I’m giving in, selling my Focusrite (that thing is lucky I don’t douse it in gasoline and dance around it as it burns- POS). My biggest obstacle has been a crappy interface for a while, and I might as well go big or go home.
Any experience with these (specfically the Babyface and the Fireface UCX). I love that the UCX is essentially a digital mixer (which would satisfy two of my gear needs at once), and insure low latency audio no matter how many FX I open and forget to close in my DAW!
But it’s $1,400, and if the difference isn’t too drastic, I’d prefer to save $650.
I just got a Babyface - liking it so far. But you know, it’s an audio interface, it’s not very exciting. Solid drivers, supposedly very good AD/DA conversion, I think it sounds more than good enough anyway. The totalmix software that comes with it is pretty easy to understand. Great for mixing purposes. Does the job.
Low latency and high quality integrated mixing software? Are the drivers recognized more than 2 out of every 3 times you fire up your DAW?
If the answer is yes to one of those questions, it’s an upgrade.
The fact that I can route audio wherever I want and get a clean mix before I record into my DAW saves me a ton of time. Ableton’s mixer works, but it works much better when you’ve mixed it on an analog mixer and routed it around and panned it it properly on a digital mixer so you Ideally only have to master after recording- less re-recording within Ableton and losing my mind monitoring.
Have you had a look at the Apogee Duet? If you just want rock solid drivers and low latency, you can save some good bucks with it. They use basically the same converters if this is something you care about.
But for the real deal in terms of latency you should sort out the USB interfaces like the Babyface…
I really like my babyface but I would like RME build a breakout cable with combo input (trs and xlr), since this time I’ll have to continue to use big adapters or maybe I’ll solder myself some xlr to trs cables with canare and neutrik connectors. I’ve sold my FF800 2 years ago cause i wasn’t multitracking oftenly and I felt that firewire was going to die. I don’t regret but I miss all those in and out 1/4. Maybe I’ll sell my babyface to get a UCX.
Solid drivers, supposedly very good AD/DA conversion, I think it sounds more than good enough anyway. The totalmix software that comes with it is pretty easy to understand. Great for mixing purposes. Does the job.