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Hi,
Sad news! Just upgraded Mac OS to Sierra from Snow Leopard, then PreSonus Firepod that served me right these years doesn't supported anymore (over latest OS).

So, I'm looking for a replacement, whether Audio Interface OR USB Mixer! I'm here to seeking your precious suggestions, opinions even advices!

These years, I realized that I mostly used 4 inputs from Firepod, and a lot of time processing source (clean recording) over DAW.

Now, what's your suggestions to me? Do you think USB will be the best bet? You know what? My very first m-audio mobilepre still serving me right now, what a shame PreSonus (I'm sorry).

Zoom UAC-8, Behringer UMC 1820, Tascam US-16x08, Roland Octa-Capture...or any others?

What do you say? I might need to proceed to grab one soon. Hope to hear from you very soon! Appreciate!

Comments

pcrecord Wed, 03/15/2017 - 04:49

mactreouser, post: 448592, member: 47968 wrote: Appreciate, dudes!
Do you think, as long as devices equipped with USB will last longer and worth to grab instead?

I know some says FireWire is going to die but even if usb exist until the end of time. Some maker will stop putting up new drivers for OS to come. It's a fact with many companies and I was the victim of it too with m-audio a few times.

That's why I love RME, they are very active at keeping up drivers compatibility. They continu to work on drivers for many years and it's very surprising they still even get things better from time to time.
The last driver made for my Fireface 800 was release in dec 2016. Not bad for a unit introduced in 2004 !

We could make some searches but I can't remember if I read complains about Focurite and Presonus drivers.

So dude.. It all depends on the seriousness of the makers.

pcrecord Wed, 03/15/2017 - 08:27

The Scarlett is an honest unit. The preamps are ok and you get line inputs and digital ins for adding external (better) preamps.

The Soundcraft mixer, I don't know. If it let's you use the mixer as a summing mixer (the outs of the DAWs to the faders) it could be nice
Some Allen & Heath zed mixers does it and I had good comments on those...

But most mixers don't have direct to converter inputs. If you want to put external preamps one day, that will be a problem.

Boswell Wed, 03/15/2017 - 10:56

Sonic quality apart, any stereo mixer with sufficient input channels could be used to mix or sum a given set of source tracks or stems. I was simply reminding the OP that not many low-cost mixers allow multi-track (>2) recording, if that was a feature in his equipment choice.

When I'm doing 2-box mixdowns, I usually use a passive mixer/summer that I built myself, but there are times when that unit does not have all the facilities and I/O that the mix requires. When that's the case, I turn to my A+H Zed-R16, using it in pure analogue mode with most tracks going in through the channel insert returns. It says a lot for the audio path quality of the Zed-R16 that I'm hard pressed to hear the difference between the passive-mixed tracks and the ones done on the active mixer.

A shortcoming of the Zed-R16 is that the ADAT I/O does not operate S/MUX protocols, so I can't feed it directly with the 96KHz digital tracks from my HD24XRs. The XRs have excellent D-A conversion, so it's not a big problem, but special leads are needed, as the insert I/O is unbalanced.

Boswell Wed, 03/15/2017 - 11:24

pcrecord, post: 448623, member: 46460 wrote: Thank you Boswell.
I had the impression the Zed-R16 could receive the track signals via FireWire and then let us mix the tracks (with eq and faders) and use the main out to send the signal to a second recording unit or computer..
Sorry for my missunderstanding..

There's no misunderstanding; it can do exactly that when set for FW input rather than ADAT, but it's not the way I use it for 2-box mixdowns.

pcrecord Wed, 03/15/2017 - 12:00

Boswell, post: 448624, member: 29034 wrote: There's no misunderstanding; it can do exactly that when set for FW input rather than ADAT, but it's not the way I use it for 2-box mixdowns.

Ah !! I get it... I should have known you have more intricate ways to sum than just the zed ;)

If I could make a bit more money with the studio, I'd like to experiment with summing and 2 Daw setups...

mactreouser Wed, 03/15/2017 - 17:46

Wow... Dudes, these are informative! In fact, I haven't approached to the level yet... Hope to learn more from you (about the Hybrid Setup), awesome!

When you mentioned Alesis HD24xr, I remember that I owned a HD24, I but now it's just has it long long winter sleep.

So, what can I do to make use of HD24 for my Recording, Mixing or... Something else that I should proceed?