Product: Echo Audio AudioFire12
Price Paid: USD 600
Submitted
10/20/2007
at
02:00am
by
Naugabeast99
General
:
10
This is a rackmount (1U) firewire audio interface. Nice LED meters for each of 12 input and 12 output channels. No soft limiter, no mic preamps. Onboard DSP which can do a separate stereo mix for each stereo output pair (so 6 output mixes) which is great for monitoring. Note that the monitor mix is stereo, not mono (as in the Presonus FirePod) which makes a big difference when recording synths. The monitor mixes are easily set up by an application that is installed with the driver. No physical volume controls so I use a headphone amplifier to control my monitor speakers. Case is shiny aluminum, heavy duty metal.
Connectivity
:
10
Has two firewire ports. Word clock input and output. Multiple ECHO AudioFire interfaces can be used simultaneously (driver specifically supports that).
I/O
:
9
12 Analog Ins, 12 Analog Outs, all balanced TRS. +4 or -10 dBu selectable by software. 1 MIDI In, 1 MIDI Out. No preamps. No instrument inputs. No ADAT or SPDIF. So I give it a 9 - lots of analog i/o but some digital i/o would be nice.
Power
:
10
Audiofire 12 can't be bus powered. Is AC powered by a line cord (no wall wart or line lump here). No provisions for battery power. I give it a 10 as I hate wall warts.
Technical specs
:
10
32kHz to 192kHz, 24 bits. Supports WDM, ASIO, and GSIF. Direct monitoring through onboard DSP mixer. Sound quality is excellent. Transparent, sweet. No noise.
Other
:
10
Includes Tracktion, probably a lite version, I don't know because I don't care. The driver includes a nice looking mixer panel with a tab to do a mix for each output pair. I give it a 10 because I have my own software. All I require is a stable driver. ECHO's driver support is legendary (um I mean legendarily good). Setup was easy. I got the latest driver from echoaudio.com, it included a firmware update.
Overall
:
10
It works beautifully. I have a mixerless setup. I have a few synths and mic preamps plugged directly into it and this works well for me. I am using it with Ableton Live. I do recommend it if you have your own mic preamps to use with it or if you have a few synths you want to record seperately. Echo driver support is good, always has been. If it was destroyed or stolen, I would definitely buy it again.
