Audio interface?

Hi everyone,

I'm brand new to the forums. But not forums in general. Came to this site because I have an MPK25 with the thicker red pads and I've been learning a few thing about MPC stuff here. But anywayz, I bought a SHURE PG42 cardioid microphone. I want to hook it up to my mobile studio and well quite frankly there are so many Audio interfaces its insane. I've been looking at them for about a month now and I feel I still don't know anything about them. At amazon.com there a few people that badmouth every interface. Does anybody know the best one for the best price?

i would reccomend a firewire one, but usb works fine too.

i have tc electronic impact twin and i love it. i would actually use the onboard preamps for recording vocals if i had to (and im really picky about mic pres)

i think i spent 399 on it.

apogee duets are also really good sounding, but no midi in or out. you'd be fine with your midi controller if its a usb one though. this is the number 1 i would go for if i didnt need midi in or out.

rme firefaces are really nice but very expensive. around 1200 for the small one.

i would stay away from ones like the m-audio fasttrack ultras and stuff, but thats just me. i would also stay away from mboxes.

i liked my m-audio firewire 410, but they dont make them anymore, i would go with the profire 610 but i heard that it takes samples at random times sometimes, although they might have fixed this.
i wouldnet ever use these to record vocals with though.
m-audio stuff tends to break faster (ive had a bunch of friends say that they will never buy a piece of m-audio gear again), although my 410 lasted for along time.

get the impact twin and be happy it also comes with a reverb plugin that sound hella nice and its built like a tank too.

I second avoiding M-Audio. My Fast Track Ultra buffer can only go down to 128 samples, and the Hi-Performance mode that should enable 32/64 buffers will crash even corrupt your system. That was the final straw with me and them. I still use it with my laptop, but it was disappointing for $350. To the OP's concerns, I usually am not one to bad mouth unless it happened to me, or I saw it with a friend's gear. Damien probably had or saw similar things with their current products, I agree their older interfaces are better.

I went the RME route, but as was mentioned this is very pricey. I like the Focusrite Saffire stuff in the sub $400 range. They come Firewire and USB.

My best two pieces of advice are as follows:

1. Save up as long as you can, you usually get what you pay for in terms of quality. The old rule buy cheap buy twice always pops into my head when I'm looking for something. Not that you should bankrupt yourself for a hobby, but you don't want to spend your hard-earned to be disappointed.

2. As hard as it is try and future proof yourself. Look forward a year, will two audio inputs be enough? Does it have enough MIDI connections etc... you get the idea.

Basically what it will come down to is portability vs. connectivity. There are USB and Firewire options, I personally have always used the latter, but I like to keep my USB ports free for other things and nothing else I use is Firewire.

The best option is to look in your chosen price range, and then try and find reviews from more knowledgeable sources, always try and find out about any latency issues which will make recording a pain in the a*se.

Sound on Sound magazine have an online section which is a good place to start. Balls to Amazon, people write absolute rubbish on there.

Metatron72 wrote:I second avoiding M-Audio. My Fast Track Ultra buffer can only go down to 128 samples, and the Hi-Performance mode that should enable 32/64 buffers will crash even corrupt your system. That was the final straw with me and them. I still use it with my laptop, but it was disappointing for $350. To the OP's concerns, I usually am not one to bad mouth unless it happened to me, or I saw it with a friend's gear. Damien probably had or saw similar things with their current products, I agree their older interfaces are better.

I went the RME route, but as was mentioned this is very pricey. I like the Focusrite Saffire stuff in the sub $400 range. They come Firewire and USB.

thats the other one i was thinking of the focusrite saffire pro. it was that vs the twin impact pro for me, and i think im glad i got the twin. i heard that the saffire pro was a little cheaper made, and the impact twin is built like a tank.
they should both sound good enough though. i read hundreds of reviews on both of them and also did a blind listening test on gearslutz.

yeah i have heard a lot of bad things about newer m-audio products, altough to their defense i did hear good things about their profire 2626 and thier bx-5a studio monitors. but for the most part, their stuff isnt built to last. even my firewire 410, although i liked it, 2 of the line inputs were broken (i dont know if that came with it cause i never plugged anything into them for a year or 2 after i had it.) the switchabale mic/line inputs were fine though. although i would say that if you did go the m-audio route, you will not be happy with the sound quality of your recordings (based off of the m-audio preamps) and you would probably want to invest in a nice mic pre if you got one.
and again, like i said before if you go with the impact twin, you will probably be happy (for now) with how your vocals sound, i would probably bet you would like the preamps well enough on the focusrite saffire pro too.

and i know you would like the apogee duets preamps; (if you like clear sounding stuff) they sound beautiful. although you will not have as many features with this one.

read some reviews, do some blind tests, go out to guitar center, go to your friends house and check out their gear, and cross your fingers is all i can really say.
good luck man.

