focusrite saffire

georgebrazil · Post by **georgebrazil** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 2:18 am

Folks, Im thinking about getting myself a focusrite saffire. Any users out there who could kindly provide some feedback about it? (features, latency, usage experience with live 5, etc). Comparisons against Edirol's FA-66 and Presonus' Inspire 1394 are welcome. Tks in advance.

http://www.focusrite.com/productdetails ... 8&iRange=5

David · Post by **David** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 3:19 pm

Evening,

I own a Focusrite Saffire. To be honest, mixed reviews here. In terms of Sound quality I am very happy with it. The only problem I have is that twice now it has just 'stopped working' for no apparent reason. The first time I just re-installed it and this fixed it. Then it happened again and I've still to fix it... It may be a dodgy driver or something? So now I'm back to SoundMax Audio!

HTH,
David

robin · Post by **robin** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 4:19 pm

I'm interested in one of these too. I have some questions in my dupe thread here:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28677

ta

Jubei · Post by **Jubei** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:52 pm

I have one. So far it has been rock solid! Sounds great. I had a presonus fire box, but that gave me all sorts of problems. I like that you can add eq and compression through the hardware and save on cpu usage. Great for me and recording my vocals. Ummm..hmmm...i forget exactly what kind of latency I was getting, but seemed the same as the firebox...maybe 7-8ms? Not positive....i'll check on that. Anyway two thumbs up from me. Very happy with it.

brainray · Post by **brainray** » Wed Oct 26, 2005 8:56 pm

I'm also comparing the FA-66 and the Presonus interfaces with the Saffire since a few days, and I think I'm going to get one tomorrow.

The biggest plus is the DSP driven plug-ins, but you can only use them as input fx. But this is perfect: usually the big problem with all native interfaces is, the latency is too high to record vocals or other instruments with them. I used to monitor the recording with an external desk using an EQ and and some light precompression from analogue hardware (Urei). But this is impossible if you are on the road or using a mobile studio setup. You will want to have as few items with you as possible. I think this where the Saffire can be useful: you don't need a desk, a preamp and a compressor, but just the unit.

Anyway, there are a few bad things as well: I think the lowest latency on PC is 5 ms (that is what a Focusrite rep wrote me). This is okay for a FW unit, but still 5 ms. On Mac you can go down to 64 samples, but that may give crackling. Also on Mac you have to add some milliseconds of latency because Core Audio has a buffer as well - so in practise you won't get under 5 ms there as well. I admit that this is okay for me.

The other thing is that some people feel that the headphone outs are not load enough. Focusrite say they wanted to produce a unit that has a headphone out which does not under any circumstances clip. Hmm, well I admit I don't think that this is a great idea, but it suits to Focusrite.

The mixer software seems to be kind of complicated as well. Anyway.

The Compressor and EQ VST/AU's are said to be of excellent quality. They need to be authorised be a callenge/response method, but you can get up to 4 authorisations for them , so that's not an issue IMHO.

Here some link I have collected:

http://www.bridgeco.net/news/focusrite_saffire.pdf

http://podcastrigs.com/?p=7

I'm also interested in every opinion!

brainray · Post by **brainray** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 11:25 am

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ht=saffire

and a review at

http://musictechmag.co.uk/mtm/reviews/saffire

After have been searching a lot about this item, I have the feeling as if there is a lots of negative propaganda about it, that maily comes from members in forums with few posts... well, probably I'm not right, but I have the feeling as if there are a lots of faked (negative) comments.

georgebrazil · Post by **georgebrazil** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 4:45 pm

fantastic guys, tks for the replies. i'm really into this unit, looks like a complete firewire solution that could go well with live 5. i want low-latency clean guitar and voice recording (i produce smooth jazz songs in live) with preamp capability and pristine final sound quality, and it looks like the saffire can be the one and only solution for my needs. i'm a bit disappointed with m-audio so far based on my experience with the fasttrack (drivers crash, latency is bad, tech support did not work well for me, ..) so am on the look for an alternative. based on fame alone, presonus new product could also be a contender for me, but not sure anyone here in the forums already has one since it's a brand new product - let's wait and see.

i'm also interested to learn if our colleage who wrote the first reply has already managed to figure out why his unit is not working linearly (what focusrite has to say about it?). i live in latin america, last thing i wanna do is buy a saffire on my next trip to the us, come back and have my unit malfunctioning.

anyway, tks so much for your feedback, you guys rule

GB

brainray · Post by **brainray** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:40 pm

Hi George and others,

I bought the unit yesterday - so far everything is fine. I recorded some trumpet tracks today at a friends place, but can't tell much about the quality etc. because I was in a recording situation. At least no distortions etc. I used the input DSP EQ a bit but I was very carefully with it.
Setup on Mac was very easy, on Windows - as usual - a bit more work, but no stress.

