Audio Interface Choice - Need some help

[grooverthebarbarian]

Best bet is to go out and have a listen to some and look at them in the flesh. I'm using an Apogee Duet which suits me fine cos the only recording I do is some Vox or a single instrument at a time. Well worth the money

[thebeagle]

As an aside, you needn't be limited by the number of in-built mic pres the if the interface has an ADAT/Lightpipe input as you can then hook in a Behringer ADA8000 (one of the only properly 'pro' bits of kit they make, IMHO) or similar to give you an extra 8 mic channels.

With something like the Focusrite you've flagged you could then have your basic mixing setup with just the laptop, interface and monitors, and a second small rack for location/drum recordings with maybe the ADA and a decent headphone amp which you could run in the drum room; all you gotta do then is run an ADAT cable and a balanced jack-jack cable from your 'control' room into the drum room rather than have loads of long drum mic cables going everywhere. Worth a thought.

[jim_branning]

like danny1969, i too have a portable system using an old (but super-reliable) amd 2000xp (166-something ghz, single core) and 2 gb ram, recording to straight 7200rpm pata, pci 8x8 ESI audio interface, and it'll record and playback 8 tracks with the a/i set to th e very lowest sample setting so i can use realtime s/w fx - are u sure a macbook (minimum spec's are dual core) can't do it with a fast firewire or thunderbolt external disk?

[JamesNewmarch]

As an aside, you needn't be limited by the number of in-built mic pres the if the interface has an ADAT/Lightpipe input as you can then hook in a Behringer ADA8000 (one of the only properly 'pro' bits of kit they make, IMHO) or similar to give you an extra 8 mic channels.

With something like the Focusrite you've flagged you could then have your basic mixing setup with just the laptop, interface and monitors, and a second small rack for location/drum recordings with maybe the ADA and a decent headphone amp which you could run in the drum room; all you gotta do then is run an ADAT cable and a balanced jack-jack cable from your 'control' room into the drum room rather than have loads of long drum mic cables going everywhere. Worth a thought.

Thats a good idea man, the behringer any good? Would you just run the Light cable into it and leave the sync thing out? I can see that working nicely with the presonus in a small rack.

[thebeagle]

Thats a good idea man, the behringer any good? Would you just run the Light cable into it and leave the sync thing out? I can see that working nicely with the presonus in a small rack.

I had no complaints with the ADA, not the most characterful mic preamps ever but low-noise and nicely neutral; would happily have one again. Not sure what the benefit of using one with the Presonus would be with the setup you're proposing though, running sixteen channels of audio via USB would be pushing things a bit with a lower-specced system IMO.

Oh, and I've always run ADAT optical without a BNC sync, pretty sure you don't need one as long as you set up the master/slave properly; would have to check to be sure though.

[Danny1969]

The ADA8000 is a good unit, I've got one. Mind you I had to buy 3 before I recieved one which worked properly. It's stayed working though and for adding 8 channels of AD it's useful. The new version is out soon and address's some short comings of the current model

Bear in mind though that lightpipe is only really for lengths of about 5M tops, 10 being the absolute limit I reckon