Post
by MobiusB » Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:21 pm
Hi Andrew, thanks for the feedback! Glad you liked it.
The audio quality was a little less than I'd like and was due to the audio driver for the screen capture software I was using (ScreenFlow) not working well with a multi-channel audio interface. I've got a support call into them to look into it. So the audio you were hearing was what was being picked up by the mic I was narrating with. (Samson CO3U). Definitely will explore other ways of getting audio into there on a more mixable level.
As far as the Focusrite, I've been very happy with it. I had first purchased a PreSonus FireStudio but had nothing but problems (it was never more than a paperweight really) so sent it back to Sweetwater and got the Safire instead. I use a Mac Pro and initially had some slight timing issues when using the on-board Firewire when also having external Firewire drives, so I bought an add-on PCI-E Firewire card just for the Safire (only like $50) and it's worked flawlessly since.
My only real criticism isn't for the unit, but the mixer GUI that comes with it to control hardware monitoring. The SW doesn't show signal levels coming in which I think kind of blows. I previously used an Echo Layla 2496 for years and that was a feature on their SW mixer and I definitely miss it. The only way to tell levels are hot are either hearing clipping or seeing the overload LEDs on the Safire trigger which pretty much means it's already too late if you're in the middle of a take. And when you are dealing with external units that have filters you are sweeping, it is sometimes unfortunately very easy for levels to get away from you.
But the Safire is very clean and is a good deal at it's price ($499 US), so I'd recommend it.
Cheers!
-Mobius
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Mac Pro 8 Core 2.8, Focusrite Safire Pro 10io
MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33 Ghz, Echo AudioFire4, MidiSport 8x8, M-Audio O2, Line6 Pod X3Live, Roland GI-20 Guitar Synth, WD 500GB MyBook Firewire 800 HD
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