Piccoman2 wrote:Does anyone have any recommendations for an audio interface which would use USB 3.0? I'm finding anything Firewire is getting harder and harder to accommodate if I go the PC route. Something similar to the Echo Audiofire 12 would be ideal for me. I need at least 8 inputs 12 ideally for doing enough tracks live.Would you please explain why you need the USB 3.0 in particular? Because even the current 2.0 implementation seems to be overkill for these applications (streaming large portions of audio data in hi-res). So far, isn't this entire USB 3.0 thing a kind of meme or something?

Auntie Ovipositor wrote:One thing that you probably figured out that took me a while is that the Echo has a mixer on board for monitoring before the A/D converters. If everyone wants their own headphone mix when you're tracking live, you could pretty easily pull them all out as stereo pairs from there. Giving everyone their own little mixer is classier, but you can invest in that down the road.I'm not sure I'm following when you say "before" the A/D converters. I took a look at the Echo software and I thought you have the ability to create a mix per pair (referred to as an output buss) of the analog outputs. So for example analog outputs 1-2 have a mix, 3-4 have a mix, and so on. Is this what you were referring to?

Piccoman2 wrote:Auntie Ovipositor wrote:One thing that you probably figured out that took me a while is that the Echo has a mixer on board for monitoring before the A/D converters. If everyone wants their own headphone mix when you're tracking live, you could pretty easily pull them all out as stereo pairs from there. Giving everyone their own little mixer is classier, but you can invest in that down the road.I'm not sure I'm following when you say before the A/D converters. I took a look at the Echo software and I thought you have the ability to create a mix per pair (referred to as an output buss) of the analog outputs. So for example analog outputs 1-2 have a mix, 3-4 have a mix, and so on. Is this what you were referring to?When you're tracking, you can set up separate mixes from the inputs and send them to separate outputs as headphone mixes. So, if you are tracking on inputs 1-8, you could send a mix of those inputs to output 1 (or 1/2 if you want a stereo pair) for the drummer, a different mix of those inputs to output 3 (3/4) for the guitarist, and yet another mix to 5 (5/6) for the Yoko. No A/D, so no latency. Really useful for tracking live, and it beats trying to run it through Reaper and making headphone mixes there.

endofanera wrote:Piccoman2 wrote:Record directly to the external drive. Recording to the same drive that is running the OS and DAW will cause stuttering and artifacts.Not really. The external drive would be terribly slow from the latency and the seek times. Those mini drives barely run at 5400 RPM and sometimes run slower than that. If you have a fast internal disk, it would beat the crap out of the USB standard, even 3.0 considering latency issues unless you like waiting there for a few seconds for the song to play every time you hit play. My suggestion would be to fit your internal drive with an SSD and backup sessions with an external AND gold dvd dual layers. I can run my OS and 20+ track fully loaded sessions on a SSD with no dropouts. Other than extra space, there's absolutely no need these days with mature SSD tech to run a mechanical drive anymore.

bump.anyone using the apogee quartet yet? i need to move on from my tascam fw-1884 (still works but there aren't 64-bit drivers and i will soon need to move on to the latest mac os), and the quartet seems to fit in the sweet spot between the sub-$1k MOTU stuff and ua apollo and lynx options on the other side.any other recommendations are welcome. i don't need pre's, just solid AD/DA for at least 6 outputs over USB. the quartet seems to be the best bet in terms of AD/DA value, so long as the conversion is as good as it's supposed to be.

I'm looking hard at some of the Focusrites, probably the 6i6 but possibly the 18i20.

weezy wrote:Does anyone make a basic, dumbed down 8 line in/out USB interface these days? Actually just 8 line inputs minimum would suffice. I'm using a laptop now without firewire, so it has to be USB. I don't really need mic pre's or much of anything else. I'm using an analog dedicated mixer as my front end for the preamps, EQ and whatnot. When I had a desktop I was using an M-Audio Delta 1010 PCI card/rack unit which worked fine for this. Most of what I see out there lately is either basic like I want but doesn't have enough inputs, or seems overly complicated, with features that I won't use or it's laid out weird. This Lexicon thing below seems like the closest thing, any body know of anything else? The only other thing I saw was some older M-Audio Fast Track interfaces...http://www.lexiconpro.com/en-US/products/i-o-82MOTU has a few things that might fit the bill. i think all of their stuff is both USB and firewire these days.if you already have something with ADAT i/o on it you could pick up a used alesis ai3 for under $200 on ebay. my new setup is a MOTU track 16 with an ai3 and i'm liking it quite a bit. that lexicon looks pretty awesome, though.

weezy wrote:Does anyone make a basic, dumbed down 8 line in/out USB interface these days?Lynx Aurora 8 with LT-USB card. Relatively expensive, but not overpriced. I've had the 16 for some time and love it.

tarandfeathers wrote:Lynx Aurora 8 with LT-USB card. Relatively expensive, but not overpriced. I've had the 16 for some time and love it.Edit: So the USB card installs into the rear of the rack unit? Looks good but kinda more than what I want to spend.

Does anyone make a basic, dumbed down 8 line in/out USB interface these days? Actually just 8 line inputs minimum would suffice. I'm using a laptop now without firewire, so it has to be USB. I don't really need mic pre's or much of anything else. I'm using an analog dedicated mixer as my front end for the preamps, EQ and whatnot. When I had a desktop I was using an M-Audio Delta 1010 PCI card/rack unit which worked fine for this. Most of what I see out there lately is either basic like I want but doesn't have enough inputs, or seems overly complicated, with features that I won't use or it's laid out weird. This Lexicon thing below seems like the closest thing, any body know of anything else? The only other thing I saw was some older M-Audio Fast Track interfaces...http://www.lexiconpro.com/en-US/products/i-o-82