Interface upgrade time...

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davdud101
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2017/01/30 19:11:39 (permalink)

Interface upgrade time...

I just bought a pair of new mics that I'd LIKE to use simultaneously with a 'main'/center mic in perhaps a 3-mic-setup. Unfortunately, I've got only a PreSonus Audiobox, which gives me a grand total of two inputs.
I don't have a very specific budget, but let's say $200 and under- does anyone have a recommendation for a 4- or 8- input interface that plays well with Win7 and SONAR X3, and hopefully has better-sounding preamps and better 48V routing options than the Audiobox?

 
Mics: MXL 990, MXL R80, 2 x MXL Tempo XLRs, Cobalt Co9, SM48, iSK Starlight
Cans: Hifiman HE4XX, AKG M220
Gear: Cakewalk BBL - PreSonus Firepod - Alesis Elevate 3 - Axiom 49
DAW: Win10, AMD FX-8300, 16GB DDR3
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    davdud101
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    Re: Interface upgrade time... 2017/01/30 22:02:36 (permalink)
    Update: A guy an hour from my place has a PreSonus Firepod. That IS 8 inputs on a FireWire interface - compatible with my system as far as that goes. Plus, it's only $100, that's how much I paid for this 2-input noisemaker I've got now! 
    Any thoughts? How compatible will this unit be with SONAR X3 Studio on a 64-bit Windows 7 desktop?

     
    Mics: MXL 990, MXL R80, 2 x MXL Tempo XLRs, Cobalt Co9, SM48, iSK Starlight
    Cans: Hifiman HE4XX, AKG M220
    Gear: Cakewalk BBL - PreSonus Firepod - Alesis Elevate 3 - Axiom 49
    DAW: Win10, AMD FX-8300, 16GB DDR3
    #2
    AT
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    Re: Interface upgrade time... 2017/01/31 10:23:36 (permalink)
    The FP is a solid piece.  Old converters and pres, but acceptable.  I had mine a long time ago and can't remember what the latency was, but it worked fine with SONAR and Sony software.  I gave it to a cousin for his band - the singer already had one and you can run two as a 16 I/o combo.  In short, it should be fine.  I actually liked the lower fidelity on an old Jimmy Rodgers cover than my replacement TC.
     
    If you were closer you could borrow the TC unit.  I talked to cousin about that one, too, but he never bothered to get it. PM me.

    https://soundcloud.com/a-pleasure-dome
    http://www.bnoir-film.com/  
     
    there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
    24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
    #3
    davdud101
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    Re: Interface upgrade time... 2017/01/31 23:56:19 (permalink)
    Good to know AT. I'll consider it mine (the FP, that is). Would've been cool to try out the TC.
    I see that the Firepod gets stated a lot for that it can be daisychained. Is that the biggest/best feature of the unit? I'm not going to need any more than 6 inputs any time soon in the home studio!
     
    Any other comments on this interface, guys? It looks like it'll do the trick nicely for my current situation, so if not, I'm picking it up on Saturday!

     
    Mics: MXL 990, MXL R80, 2 x MXL Tempo XLRs, Cobalt Co9, SM48, iSK Starlight
    Cans: Hifiman HE4XX, AKG M220
    Gear: Cakewalk BBL - PreSonus Firepod - Alesis Elevate 3 - Axiom 49
    DAW: Win10, AMD FX-8300, 16GB DDR3
    #4
    AT
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    Re: Interface upgrade time... 2017/02/01 00:18:32 (permalink)
    I don't know about daisy chaining - just heard it was possible.  And you lose the spdif in/out too.  There may be a firmware update, too.

    https://soundcloud.com/a-pleasure-dome
    http://www.bnoir-film.com/  
     
    there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
    24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
    #5
    Viamichael
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    Re: Interface upgrade time... 2017/02/01 09:54:25 (permalink)
    I still use an old Edirol FA-101 on a Win 7 system. It is also FireWire. I had a world of problems when I first used it on my HP desktop. It was flawless on a very old Dell laptop.

    Even though HP tech insisted the FireWire ports were Texas Instrument ones, they weren't. Latency and crashes insued until I bought a TI FireWire card. It was better, but still had issues until I came up with the idea of going into device manager and disable the original FireWire ports. What a world of difference.

    I think FireWire is wonderful and if you go that route and have issues think about my 2 fixes.
    #6
    fret_man
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    Re: Interface upgrade time... 2017/02/01 11:46:56 (permalink)
    Be aware the FW is not being supported by Win10 and future updates may break it over and over again, requiring you to fix it again and again. At some point Win7 will go away and you'll be forced to upgrade. Not sure I'd invest further in FW at this point.
    #7
    davdud101
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    Re: Interface upgrade time... 2017/02/01 14:38:43 (permalink)
    fret_man
    Be aware the FW is not being supported by Win10 and future updates may break it over and over again, requiring you to fix it again and again. At some point Win7 will go away and you'll be forced to upgrade. Not sure I'd invest further in FW at this point.



    You're 100% certain of that? I'm still on Windows 7 - my machine has some problems with HP's Updater so I've NEVER been able to update any HP services, and sometimes the tower won't turn off until the system crashes, usually forcing a reboot later. But it works fine as long as I turn it off properly when I'm done, or leave it in sleep mode.
     
    I'll do what I can to avoid 10, as I hate 10 thus far where I've seen it/used it.

