Audio interface edirol fa-66 or.........

here's the deal.............I know firewire is much better than usb for audio interfaces, I tried the e-mu 0404 usb,dont get me wrong, I love e-mu, but it sucked, driver conflicts and all, my sound blaster audigy worked better.. well now..

question 1- which should I consider?I'm Looking @ the edirol fa-66, presonus fire box, or m audio
now i am leaning twoards edirol but if anyone has words of wisdom please help, if you can

question 2- if I am satisfied with direct x,vst, and so on, (instruments and FX) d with the little differences between conveniances
(like "multi level view" on the same track....is there any difference performance wise between sonar hs 6 xl and sonar studio or producer editions? not interested in nick nacks just soud quality i own hs 6xl and debate an upgrade @ the time.

question 3- the fa-66 IS the cakewalk power studio interface, why cant you get it thru cakewalk? not a big deal?
just a question



thanks to all ..............make some noise .................... benni sixx

ORIGINAL: Jim Roseberry
The Edirol will offer the lowest round-trip latency of those three audio interfaces.
If you'll be monitoring thru software EFX in realtime, that's important.
Otherwise, any of the above will work well.

Hi Jim,
Not to go off topic, but it might be of some use to the OP:
How's the round trip latency with the Focusrite Saffire line?
Do you know, off-hand?

I have a Saffire, and I like it, but I'm curious to know how it stands up to some of the other similarly priced units.

Thanks,
- zevo

Saffire works/sounds good... but suffers from higher round-trip latency.
Again, if the OP isn't monitoring thru software EFX in realtime, then the Saffire would be another potential option.

And I can say I use the FA-66 with ASIO for personal preferences, but fine as well. Firewire's a bit less stable than PCI in general, but the FA-66 is pretty rugged, never know it's there most of the time, which is a good thing IMO. And it has a very powerful, clean sound for such a little box. Roland Clean, I guess - they're good at clean. This will probably last me as long as Firewire will be around in PC's, probably moving down the line to laptop companion, whatever.

I got mine relatively cheap, and no way I'd sell it again easily. Next step up is considerably more expensive IMHO.

ORIGINAL: inmazevo


So let me clarify (and pardon my embarrassingly ignorant question):
Round trip latency is primarily an issue when routing from external, to internal, and then software monitoring back out, correct?
Meaning: once you've recorded your external hardware, or if you're primarily playing software synths, it's not round-trip anymore... it's just the latency one-way out of your machine to your monitors?

Yes.

If you're playing a soft-synth from a MIDI controller, you're only dealing with one-way (playback) latency.
If your effective latency in Sonar is set to 1.5ms, you add the latency of the D/A and any additional safety buffer to determine your total playback latency. In this case, it would likely be ~2.5 to 3ms - depending on the audio interface.

If you're playing/monitoring in realtime thru a software effect (like Amplitube 2), you're dealing with two-way latency (both input and output). So... if your effective latency in Sonar is set to 1.5ms, you actually have 3ms of latency just from the ASIO (or WDM) buffers. Now factor in latency from the A/D and D/A converters... and any safety buffers to determine total round-trip latency. In this case, it would be ~5 to 12ms - depending on the audio interface.

In the first scenario, most any decent audio interface will suffice.
In the 2nd scenario, chosing a unit with low round-trip latency is a must.

Over the last few days I've noticed that I need to to fully shut down and reboot to get the FA-66 to initiate after changing buffers in the ASIO panel. It can be a bit of an interuption in work flow. I have the ASIO panel available on my desktop....anyone know if changing from there instead of through Sonar might help out the situation ?..I do get marginally better Latency through ASIO but the interuptions make it a pain.

Thanks roflcopter,
The issue isn't sample rate or bit depth changes. It's simply I have the buffers set to give me a latency of lets say 4.0 ms. then after adding a few plugs or another soft synth..all of a sudden i'm pushing my set-up a bit and need to increase buffers to up it to 6.0 ms latency to accomodate the extra load. When I go to close out sonar and reset the Fa-66..... I often re-load Sonar to find that my interface isn't available and have to completely shut down and re-boot in order to capture them. I wonder if there is a way to re-initiate the firewire port while the system is hot ? or something similar ?