How are Echo Audio interfaces?

Zeddy · Post by **Zeddy** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:10 am

I'm specifically thinking about the AudioFire 4. They seem to get good reviews and such, but I don't see too many people talking about them, which makes me think they might not be very popular, which then gets me worried that Echo are not on top of things like drivers updates and stuff...

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:47 am

Echo are awesome for drivers and updates. In the past they even provided drivers for legacy products and even had WaveRT drivers for Vista which is ueber rare.

I had an Echo Indigo IO laptop cardbus card and that had really great latency and great sound (although no pres as is the case for PCMCIA cards so I used my Mackie VLZ mixer as the mic pres, but great s/n ratio).

The Echo Audiofire range is well respected. It's in a similar class to Presonus etc.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may07/a ... ofire4.htm

this is a good review from Sound On Sound May 2007.

convex · Post by **convex** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:48 am

I've never used the AudioFire series, but I've had one of their PCI or PCMCIA cards (Gina, Layla, Indigo) in nearly every PC I've owned. To second Leedsquietman's point, the last thing you should worry about with Echo is drivers in my experience. For example, they kept updating the drivers for the original 20 bit Gina card for years after they discontinued it.

I actually emailed tech support several months ago asking if they would put out a Windows 7 driver for my discontinued Layla 24 and the support guy said that he couldn't imagine why they wouldn't since it wasn't fundamentally different from the Vista version. I haven't checked back to confirm that they have done this yet.

I've never been sure why I don't hear more about these cards. They're not expensive, the drivers are stable and easy to install, and the outboard boxes that I've owned have been built like tanks. There are interfaces out there with higher-end converters, but they come at a price.

BDS · Post by **BDS** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 3:43 am

zeddy -
i've been using an audiofire 8 for a few years. i think it's just ducky. i'm on a mac, so your mileage will certainly vary, but i think very, very highly of echo's hardware.

cheers,
bds

Zeddy · Post by **Zeddy** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 4:15 am

BDS wrote:zeddy -
i've been using an audiofire 8 for a few years. i think it's just ducky. i'm on a mac, so your mileage will certainly vary, but i think very, very highly of echo's hardware.

cheers,
bds

Thanks for the help everyone! I'm on a Mac too (which I should have mentioned in my original post I suppose). I have an M-Audio card right now that I'm not super impressed with. I may have to snatch up an AudioFire at some point

UncleAge · Post by **UncleAge** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 5:15 am

I had an Audiofire 8 and loved it. Drivers were solid in WinXP. Had to part with it a while back to make ends meet. When I got funds again I bought a Focusrite Pro40 and it gets the job done but overall I wish I had just purchased the Audiofire 8 again.

bartosz szczesny · Post by **bartosz szczesny** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 9:37 am

My Echo Audio Gina 3G broke down after 1,5 year. Mic pre-amps quality is amazing, but I`ve got no +48 voltage (broken) and 1st output is 1/3 of it`s power (broken).

KainProject · Post by **KainProject** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 9:57 am

They give good person to person support, though if you plan on working in a 64bit environment i'd suggest a higher end solution.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 10:05 am

Explain ?

64 bit floating point audio superiority is a marketing myth. Unless you are not human and can hear frequency ranges like a dog well beyond the normal range of what even golden eared people hear.

KainProject · Post by **KainProject** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 10:14 am

64 Bit offers more RAM memory not superior audio quality, well that's what counts for me.. i know there's people mastering at 96khs.. why though

I used a echo device for a while and had some issues under win xp pro 64bit (crackling and 'full' drop outs, ie had to restart application to regain sound)

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sat Nov 21, 2009 10:30 am

OK. That explains it !

Win XP Pro 64 was pretty poorly supported though by several manufacturers. The Vista 64 and win 7 drivers are fine AFAIK.

Live is still a 32 bit app, so you can use 4GB under a 64 bit o/s which is still helpful. Most 64 bit apps (i.e. Sonar, Reaper, Cubase 5) still suffer from bad/non existent drivers, plugin incompatibilities and so on, so for the next year or so, it probably still makes sense to a lot of folk to run their 32 bit DAW app version under 64 bits.

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