction to a nightmare... we used a lot of their gear in the old company i worked for, all newer products we purchased from them where real rubbish and went back... i don't know what's wrong with them, but they used to be top notch quality, now it's cheapest chinese shit.

[lapieuvre]

+1 for écho

[Atomikat]

+1 for the RME's, you wont' be disappointed

[cmreal04]

Personally I feel a bit wary of Tascam gear after seeing two friends have gear failures and driver problems because of poor support from Tascam. Not a very rational way of picking brands I suppose. I like the I/O on that Tascam though.

Dunno I've always liked Tascam on PC's, although I've heard mixed reviews when being used with macs.

i would be vary of tascam as well, they sadly, very sadly moved down form a company where you could buy nearly blind any product with having total satisfaction to a nightmare... we used a lot of their gear in the old company i worked for, all newer products we purchased from them where real rubbish and went back... i don't know what's wrong with them, but they used to be top notch quality, now it's cheapest chinese shit.

I hate to hear they've gone astray. My MKII has been treating me great, but I only need it for 1 mic and my turntable.

[BoxDJ]

From what I've heard, Echo and RME seem to be the most reliable.

[leedsquietman]

Tascam have good features but their have been issues with their drivers (esp. USB interfaces) in both stability and in terms of never getting close to some others with low latency performance on some profucts and especially Mac.

I can recommend both Echo and RME from having used them a) personally (Echo) and b) at work RME FF800.

[lapieuvre]

+1 for the RME's, you wont' be disappointed

I owned an echo for years, then upgraded to RME Fireface 800. Just love it. It's very expensive, though! The echo was rock solid, too.

[GrooveNinja]

RME is always a good, safe option giving proven quality, great low latency drivers (probably the best around on a PC and only Apogee's Symphony system rivals it on mac) and solid build.

I tried a Fireface UC, an Apogee Duet, and the Metric Halo ULN-2. With the same Live project on my Macbook Pro at 44.1KHz, I could run the Fireface at 95 samples without any problems. The Duet would run at 128 samples. The ULN-2 will run at 37 samples. Just sayin'...

[SubFunk]

I hate to hear they've gone astray. My MKII has been treating me great, but I only need it for 1 mic and my turntable.

well, i am super annoyed by it myself, they made such top class professional audio products, great russian style built to win the next war, fantastic features, superb sound and the whole lot... now they got apeshit. real, real sad!!!

so bad that there have been products being completely withdrawn again, because they could not handle the bugs in their software...
i can't recall the model number, but it was a 48 track HD recorder with computer sized screen... we wanted to buy it for the company...
and all the latest CD players / compact flash recorders of them had severe bugs, the list goes on and on...

[3phase]

RME is always a good, safe option giving proven quality, great low latency drivers (probably the best around on a PC and only Apogee's Symphony system rivals it on mac) and solid build.

I tried a Fireface UC, an Apogee Duet, and the Metric Halo ULN-2. With the same Live project on my Macbook Pro at 44.1KHz, I could run the Fireface at 95 samples without any problems. The Duet would run at 128 samples. The ULN-2 will run at 37 samples. Just sayin'...

true..the metric halo stuff is nice and the sales figure on the second handmarket speeks for it self..theese units dont get replaced...
however.. rme is cheap against them... and smaler

[leedsquietman]

The Fireface UC (usb 2.0 interface) can run at 14 (FOURTEEN) samples on a Mac Pro Octacore.

The FF800 adds a buffer (48 samples) for smoother performance to it's output, so it actually performs slightly less well than the FF400 and Fireface UC. Yes, Metric Halo are also fantastic. The ULN-2/8 and their older cards with option DSP, such as 2882 are all really top stuff - just a pity there are no windows versions, Mac only.

Let's face it though, anything giving solid performance at 128 samples or less is a good performance. You can use direct monitoring for near zero latency if 128 samples is too much latency. I bet your FF800 would be able to run at 64 samples in another host - Live always requires higher latency than other DAWS in my experience, due to it's on the fly, drop and drag, live performance orientated audio engine.

Let's also not forget - the real round trip latency is going to be higher than what is specified anyway, there is also latency incurred in the conversion stage and many manufacturers add additional buffers (usually on the output/playback side) for smoother performance. When someone says it has a 3ms latency, that usually means 3ms input, 4-5ms output (depending on buffers added ) and aroun 1-1.5 ms for A/D conversion, making a real roundtrip latency of closer to 10ms.

[SubFunk]

i actually wonder anyways, how someone possibly can have problems with sample buffers of 256 or below, OK maybe when you are a guitarist... maybe.

otherwise i never had any real issues using 256 or below... i don't know, but anything below 11ms is like talking about below 40hz subs IMHO.
and hardly noticeable.

[leedsquietman]

Tracking real drums in the studio is something which typically requires less than 96 samples latency or some drummers really feel it. Even death metal shredders should be able to cope with latency of 128 samples.

Otherwise 256 samples is fine for most other applications.

[SubFunk]

Well, yes fair enough. but again in a studio (for everything, vox, drums, etc.) you easy can delay compensate the monitor feed, to have more CPU juice, i hardly have been in studios which permanentely have the latest computers, they are actually fairly old at times and you can still work professionally.

i don't want to argue at all, and super low latencies are a great thing to have.

just feel it is a bit obsessed at times.

it is yet another reason why you hardly find Live for plain tracking in studios, i would rather look at the general quaility and reliability!!! of an interface...

peace.

[dru]

My firebox died yesterday thanks to a leaking window and the worst storm Perth has seen in 14 years. It was fully drenched and wouldn't power up after giving it a thorough dry. I nearly bought a firestudio mobile to take it's place but it came back to life.

presonus gear is very decent quality abd great support too.