ADAT Mic Pre

I have an RME UCX and an Audient ASP880.
 
I do use the clock link from the UCX to the Audient. The Audient doesn't have an ADAT input so you have to hook up the clock cable or sync the UCX to the Audient.
 
It works fine.
 
My UCX has SPIDF too, so I can lock to the clock in my Tascam 2488 giving me 24 inputs at 44.1.

BlixYZ
i wouldn't call the audient pres, "run of the mill".  Presonus and Focusrite and Behringer make run of the mill pres.  Audient's are definitely nicer!

 
Great example of totally incorrect information on the internet! Focusrite actually make some of the highest quality Mic Pres available. Especially the ones in their thunderbolt range. I have got a Scarlett 18i20 and recently just made a very high quality recording through it as well.  Focusrite also make a real nice ADAT Mic Pre but it is quite a high price.
 
Presonus are also quite fine indeed. The Behringer older ADA8000 Mic Pre is also one of their finer products.  I have made supreme high quality recordings through them in the past so lets put that myth to bed.
 
Good thing now the newer Behringer ADA8200 Mic pre is very very good indeed.  They have improved it big time. Mic pres are all Midas now and they sound fabulous. Very affordable as well. The Behringer has both ADAT In and OUT so all you need is two optical leads and set it into slave mode and it all works perfectly.
 
Try and get an ADAT Mic Pre that has both optical IN/OUT connectors.  It is handy to be able to lock it via the optical connection rather than the word clock. You may need the word clock on your RME for something else that is more important.
 

do you currently use all the outs you have? I'm not being difficult, I'm honestly curious. I have not often been limited by my outs.

also, I think people are making killer recordings everyday with run of the mill pres.  even with cheap pres.  I know i have.
but the audient pres sound almost as good as API pres.  They are sweet and warm.
Presonus and focusrite put decent pres in their interfaces, but make some top notch outboard gear.
 

rme babyface would be perfect

rumleymusic
 
 
On some source material, it may be hard to tell the difference between a Behringer Pre or Focusrite, or Audient & RME.  Especially if the mics and monitoring are not up to snuff.  But RME and Audient can provide noticeably better quality in the right circumstance. 

 
Don't agree. Very few circumstances and not so noticeable especially where the mics are great and the monitoring is great.  In fact in those situations it might be harder to tell.  The mics and the source material rule.  Mic Pres are very very good these days.  A lot better than they once were. 
 
I agree though comparing the Behringer to the XTC which is an excellent product for sure.  (Major difference in price though) Not sure about Focusrite compared to Audient though.  They are similarly priced and featured and I would imagine much closer than you think.  
  
I recently did a classical solo piano recording with the Focusrite Pres (Clarett) and they sounded beautiful.  Even compared to RME Mic Pres.  Which are also excellent of course. 

I had not looked at the focusrite clarett octapre prior to the suggestion here. It's been updated recently and the new specs on it are actually quite a bit better than the audient asp800. Noise floor of 118db vs 112db for the asp800 among other things. For approx $300 less than the asp800 it might be the right way to go if I'm going for the lower cost units. The big benefit of the asp800 is the iron and hmx settings, however I don't know how much I would use those. I tend to prefer recording a clean signal and doing things to it in sonar instead of "burning in" the FX.
 
As for the XTC, yes that is still something I'm considering. The operation with totalmix is an excellent point. Totalmix is really excellent and of course is used with my UFX so I'm already trained on how to use it. The XTC would clearly be a long term winner, but based on comments here it's becoming hard to justify the approx 4x price over the octapre.
 
Thanks, gabo

The AIR switches on the Focusrite are I am pretty sure very similar to IRON in that they are simulations of a transformer signal path.  It is available on all 8 channels.  It adds top end to the sound and in some cases it is nice to have and use.  Recently I found it was a little too much on drum overheads making them a tad bright.  Or at least with the Mics I was using at the time.  I found a good thing to do is a little test recording with and without AIR to see which is a good match for the source. The pres are perfectly flat and transparent with AIR switched off. 
 
