qipi wrote:
I am going to use a LOT of very heavy vst/vsti effects
The only thing I am going to record is vocals and maybe a guitar, but mostly
Vocals – so no need for many I/O'S.
1) Can any of the interfaces
(Saffire 56 \ DSP 24) can handle the massive amount of VST and audio channels?
What about **latency**? – I saw some tests about the card *RTL* which
Was not so flattering.
2)The recording quality : I saw that the sapphire 24 dsp sample rate
Is only 96 kHz and the Saffire 56 has 192 kHz, is it going to have
effect the recording quality , or its minor thing?
What about the A2D D2A Quailty?
3)I do not have mic preamp, is the liquid preamps will be a good deal or should I go with the 24 DSP?
I am must emphasize that the recoding level and everything else must be in the Most highest standards exist in the music industry
I have a hard time answering someone who emphasizes that what he wants to buy must be professional and to the highest standards. If that's what you really need, then you shoudl be working with a consultant who can discuss your specific needs with you and make recommendations. I think that Focusrite gave you a fair answer not knowing who you are. Would you care to introduce yourself and tell us about some of your projects that led you to the point where you demant utmost quality? And what your final products in the near future will be? It would really help a lot. More so when, at the end of your post, you used the words "average price."
On the surface, if all you're using the interface for is recording vocals, you can use something quite simple that plugs into a USB port and get very good results as long as your your recording environment, your mic, your monitoring system, and your talent (both the vocalist and you as the entineer/producer) are up to the task. Rather than a plug-and-play interface, you might want to consider the system approach where you can choose the mic preamp, the A/D converter, and the computer interface separately.
That being said, the interface doesn't significantly contribute to the load, so it won't affect the number of effects and virtual instruments you can use in a project, nor will it affect the number of tracks your project can have since you're really only passing one channel to the computer at at time for recording, and (I presume) you're mixing on the computer so it only needs to pass two channels out.
As Focusrite told you, there are lots of things that contribute to latency, and there are also different latencies which can affect you in different ways during different phases of the project. To me, the most important latency is input monitor latency, the time between when a singer sings a word and when it gets back to his ears in the headphones. Equally important to someone who records in real time with virtual instruments is how long after you press a key do you hear a sound. There are some tricks that can be played with the interface hardware to turn around an input source and send it to the output with very little delay.You can reduce buffer sizes to reduce latency, but all you're doing there is finding out how little a safety margin your system will tolerate before it can't keep up and drops samples.
In the Focusrite Saffire and Scarlett range, this is done using a DSP mixer built into the hardware. But when you must monitor what's coming out of the computer, that's where you get into the big latency numbers, and that's the part that's a function of many things, the driver being one, but probably the greatest contributor the to total latency is the processor or virtual instrument itself.
I have some actual input-to-monitor latency measurements in reviews of the Focusrite Liquid 56 and Scarlett 6 and 18i6 interfaces on my web site. I was truly amazed at how little input monitoring latency there is with those units. Focusrite was going to sent me a Forte for review but it hasn't shown up yet.
My opinion of the Liquid preamps is that they might be useful now and then, but I figured I'd use the cleanest preamps nearly all the time and then **bleep** up the sound as I saw fit later on in the production process.
My opinion of high sample rates is that they're a necessary evil brough on by industry pressure. Some plug-ins might work better at 96 kHz because it gives them more bits to play with, and a number of poeple like to make their masters at 96 kHz. Some even say it sounds better, but it all depends on where that master is going. But the good thing is that 4x sample rate doesn't sound worse than 2x sample rate as was the case maybe as much as half a dozen years ago, so if your clients are paying for it, you might as well use it, at least 96 kHz.
As far as outboard preamps are concerned, they're all different. I had no complaints with the preamps in the Saffire and Scarlett units that I reviewed, and if Focusrite says the RedNet series preamps that they use in the Forte are even better, I'd believe them, but in reality, I might not care about the difference. Or I might. And, sure, you can connect a Forte, or any of the other interfaces you're mentioned, to a headphone amplifier.
--
"Today's production equipment is IT-based and cannot be operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge of audio." - John Watkinson, Resolution Magazine, October 2006
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