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Is there anyother major difference besides the amount of inputs?

I was looking into the 800 because well it is talking about all over here, several people pointed me in its direction and it is one of the top audio interfaces out there.

Now they have a 400. which is cheaper but seems just as worthy.

i do what to beable to record drums, but i could not do that without at least 8 channels. Which both the 800 and the 400 cannot to without a preamp pluged in. soooooo my point is would it be worth it to go for the 400 and buy a preamp for drums over the 800?

Comments

TheJackAttack Tue, 03/01/2011 - 13:34

The internal routing and conversion is the same in each unit. From an analog perspective you lose two mic preamps, two line inputs; and lose two balanced outputs. From the digital side you lose a Toslink (8 channel ADAT) input. Also, two of the line inputs on the 400 are combo inputs which by definition is not necessarily bad. You can mic a kit with a stereo pair if you need to but four would be more common and you would of course lack preamps for that. The Fireface preamps are quite usable by the way.

kmetal Fri, 03/04/2011 - 00:38

Ok i haven't used either one, so sound quality judgement is out. Connectivity wise, i'd go 800. i love the sound of two 81's in a coincedent pair over a kit. Some projects they're perfect alone, others, it's the 'salt and pepper' to the drums.
at the studio we usually have 14 drum channels, 2overhead,2room,kick in/out, snare top/bottom, top each tom, hi hat, ride. There's usually a guitar, bass, vocal, going scratch at the same time.
I know it costs $, but if i were going to invest personally, i'd get 800 in this case, if you never use all of the channels, you still can, if you want more than the 400 has, you need to buy a whole new device.
Depends on your current/future needs, and your wiring/patch scheme.