AW: Firewire audio interface recommendations - late reply

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

Hi Nick,

I'll answer your questions, at least to the best of my knowledge (which
regarding the audiofire is nil).

There is no thing I know of which is called "post-converter". What I meant
to say by this is that there is an analogue volume control (most probably
resistor in the feedback loop of an opamp) between the output of the D/A
converter and the output jacks.
Why is this important?

Strangely, a lot of interfaces (among them some really good ones - RME 
comes
to mind) do not have this. Now you have a volume control in your software
mixer thing on the computer, but this works digitally, that means it
attenuates the digital signal before the converter.
Now if you need for some reason to attenuate your signal by 20dB and you're
working with 16bit audio (and even in times of 24/96, in most cases you are
to some extent), then this attenuation basically steals (a little more 
than)
three of your bits, bringing your dynamic range and SNR down to 13bit. Now
if your source signal still has some dynamics (meaning you also play quiet
parts), you quickly end up with something in the 10-11 bit range, which is
not good.

Now due to the gain structure of a lot of (digital) devices, having this
analogue level control in place is very handy in a lot of situations - and
as I said before, there's only so many interfaces which have that
functionality (another one which comes to mind is the TC Konnekt24D, which
is out of your target range price-wise).

In the comparison feature-wise I'm a little bit confused - the audiofire4
has preamps, too, right?
http://echoaudio.com/Products/FireWire/AudioFire4/specs.php

I have been very happy with the Firebox so far (although by connecting the
outs to a phantom-powered input, you can fry something - I ruined an output
pair that way, still have to fix it). For an interface of that size and
prize, it really rocks, as they say. Btw, I use it in Live as well, usually
in a configuration where I send the 2bus to out1/2 and the cue/pfl signal 
to
out3/4, which I send to the headphone out. Usually, I use a configuration
with two (mono) ins, but I also used a setup where I would use an external
effect between out5/6 and in3/4, so that works as well in Ableton Live.

        Rainer


________________________________

        Von: collective.reality@gmail.com
[mailto:collective.reality@gmail.com] Im Auftrag von Nick
        Gesendet: Sonntag, 26. Oktober 2008 23:20
        An: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
        Betreff: Re: Firewire audio interface recommendations - late reply
        
        
        hmmm tough comparison. except now I have to ask a few questions :P
        
        What is a post-converter?
        
        It looks to me like the audiofire 4 has midi in/out too so they're
even on that front, right?
        
        It looks like the firebox has preamps, and one more out, so what 
I'm
wondering is: what does the audiofire 4 have that the firebox doesn't? I
don't currently know what would make one consider the audiofire over the
firebox, so please let me know if there are things. The things I care about
way more than anything are still audio clarity, having virtually 0 lag, and
(It sounds like all firewire interfaces do this though) being able to 
select
each in/out/headphones/etc seperately in ableton live.