I really like the Impact Twin. It looks awesome and its portable. . I think I'm gonna get that bad boy because it's nicely priced. THanks for all the help. I'm sure it will sound great with my SHURE PG42 VOCAL CONDENSER!!!!111

I disagree with the neg comments about m-audio.
I used to do a lot of mobile recording and when I did I used the fast track pro and it worked great.
It's barely $200 and i was able to record just fine.

You can prob find it now for $100....as a matter of fact i might just get another one on the strength...

SFTRAXx wrote:I disagree with the neg comments about m-audio.
I used to do a lot of mobile recording and when I did I used the fast track pro and it worked great.
It's barely $200 and i was able to record just fine.

You can prob find it now for $100....as a matter of fact i might just get another one on the strength...

I think the OP was already thinking of spending $350, and had TC Electronics in mind. I agree with your point that for just the basics their stuff is good. In the over $350 range their Pro Fire Firewire Series Damien mentioned are very good. But there's just too many other options once you're gonna spend $400+. My experience is their drivers have not been as good the last few years, one of the reasons their older interfaces were mentioned as a good used buy.

Like I said about the Fast Track Ultra, the Hi-performance is known to be broken/unstable, and it's ridiculous your interface's native ASIO driver would need to resort to such voodoo to allow 32/64/88 sample buffers.

damien907 wrote: i would go with the profire 610 but i heard that it takes samples at random times sometimes, although they might have fixed this.
i wouldnet ever use these to record vocals with though.
m-audio stuff tends to break faster (ive had a bunch of friends say that they will never buy a piece of m-audio gear again), although my 410 lasted for along time.

I actually have the Profire 610...I love the conversion but to 2nd headphone output stopped working out of nowhere about 3 years ago. I still use it and haven't had any other problelms but at the time losing the 2nd headphone output kinda ticked me off. If I had to do it all over again I'd probably go with the RME like Metatron....I've heard nothing but good things about RME.

have you ever tried taking it apart? maybe a wire fell out and you could re soldier it

i always thought about doing this with the line ins on my firewire 410, but i never got around to it. when i shake it i can hear something moving around in there and it could be broken soldier.

damien907 wrote:have you ever tried taking it apart? maybe a wire fell out and you could re soldier it

i always thought about doing this with the line ins on my firewire 410, but i never got around to it. when i shake it i can hear something moving around in there and it could be broken soldier.

Ah...good point. I haven't thought about doing this but these days it's not as big of an issue as it was when it first happened. Now I have a Mackie Big Knob so I do my headphone monitoring from it.

I also recommend getting FireWire audio interface over USB audio interface. (There is very good reasons for it, but I won't get into that here.)

I own Behringer FCA202 FireWire audio interface (2 in / 2 out, I know that Behringer is perceived like Gemini these days), and as far as output audio quality is concerned, I can't say bad thing about the device. It has never clipped audio (thank to FireWire protocol) and it has headphone output as well. Considering it is the cheapest FireWire audio interface available (and it can be found very cheap in ebay), I can't really complain.

I heard that it sound quality for recording is not very good (There is comparison report between FCA202 and Agogee Duet FireWire on internet, and FCA202 actually did good for audio output), but at least you won't have to worry about clipping.

JVC wrote:I also recommend getting FireWire audio interface over USB audio interface. (There is very good reasons for it, but I won't get into that here.)

I own Behringer FCA202 FireWire audio interface (2 in / 2 out, I know that Behringer is perceived like Gemini these days), and as far as output audio quality is concerned, I can't say bad thing about the device. It has never clipped audio (thank to FireWire protocol) and it has headphone output as well. Considering it is the cheapest FireWire audio interface available (and it can be found very cheap in ebay), I can't really complain.

I heard that it sound quality for recording is not very good (There is comparison report between FCA202 and Agogee Duet FireWire on internet, and FCA202 actually did good for audio output), but at least you won't have to worry about clipping.

Yeah, I remember when those FCA02's came out, I think GC had them for like $89. I did always hear they were surprisingly decent.