Audio Interfaces - Much of a muchness?

TTony

@duotone ;

I'm using Studio One Artist v5, and all the plugins are working fine.

duotone

@TTony Do you pay a monthly fee/subscription?

TTony

@duotone - no.  I prefer the buy  once, use forever model!

duotone

TTony said:

@duotone - no.  I prefer the buy  once, use forever model!

@TTony Me too.

I should have said that I was using the version before v5 was released & that definitely did not support external plugins. A bit like Studio One Prime now.

https://www.presonus.com/products/Studio-One/compare-versions

So I switched to using Reaper instead.

musicegbdf

Yes I am using presonus as well with V 5 and have a fair few plug ins and they all work.
I have had two items from focusrite and both failed. 
With the presonus the instruction videos are very good and they take you through the process of setting the latency ,etc.
Have been very impressed with the included software with Studio one.

Snap

Have a look at the Native Instruments interfaces. They are good and the software bundle is superb, especially if you haven't actually got Komplete - you get a lot of stuff bundled

monquixote

Snap said:

Have a look at the Native Instruments interfaces. They are good and the software bundle is superb, especially if you haven't actually got Komplete - you get a lot of stuff bundled

Interesting I hadn't looked at them.

I'd like to play with Maschine as the idea of the hardware controllers and DAWless type workflow appeals.

ecc83

Whilst I would agree that many sub £200 interface are pretty similar, two stand out for me. The Native Instruments KA6 and the MOTU M2/M4.

I have had a KA6 for several years and it has proved a bomb proof unit and gives excellent quality.

The M4 beats it however IMO. I have just taken delivery of my second M4, first one went to son in France (supra luna with it) . Yes it is bit over £200 but the specifications, dynamic range, drivers, converter quality are those of the very top end interfaces. In short you will not get better audio quality almost anywhere else. The mic pre amps are very quiet and have enough gain for speech into a dynamic mic.

I stand ready for any questions and prepared to run tests if they are within my ability.

Dave.

Stuckfast

In terms of absolute sound quality most interfaces now are pretty good, and very unlikely to be the weak link in a home recording setup. However, one thing that does vary quite a lot is the alignment of the mic preamps with respect to the A-D converters. What that means is that although most of them typically have a gain range of about 50 to 60 dB, some of them are set up to expect much hotter signals than others. It's worth checking the spec for maximum input level on the mic preamp. If that's a low figure like +10dBu it suggests the interface is optimised for working with quiet signals such as speech. If it's something like +32dBu then it's got tons of headroom for things like drums and electric guitars, but you might struggle to get a healthy signal level with quiet vocals on an SM7.

Snap

ecc83 said:

Whilst I would agree that many sub £200 interface are pretty similar, two stand out for me. The Native Instruments KA6 and the MOTU M2/M4.

I have had a KA6 for several years and it has proved a bomb proof unit and gives excellent quality.

The M4 beats it however IMO. I have just taken delivery of my second M4, first one went to son in France (supra luna with it) . Yes it is bit over £200 but the specifications, dynamic range, drivers, converter quality are those of the very top end interfaces. In short you will not get better audio quality almost anywhere else. The mic pre amps are very quiet and have enough gain for speech into a dynamic mic.

I stand ready for any questions and prepared to run tests if they are within my ability.

Dave.

I have the KA6 MkII and I had the MKI before. the MKII is a good step above, I'm very happy with it. 

digitalscream

monquixote said:

Snap said:

Have a look at the Native Instruments interfaces. They are good and the software bundle is superb, especially if you haven't actually got Komplete - you get a lot of stuff bundled

Interesting I hadn't looked at them.

I'd like to play with Maschine as the idea of the hardware controllers and DAWless type workflow appeals.

Also, as another owner of a Komplete Audio 6, their interfaces are some of the few which are compatible with everything (Windows, MacOS, Linux and - I believe - Android and iOS).

Exorcist

Snap said:

Have a look at the Native Instruments interfaces. They are good and the software bundle is superb, especially if you haven't actually got Komplete - you get a lot of stuff bundled

I would second that - I've got the older Komplete interface, which has been brilliant. I needed two mic inputs, so I could record acoustic with two x/y mic's and flip the polarity on one. Low latency and always been stable. (you can switch the MIC input's to HI-Z instrument.)