Not discounting the Focusrite at all, I just want to see what he would recommend.

If I had a thousand bucks to blow on an interface I'd like something like this... http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/896mk3

chuckebaby

jcschild


looking around for user reviews?

fact is its NOT a low latency interface. none of the focusrites are, same with most Dice II chipsets with very few exceptions.

low latency
RME
Motu
Steinberg
Presonus VSL series (but have buffers added to make round trip not the best)

here is a great list. i agree with most of it. some things have changed for the better like the Steinberg USB and the Presonus..

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/7856057-post276.html
 
OP the question is do you need super low latency? (32-53 buffer) based on your workflow i dont think you do. punch in is one area you might need it but even 256 buffer is usually ok for that.

are you saying focusrite interfaces are not low in latency?

Exactly! compared to many others the Dice II chipset interfaces are poor performers
of all the "budget" interfaces i like Focusrite a pretty good amount. 

Whew... you had me worried for a second. And that there is why I decided on the Scarlett. Way more for WAY less. When someone is paying me a hundred bucks an hour to produce music I'll look at other stuff. For what I needed I think I made the best choice possible in my price range. I think August has a bit more cash to work with though so he'll have way more options available to him. Cheers.

I have a saphire 6 usb and i love it,its just one of my interfaces,i also have a v-sutio which i absolutely love.
its nice to be able to use the 8 faders on the interface to move the faders on the screen.

in my opinion when your talking a few ml sec in latency,can you really tell the difference?

I think that would come down to what you are doing. For most of us it won't make a difference but I see the case being made for really intricate stuff where it has to be spot freakin' on. It's kind of like the CPU discussion we were have earlier. Sure you could pay a ton of money just to squeeze an extra little bit of performance out of something but if you don't absolutely NEED to why bother? So far I am extremely happy with my Scarlett and it is the bottom end line from Focusrite. No regrets.

I have 2 Focusrites and am well pleased with their performance

guys you have to remember how much i tweak, benchmarks etc. (same with Vin who's test i linked to)

i have clients who refuse to work with anything higher than 64buffer even a few with 32.
99% of them are composers.

the average home studio users probably has no issues with 128/256 or even 512 buffer.

funny thing is it was not that long ago 64/32 buffer was unheard of and 512 was about the average.

i run a small studio,stay busy here.
all it comes down to on my end is being able to overdub without hearing a delay.

latency means nothing at all to me unless it is a problem.
those composers your talking about wouldnt be able to tell(with the human ear)a slight difference.

when it comes down to it...my customers are happy,they cant tell the difference in latency unless it noticable.

@jschild... Yeah, dude. As soon as I saw "ADK" in your sig I started listening intently to what you have to say. Ever since I discovered your company I've recommended to anyone asking about audio systems to check out your site. Anyway I did a little test last night with the 18i6 in regards to latency. This is a brand new interface and I'm still checking it out so I had it set to the default setting of 10ms on the buffer setting fader. Sonar was reporting something like 50ms roundtrip. Once I figured out how to actually monitor Sonar (as opposed to direct monitoring) I could hear the latency. It wasn't insane but it was definitely enough to be distracting. So I set the buffer fader to 4.0ms and Sonar was reporting 22ms roundtrip latency. If I REALLY strained to hear latency I think there was just an microscopic delay but it very well could have been my imagination. I recorded some stuff and didn't get any pops or clicks. So that's at 4.0ms (which I'm probably going stick to just because I can't hear any latency so why use up more resources?). I can still go down further. The lowest setting is 1.0ms. I will give it a try just to see the latency report from Sonar but I'd imagine I could get things around or below 10ms. That said I'm running an i7 2600k with 16GB RAM and 7200/6.0 hardrives so that probably helps... at least as far as dropouts are concerned. Just thought you might be curious. Cheers.