Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 or......?

[rikhyray]

Echo is nice little company, just few people, few products=focused, decent quality, decent drivers. However I wouldn't take any Echo card today, for simply reason that the rest of the world moved ahead and TC, Focusrite, Presonus offer products that are so much better audio quality (clarity and definition). I used Echos before, and worked with 2 Echos recently, the comparison is obvious "on the very first hear". They better bring new products out, otherwise they might be out of the game.
Both TC and Focusrite risen from "unusable", specially on PCs, as when they came out on the market few years back to acceptable (latencies are not fabulous for sure), reliable level. Seems like there are issues on some unfortunate pc hardware combinations but both companies (and even Presonus following) match audio quality of interfaces @ twice or more the price, so if they work (and on Mac they do and pc users should try before they buy) are great value for money.

[leedsquietman]

With no disrespect, I think it's fair to say RME sounds better and Focusrite maybe has slightly nicer pres, but I would not rate Presonus above Echo for preamp sound or conversion.

It's all subjective and I think that both of these are in the same ball park, certainly after hearing the new Echo AudioFire Pre 8. I agree that older Echo such as MiaMIDI and Layla don't sound quite so good but they were reasonable for their time.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr10/a ... repre8.htm

Sam Inglis compared the sound quality favourably against the Profire 2626 and Saffire 40 in this review.

And I can tell you that in terms of drivers, they are a league ahead of most others, except RME. They still support older platforms too, such as XP and even their discontinued products have windows 7 drivers. I had an Indigo I/O and they upgraded that driver over a dozen times over several years. So I would say they are worth considering and testing still.

[rikhyray]

What I wrote does not apply to this newest Echo, have not tried it since I dont need this kind (size) it could exactly be the "new" product I mentioned they should better have to compete with others. Old RME were great for reliability but not all that for the sound, I did switch to EMU 1616m from RME PCMCIA because of superior sound.
I do not need /expect much from such interfaces as far as in/preamps are concerned- should be OK for live and casual recording, for serious acoustic stuff rather use regular studio with proper standalone preamps, U87 etc stuff that I dont need everyday.
Most important is what I hear, can hear/detect etc that is why I am so concerned about definition, details I can hear and for that, all the Echos I used are inferior to earlier mentioned interfaces.
It can well be that this newest Echo model is different, already upgraded.

Edit: I got better performance, lower latency with Presonus mobile then Echo Audiofire 4 on OSX and on XP, all with latest drivers.

[smaucher]

you're welcome

[leedsquietman]

I'm not a Presonus hater btw in case anyone gets the wrong idea.

Latency varies from machine to machine and I never put Presonus in the same lower tier as the likes of Tascam and Focusrite in terms of low latency native driver performance. Presonus are usually OK for drivers.

Having said this, you can expect Echo to keep fine tuning their product. When I first got my Echo Indigo I/O PCMCIA card (2004) years ago it could run Cubase at 96 samples with about a dozen audio tracks, and when I broke it (2008) it could run about 18 tracks at 32 samples (ridiculously low latency around 3ms in out) and on Reason it could run close to 30 tracks at 32 samples on win xp. There had been about 8 driver updates in the time I was using it, each one making it progressively better. Of course, you don't really need to be able to run a card at 96 samples or less typically, anything up to about 14ms is usually no probs (more like 256 samples on most cards), but I miss not having that card now for mixdowns too, if you put it up to 512 samples you could run an insane number of tracks and plugins without a hiccup, quite often I have to put the latency up to 2048 samples for mixing on my IO14 on heavy projects, unless I use asio4all (when 1024 is usually OK).

[rikhyray]

Oh, how missed PCMCIA, used both Indigo and RME. Later used the new - express Indigo a lot. Even on vista latency under 1ms IIRC (on Vaio with TI chip). I really thought you exaggerated about "no TI on new laptops", till I looked for one "some must be using them, at least Sony..." but found none and bought MBP settling for FW that "just works".
BTW. I got brand new one DJx from the company, have not used it at all, anyone interested can pm me, will be putting it on Ebay otherwise.
Shame that the express standard is so retarded (unlike PCMCIA the card can easily jump out of the slot) I guess the reason why only 2 companies re issued PCMCIAs in express form. Shit standard that will disappear faster then it appeared.
I loved the RME PCMCIA not just for audio but specially for midi controllers, less then 1/4 of USBs latency, most people are not even aware how bad USB or FW midi latency can be as compared to PCI.

[simpleton]

I use both an Echo Indigo IOx and the Saffire Pro 24 concurrently on the same machine and I hear the same thing that Ricky does. The Saffire has noticeably more definition and clarity.

[leedsquietman]

The Indigo is older technology put into a newer Expresscard - it's the same card as was around since about 2002 as a PCMCIA card before Expresscard took over from PCMCIA 3-4 years ago. It is still lower s/n ratio and better conversion than internal cards and still rocks for low latency. Think of it as a supercharged internal card (yes, it's external, but I think you catch my drift).

I'm talking about the AudioFire 12 and AudioFire 8 Pre as a comparison anyway, given the Indigo also does not have preamps (the Focusrite's BEST feature), and it only has mini jack outs, similar to an internal soundcard which means the proper 1/4" outs on the Saffire will probably be louder (and not require adapters to 1/4" jacks for monitors etc), the brain equates louder with better - don't mistake this for greater definition and clarity - when you render the file there will be no difference.

[macmurphy]

does anyone have experience of this? - http://www.lexiconpro.com/product.php?id=150

they don't have win7 drivers yet but it's another possibility..

[c5_convertible]

No experience, but a company that still doesn't have 64-bit drivers for Vista and/or XP after it has been out for several years now (in fact Windows 7 has been out quite a while too, even not counting the betas) probably will never have them.

[leedsquietman]

Earlier Lexicon products like the Lambda and Omega had very mixed reviews. I know 3 people who could not get an Omega interface to work properly and returned them.

The Sound On Sound review of the 810S is mostly positive with some caveats
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun09/a ... fw810s.htm

They have just released (Aug 9, 2010) 64 bit drivers for the interface (even though it's been out well over a year).

[macmurphy]

^ i didn't realise it had been out that long, i thought it was new.
they seem to have dragged their heels with those drivers...