what's good interface wise ?

Firewire 400 or 800, USB 3.0 or PCIe
good mic preamp
8 inputs or less

Edit: I added PCIe in the mix, mac pro 5.1 is the main workhorse of this setup

I can vouch for the Mackie Onyx i series. Had the 1220i for a few years and now have the 1640i and love it.
One of the best investments in my opinion. Price also dropped considerably since last year...
But if you have no outboard gear and also don't plan on buying some in future, and you don't need an analog desk, than there are probably cheaper and smaller options.

I've heard good things about all suggestions so far, anyone know anything about Focusrite Saffire PRO 26 ?

only reason i didnt bite the bullet on this piece is because its 96kH

the focusrites are bad ass bang for the buck. i use a 2i4 as a portable solution and the pre's are very decent. also cheap and great build quality.

i would personally avoid firewire as it is a dying technology - yea you can go firewire->thunderbolt, but some devices (m-audio) are just straight up not supported anymore.

tapedeck wrote:but some devices (m-audio) are just straight up not supported anymore.

tell me about it

I'm forced to ditch my old yamaha interface because yamaha ceased to support driver development in 2008. I was able to get by on that setup until now on a 10 year old mac pro (2.1)

unfortunately apple also ceased to support OSX on mac pro 2.1 and the latest mpc reneissance software wont even install on osx 10.7 which is what that mac is capable of supporting officialy..

im basically almost starting from scratch here

I'm thinking USB 3.0 interface or something that has firewire/thunderbolt should get me by for 5 years at least

today I was reading how fast thunderbolt is and it's screaming fast even when compared to USB 3.0...im thinking do I need all that speed, should I ditch this mac pro and go for something with less processing power but with thunderbolt port or stick with this mac and settle for USB 3 or Firewire/thunderbolt.

Lampdog wrote:

Elias wrote:I can vouch for the Mackie Onyx i series. Had the 1220i for a few years and now have the 1640i and love it.

tapedeck wrote:the focusrites are bad ass bang for the buck. i use a 2i4 as a portable solution and the pre's are very decent. also cheap and great build quality.

I'm gonna go over the spec sheet and reviews of these few times at least, appreciate the input

yea when you are using old hardware you got to sometimes make the commitment and just stick to the old software as well. i do have one machine that runs snow leopard and logic 8 just because sometimes i need that old stuff.

this was eye opener, not invest crazy amounts of money in gear that will eventually become obsolete

i hate buying new gear like buying new cars, reading all the reviews and opinions is making my head explode

I would go for a PCIE Interface first.
I currently eun a Pro Tools HD Native setup and it's a thousand times better than my old Firewire interface. I can now track vocals at a 512 buffer. With my old firewire interface I had to keep it at 128 max. Check one out, It might ruin you about 2k for a setup. Or go with a Metric Halo interface which are pretty dope and good sounding.

Metric Halo 2882
http://mhsecure.com/metric_halo/product ... /2882.html

No drivers needed on the Mac. Plug and get busy making music. Has been supported forever, and you can expand it with a DSP card, add input and output Jensen transformers, etc.
You can check the Gearslutz classifieds for cheaper prices. I saw one today going for $1,300 OBO

Good luck bro!

You didn't mention budget (sorry if I missed it) but personally I'd go with the a Lynx Aurora & AES16e combo. I tested a load of interfaces years ago, and this was the one I chose based on price / performance. Since then, the UAD Apollo has come out, which a friend of mine copped that also has my seal of approval. With that one, you also get the added bonus of getting a UAD card to take load off of your main CPU while using plugins.

Aside from those two, the RME cards & interfaces are also top notch. The only reason I went for a Lynx over the RME was my specific setup benefitted more from using the Lynx. But really as far as high-level interfaces go, these three can't be beat. To get to the next level you gotta spend WAY more money for a 5-10% "increase" in sound quality or performance.

But this is one area I wouldn't skimp on. Personally I'd recommend staying away from the mid-price options if A) the rest of your system is where you want it (I mean like your production tools, synths etc) and B) you're really in this for the long haul (think 5-10 years). I've gone thru a few of the mid-price options & if you add up all the money I spent on those it surpasses what I spent on one of the good units. I guess what I'm saying is, buy cheap, buy twice.

Fireface 800 still is a very good interface in 2016, I love mine. Can´t go wrong with a RME, great driver support aswell plus I think they sound very good

appreciate the opinions!, motu and rme are the two brands I've wanted when I started with this music journey stuff. budget is under $1000, to be honest i'm just hobbyist and dont need top notch. 99.5% of my setup is computer based, i've got motif keyboard and some drum machines but most of the time i spent on the computer. and as I learned with my old gear, computers and devices that depend on software drivers become obsolete somtimes faster than they should as vendors stop supporting them to get people to buy new product. this is what makes hardware mpcs and keyboard so much superior compared to computer driven setups IMO