Bflat5
I'm looking to replace my Presonus Firebox. It's old, noisy and limited. What I'm looking for is something with plenty of I/O's, rack mounted and within the $400 to $600 +/- range.
So far I'm looking at the Behringer FCA1616 and Focusrite Pro 40. Looking at reviews the 1616 is pretty good, but I am concerned about the overall quality. They've always seemed more of a budget minded company as opposed to higher end pro gear. Thoughts on that?
The Pro 40 also gets great reviews, but is said to have compatibility issues with some firewire cards and/or chipsets.
Any other suggestions besides Presonus? I don't think I want to go down that road again.
You won't find an audio interface that's "higher-end" with 8-channels of analog I/O for $400-$600.
There are many audio interfaces at that price point that are "pretty decent".
- Average noise-floor typically between -103dB and -107dB
- Decent mic preamps
- Typically don't offer the lowest possible round-trip latency (important if you plan to play/monitor in realtime thru software based EFX/processing.
At just a tad above the stated budget, the MOTU Ultralite AVB ($650) would improve upon a couple of those items.
It's the best you're going to do at ~$650.
- Noise-floor of -112dB
- 4.9ms total round-trip latency at a 64-sample ASIO buffer size/44.1k
"Higher-end" audio interfaces have noise-floor of -117dB or lower.
Fireface UFX, MOTU AVB series (full rack units), etc.
These audio interfaces are "world-class"... and they have the price to match.
FWIW, The new Presonus Studio 192 is worth checking out.
Good specs for the cost...