audio interface upgrade

[getz76]

There are plenty of rigs at are rather expandable. If you want something a bit bigger, take a look at the Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56. You can get it for under $800 at B&H. It will give you 8 preamps, ADAT and SPDIF.

One of the nice things about the MOTU interfaces is that the FireWire can be chained together, share a clock and the main device shows up as the interface under Mac OS X. I would check if that works under Windows. I have a pair of 8pre units and Ultralight mk3 via FireWire and you end up with 18 preamps plus 6 analog line ins and a pair of SPDIF ins. Works great.

[graveleye]

After battling ASIO problems with Focusrite stuff, I would stay away for now... at least til they get it fixed.
I purchased a MOTU 896mk3 hybrid and I've been really happy with it so far. It runs about a grand.

Tons of expandability too.

[jasonthurley]

Liquid Saffire is a lot for the money... plus you can always use an external board with pre's (and Direct Out) and have 16 simultaneous tracks recording at once (Not sure what your work flow is like) not to mention the 16 channels of ADAT...

For the money and the half way decent (same pre's in your MBox basically, with exception of the 2 liquid pre's) pre's this baby is pretty sick...

Oh, and it has 2 headphone pres... :)

[getz76]

Originally Posted by jasonthurley

Liquid Saffire is a lot for the money... plus you can always use an external board with pre's (and Direct Out) and have 16 simultaneous tracks recording at once

No you can't. That's not true. There are 8 analog input channels. You can get up to 26-in at 48kHz using the analog, SPDIF, and ADATx2.

[jasonthurley]

Ah, I forgot they are only switchable Line or Mic in (only 8 total).... Wah wah.... but yes you can still add an optical ADAT cable to get more inputs.... still, for the money.. can't really beat it.