Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 and PT 9 ?

[trock]

I have a small home studio and mainly still use cubase with an N12. that being said i do have an eleven rack and PT 9 on the same MAC

MAC Pro 2.8 octo, 16 gigs ram - 2008 model etc still running snow leopard

i have used the n12 in PT 9 and it works very well. however its a pretty big mixer/sound card and i am looking for something to rack.

i see sweetwater sells this with PT 9 so i was assuming? that its very stable and works well with PT 9?

i have been excited about PT since 9 and am leaning towards switching to it all together. i also have the artist series controllers which i bought for cubase before the buy out.

so most of my stuff became Pro Tools compatible with 9 and the subsequent updates

that being said a couple of questions i have with this uniot

1) how stable is it and how does it sound?

2) how well integrated into PT is it?

3) i have never used emulations from this company before, how are they?

4) how is the onboard DSP and micing and effects? it looks really nice

5) can you daisy chain 2 or more units? it has 2 FW ports so i was assuming it might

thanks for any insight into PT and this unit

tim

[Dot]

i run it with win7, works superb.

1) 2.2 drivers were funky, and caused bsod for me, 2.4 however are stable and i dont have any more issues (the only thing on my side is that the lowest buffer size i can use is 128, because 64 causes clicks pops n stuff, but I can easily track at 128)

2) i switched from 002 to 56. Same I/O configuration as before, everything was saved as for 002. obviously i had to re-config it for my own preference, but it works flawlessly with pt9 (routing in mixcontrol is also very good)

3) It has 10 "best" emulations for liquid pres. they sound pretty nice really, pres are clean, but the gain on them is funky. I'm used to having gain on pre and then output gain, so that's what i don't like on the side. but sound wise they sound really good as for the price. I didn't use nun of the pres that are emulated before, so i can't compare how close they are but they sound good.


4) I'm not sure with the whole dsp thing, because i don't see any reverbs, delays nothing, and i heard about it too, so maybe i'm missing something. All i know is that 56 comes with vst plugins that might be used in daw to then use them for any kind of processing and f.e. send them to headphone mix.

5) I'm pretty sure it can be done, especially on mac but.... i don't think it makes sense since it has 56 ins n outs x 2, pro tools has a limit of 32 ins i believe n im not sure how many outs. however getting octopre for it could be an option, extra 8 analog ins n outs

hope it's gonna help you a bit. i wouldn't hesitate tho, 56 is a great unit, i'm 100% satisfied

[Raggi]

I bought the 56 in June and after 6 weeks I finally got a stable system working and the problem was the Nvidia gfx cards with displayports.
Installed an ATI HD card and it has been rock steady after that.
I can track with 64buffer withtout any problems at all.

I have the 56 + OctoPre MkII dynamic + a Behringer ada8000 connected via Adat and it works great. The Behringer will be replaced later, but I have the input if needed.

The only problem (and this is minor) is that the MicControl 2.4b4 (beta) and the 56 is hanging and I can't adjust the volume. I need to turn the 56 off and on again and it works great. This is something that is not happening often and is no problem.

Happy PT9 user.

[Obsidian Dragon]

I've had the Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 for about 9 months now. I replaced my Digidesign 002R. The latest drivers 2.4 are very stable. Everything just works for me. In my opinion, this is the best interface at this price range along with the RME interfaces. To get anything better would be a major increase in cost (Apogee Symphony, Metric Halo, etc.)

I think the Liquid pres sound very good and give you a lot of flexibility depending on your source. I use it mostly for vocals and I try several of them for each person until I find one that works. It is much faster than repatching outboard mic pres and cost a lot less. I do have a Universal Audio LA610 channel strip that I tried to compare with it. Initially they sound very similar so the modeling is pretty spot on. As I tweak the LA610 however, I tend to think that I have a wider range of adjustment available with the real thing. Not that you need to do that, since it starts to distort the signal from the original sound at that point. The Liquid pre version seem to keep the range of adjustment within the range of usable sounds.

Like the others that posted above, I don't use the plugins that come with the Liquid Saffire 56. I tend to stay with RTAS plugins.

There was an individual that was able to daisy chain a Liquid Saffire 56 and a Saffire 40 a while back. It showed up properly in Protools. If I recall, a representative from Focusrite was able to confirm that this should work but Protools still limits the number of I/O available. If you need more I/O, going through the ADAT would be the most cost effective way. I currently use an older Presonus DigiMax LT but there are many 8 channel ADAT based Mic Pres available. I was looking for the Focusrite OctoPre MkII Dynamic like the poster above since it has similar pres as the ones in the Liquid Saffire 56 channels 3-8.

[cwsand]

I have a Saffire 56 and 40 and Octopre all working together great with Pro Tools. The only weird thing is the ADAT inputs on the 56 don't seem to work properly when it's chained with the Pro 40. I have to use the ADAT inputs on the Pro 40 instead - not sure if I could then add additional ADATs to either interface and get them to work, but I have 24 inputs right now - very nice!

[Shonk Studios]

CWSand.

your issue is to do with the way Protools limits the I/O streams....

it counts the available hardware inputs , not the ones you actually want to use..


see my thread concerning PT9 i/o limitations on Ideascale and on here

http://protools.ideascale.com/a/dtd/...mit/81527-3779

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=307196


the suggested alteration to protools would fix that issue .


so get voting on ideascale, and add your voice here in DUC.