I see the Magnetic saturation on the Audient is working in the analog domain which is interesting. The Focusrite is also doing this in the analog domain. They are changing the input impedance and therefore altering the relationship between the microphone output impedance and the Mic Pre input impedance.

gswitz
Any ADAT interface will come into TotalMix, so from my point of view there isn't much advantage there.

Ah, thanks for that, totally true as anything that comes into the UFX is going to show up in totalmix. An additional $1800 or so for auto level seems like more than it's worth at this point.
 
And yes I need more than 2 channels. I currently use all the line inputs and mic pres on the UFX (it has 12) and I need 4 or 5 more. And it has to be an ADAT capable unit as that's the only way I can get expansion. So I'm looking for a good quality 8 channel ADAT preamp. I'm willing to spend a little more for better quality, but I'm not sure about 4x for what seems to be a barely identifiable quality increase. For that additional $1800+ for something like the XTC or better there needs to be some fairly obvious improvements.
 
Thanks, gabo

gswitz
Gabo,

You can use up to three ufxs our ucxs together. We're you aware? Each plugs into a separate USB port but they act as 1 huge input into Sonar.
Just consider it.

 
Not sure about that.  Not sure where you are getting this information from.  It certainly does not seem to say anything like that on the RME site.  Usually it is not possible to connect more than one interface at once.  On the site it says it is compatible with USB 3 chipsets. Were you thinking you could connect to 3 USB ports.  That is not what they mean.  That means it is USB 3 compatible.
 
What I do like about RME interfaces is the fact they often have many analog inputs such as 10.  Plus the 2 ADAT ports increases the total input count to 26.  The other 4 inputs are via other digital inputs which one does not often do. e.g. SDPIF etc.. 
 
Most software cannot handle more than one interface at once.  Studio One can now though but only in that you are allowed to have one interface handling inputs and another outputs.  You cannot still sum all the inputs at once.  Although on a MAC I believe you can using an aggregate device setup. 
 
The UFX firewire port only runs at 400 speed.  I have been working with a borrowed Fireface 800 for a while and it runs at 800 speed which is damn fast.  I can get very low latencies with that model.  The RME Mic Pres are very nice.
 
The Focusrite Octapre or Audient are still good companion add on preamps.  I have been using a Behringer ADA8000 connected to the FF800 and it all works rather perfectly.  At my place of employment we are about to get the Clarett 8 Pre X and two ADA8200 preamps.  I suspect that will also all work pretty nice too. 

Both ADAT and SPIDF can be looped back on the RME UCX (no SPIDF on UFX).
 
This means that you can plug in 8 inputs...
Route all 8 to SPIDF out with stereo panning.
 
Also Route all 8 analog inputs to ADAT Outs...
Route all loop-backed ADAT Ins to SPIDF out with identical stereo panning to initial 8.
 
Now, input FX like compression/expansion and EQ will be on both the parallel tracks.
One of the parallel tacks (the one going to ADAT) has 2 additional stages of EQ and Compression. The first stage is on the output of the ADAT channel and the second stage is on the input of the ADAT channel.
 
Now, you have parallel compression and as many as 3 stages of EQ on your tracks you send to the SPIDF output.
 
For your main mix, you have the EQ and compression on SPIDF output (which loops back to SPIDF input).
You have another level of EQ and compression on the SPIDF input.
You route the SPIDF input to the Main Outputs from your interface (say headphones 7/8 and Mains 5/6).
You have a final stage of EQ and compression on this final output.

Caution... my posts kept getting deleted by the spaminator. I tried to break them up into smaller posts and hope they survive.
 
They are not in the order that I typed them in.

Thanks Geoff I am surprised and impressed by multiple RME units to be used in tandem.  It was not that obvious from browsing their product description. That feature could be more visible.  Many would be interested in knowing that several interfaces can be used.  Great for expansion options.  Multiple main interfaces also would mean hopefully extra ADAT connectivity for each one, ADAT preamps being a quick and effective way to expand your input and output options. 

https://youtu.be/lTHmki4VyfE
 
I made a video about how to use the SPIDF Loop-back to stack the fx.