Focusrite Saffire Sound Card

michaellpenman · Post by **michaellpenman** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 12:47 pm

Hi i've been looking at the Focusrite Saffire Sound Card, and now i'm really thinking of buying it does anyone have it and if so whats your opinions on it.
Thanks

Seyser Koze · Post by **Seyser Koze** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:50 pm

I'm sure it's been discussed before but for wha it's worth and I know I'm in the minority...I had problems with it crashing Live.

To be fair i never quite put my finger on the cause, but since i switched to my Motu I have had nil problems.

Redhand · Post by **Redhand** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 4:53 pm

Um... I have used it on my pc laptop with some success. I like the routing and the fact it has dsp, but I do have some issues. On my laptop I have a mini firewire connection that I am believing is not allowing enough bandwidth between the device and my laptop so I get these weird digital glitch sounds. I may need to get the latest drivers, but this does not happen with my m-audio firewire solo.

JDSampo · Post by **JDSampo** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:31 pm

I'm using a Saffire LE (4-in, 6-out, no DSP) on a desktop and it's been great. The mic pres are very nice.

stutter · Post by **stutter** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:04 pm

also using a Saffire LE, on my laptop. Twice has for some reason lost connectivity with my computer. Apart from that (and I've used it quite a lot) it hs worked perfectly - no glitching (Texas Instruments firewire chipset on my laptop may help there), latency is pretty low, sound quality is good.
Wish I had a 6-pin firewire port.

JM · Post by JM » Wed Jan 16, 2008 9:59 pm

JDSampo wrote:I'm using a Saffire LE (4-in, 6-out, no DSP) on a desktop and it's been great. The mic pres are very nice.

Same here.. It's what I wanted for my tasks..

hereschenes · Post by **hereschenes** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 11:56 pm

I'm using the big-daddy Saffire. Speaking only for myself, it's never crashed my PC-based Live 5, 6, or now 7 setup. My over-zealous use of VST plugins, however, has crashed Live on occasion...

If you're a PC-user, make sure you don't get a cheapo firewire card (assuming you don't already have one) - I did have problems with that initially, but I swapped it for a much sturdier card and has been fine since. Across two different motherboards.

You can get Saffire driver and firmware updates too - I was on the beta-list for a while and Focusrite seemed to be very active in improving things (I haven't checked lately).