I havn't yet understood the routing thing, meaning the internal mixer of the Saffire, but I'll check that out tomorrow, before recording bass and vocals. I'm also on a downbeat jazzy trip in the moment, after 15 years of techno, dance and so on :-)
I'll give more feedback the next days, when I'm through more of the features of the Saffire. So far the normal connect and record without manual has worked fine.

CHeers

Ray

georgebrazil · Post by **georgebrazil** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 2:02 am

that's great news brainray, tks for your feedback. let us know about your progress with this baby. keep up the good jazzy work!!

best

GB

brainray · Post by **brainray** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 2:22 pm

I have just checked out the in camp and eq playing bass. It's really great to have them :-) It's a lots of fun playing bass with a realtime compressor. The compressor sounds quite nice, at least more than enough for some precompression. The Ampsim is not great sounding, the reverb sounds like a plate/spring combination (as somebody else already wrote), but good enough to give a singer a goog feeling IMHO.

One word regarding bus-power: I was not aware that PCMCIA slots don't feature bus power for Firewire ports - they simply don't have the right voltage. As a result, Firewire interfaces can't be used with the most PC notebooks in the bus powered mode. Of course Macs will do, and a few (very few) notebooks have the 6-pin Firewire connector. Well, thats not a problem for me.

Regarding the headphone outs: they are not very loud indeed. But I don't know if this will drive me into problems though. Pulling up Live's output gave enough loadness so far - I don't care too much if the headphone clips a little bit.

Best

Ray

grainshifter · Post by **grainshifter** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 10:25 pm

i was pretty set on gettin the saffire, until someone told me to look into the
edirol fa 66.

now im still a bit torn, trying to weigh the pros and cons of each interface..

for those that bought the saffire, what other interfaces were you considering and what ultimately made you go for the saffire???

gs

brainray · Post by **brainray** » Tue Nov 01, 2005 11:46 pm

I was torn as well, the market of small and cheap interfaces is really huge.

My second choice would have been a Lexicon Omega. An excellent interface with very good drivers. I don't care about USB 1.1. It's good enough for 4 channel audio I/O. The DBX pre's sound great.

If not the Saffire or Lexicon I would have chosen the Presonus Firebox (or pod) or the Edirol FA-66. I didn't go for both of them because I don't trust them regarding the drivers. The Presonus had issues with Windows, and Edirol is a relativ new company that I don't know about of. I need compatibility with both Mac and PC. I had a bad expirience with M_Audio, thats why I don't consider in buying them again.

An other option would have been to get on the Protools train. As a Logic veteran I was alwas interested to try out the Protools platform (without TDM). But the problem with the M-Box is, that the M-Box 1 doesn't have Midi, and the M-Box 2 doesn't have Focusrite inputs. Also, Protools LE does not yet have a Windows driver (?), at least one can say, that Digigdesign doesn't care too much about 3rd party host compatibility and up to date drivers. But the Focusrite pre's in the M-Box where told to be excellent.

So, why not have the Focusrite pre's, a tiny DSP for EQ and compression, the possibility to create 5+1 and 7+1 mixes (in Logic or Nuendo) plus Cubase LE, which is not bad to have as a non-dongle protected, hassle free addition for what Live is not good at (Ableton, I mean the arrange;-)

Anyway, the Saffire had the highest count what was interesting for me. The name and reputantion of Focusrite is ceratinly a piont. The driver stability on both platforms as well. So far the Saffire drivers have been very stable on Mac for me and quite stable on Windows, but I'll have to do much more testing to see if they are stable in all situations..

The small DSP on the inputs is a bonus for those who want to make live recordings frequently, like instruments or vocals. If you just need to sample from records or want to record a synth, the DSP is not that essential to have.

The Compressor plug-in (also as VST) is also a strong plus for the Saffire. It reminds me of the Sonalksis Comp or the Waves Renaissance. The VST version doens't use very much cpu.

Hope this helps

Ray

robin · Post by **robin** » Wed Nov 02, 2005 7:51 am

brainray wrote:and Edirol is a relativ new company that I don't know about of.

Edirol = Roland.

David · Post by **David** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 7:07 pm

This might be a little late with regards to the Focusrite Saffire.

I was having a few problems with it before in that there was no sound coming out of it. I decided to do a complete re-install of my computer and that seems to have done the trick for the moment. Definetly sounds good to my ears.

HTH,
David

georgebrazil · Post by **georgebrazil** » Mon Nov 07, 2005 9:18 pm

cool david, tks for your feedback. are you running xp sp1? why do you think you had to reinstall the whole system to have the saffire running well again? (just want to understand if it seems a problem associated with the audio interface or with the peculiarities of your computer platform). tks again, GB.