     
    Mics: MXL 990, MXL R80, 2 x MXL Tempo XLRs, Cobalt Co9, SM48, iSK Starlight
    Cans: Hifiman HE4XX, AKG M220
    Gear: Cakewalk BBL - PreSonus Firepod - Alesis Elevate 3 - Axiom 49
    DAW: Win10, AMD FX-8300, 16GB DDR3
    #8
    davdud101
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    Upgrading the whole system (Interface upgrade time...) 2017/02/01 22:58:55 (permalink)
    Since it looks like I'll be making a purchase on a couple of new Firewire cables, I figured I might as well go ahead and get the processor upgrade I've been looking at for 7 months.
    Question is what type of upgrades are going to make the biggest difference in performance?
     
    - I've heard about dual-channel mode on RAM. right now my setup is using 3x 2GB ram sticks and 1x 1GB stick, but I don't know if that is hurting my computer's ability to run in Dual-channel mode since the second pair isn't matched.
     
    - My current processor is a decent, stock quad-core, but I'm considering moving up to a hexacore - specifically this one. Any thoughts? Comments?
     
    I figured if I wanted to do a little bit of lightweight gaming now and again, I'd also want to upgrade my video card. Would doing this have any noticeable effect on the running of the software or anything?
    Here's what I was looking at.
     
    So I've got a little quest ahead of me. I'm not quite sure what I'll want to upgrade to achieve better performance in general, so hopefully you guys can help point me in the right direction.

     
    Mics: MXL 990, MXL R80, 2 x MXL Tempo XLRs, Cobalt Co9, SM48, iSK Starlight
    Cans: Hifiman HE4XX, AKG M220
    Gear: Cakewalk BBL - PreSonus Firepod - Alesis Elevate 3 - Axiom 49
    DAW: Win10, AMD FX-8300, 16GB DDR3
    #9
    dpotseluev
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    Re: Upgrading the whole system (Interface upgrade time...) 2017/02/02 09:15:51 (permalink)
    Not identical memory modules not good for stability. Now good performance for audio recording is 8gb or 16gb RAM. Processor - need more cores and MHz for realtime FX support. Video card not get much more performance for sound recording, only for software interface. General - processor.

    PC Configuration: MSI Z77A-G45, Core i5 3570 3.8GHz, Kingston HyperX 16Gb 1600MHz, MSI N770, Plextor PX-256M5S, ESI Maya44e.
    Audio Hardware: Behringer Xenyx 1202, Behringer C1, Shure PGA58-XLR-E, Yamaha HTR-5940, Ultimate Stage 5.0 Acoustic System, Sound Pro 1200 Sub, Energy C-200, Casio WK-3200, Yamaha DD-65, Cort GB34A Bass Guitar, Yamaha RGX121Z-BL Electro Guitar, Zoom G1X, Violin, Harmonica.
    #10
    davdud101
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    Re: Upgrading the whole system (Interface upgrade time...) 2017/02/02 14:44:22 (permalink)
    dpotseluev
    Not identical memory modules not good for stability. Now good performance for audio recording is 8gb or 16gb RAM. Processor - need more cores and MHz for realtime FX support. Video card not get much more performance for sound recording, only for software interface. General - processor.




    Pretty straightforward- thanks, Dan! So going for a more powerful CPU (6 cores @ 3.1Ghz) will certainly be a good upgrade against my current system (4 cores @ 2.6Ghz).
    I'm going to buy another RAM stick to balance out to 8gb - looking at my usage, I rarely, if ever, go over about 5gb, so spending up on 16gb for a machine from 2009 probably wouldn't be worth my while.
    I'll hold off on the graphics card for a while. I won't be doing much gaming or graphics-work in he near future anyway!

     
    Mics: MXL 990, MXL R80, 2 x MXL Tempo XLRs, Cobalt Co9, SM48, iSK Starlight
    Cans: Hifiman HE4XX, AKG M220
    Gear: Cakewalk BBL - PreSonus Firepod - Alesis Elevate 3 - Axiom 49
    DAW: Win10, AMD FX-8300, 16GB DDR3
    #11
    davdud101
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    Re: Upgrading the whole system (Interface upgrade time...) 2017/02/04 23:00:07 (permalink)
    Gonna just close this topic up - I picked up the unit today. Ran over to a local computer hardare store and grabbed a couple of 1394 cables... had some trouble getting the unit recognized in Win7 before I realized the port was disabled in the BIOS. After that, it worked a treat! very clean preamps, simple to use, great very low-latency drivers and all! Overall I'm very satisfied with this purchase... $100 got me a unit 4 times greater than what I had before... and I paid the same amount! 
     
    Haha! Sorry to make a big deal about what is essentially legacy-hardware. But I'm satisfied to the max! 

     
    Mics: MXL 990, MXL R80, 2 x MXL Tempo XLRs, Cobalt Co9, SM48, iSK Starlight
    Cans: Hifiman HE4XX, AKG M220
    Gear: Cakewalk BBL - PreSonus Firepod - Alesis Elevate 3 - Axiom 49
    DAW: Win10, AMD FX-8300, 16GB DDR3
    #12
    AT
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    Re: Upgrading the whole system (Interface upgrade time...) 2017/02/05 14:28:31 (permalink)
    Have fun.

    https://soundcloud.com/a-pleasure-dome
    http://www.bnoir-film.com/  
     
    there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
    24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
    #13
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