[LAU] need soundcard recommendations

[Leigh Dyer]

On 07/03/11 13:59, Josh Lawrence wrote:
> hey everyone,
>
> my friend and I are starting a recording project that will require
> multiple mic inputs.  my soundcard has only two xlr inputs, and I need
> at least 8.  I could buy a cheap mixer and and sum everything up, but
> I'd like to have access to all of the channels in ardour if possible.
> does anyone have any recommendations for "pro-sumer" soundcards that
> have at minimum 8 xlr inputs?

I'm very happy with my Focusrite Saffire PRO40 -- it's a Firewire 
interface with 8 analogue ins and 10 analogue outs. Each of those inputs 
is an XLR/jack combo, and each has a preamp with phantom power, so 
hooking up eight mics is a no-brainer. The first two inputs can also be 
switched to a high-impedance mode for plugging in guitars directly. If 
you need more ports later, it has an ADAT port that you can hook one of 
those Behringer units up to.

Performance on it is great -- I'm not the best judge, but the preamps 
sound very clean and noise-free to me. On a realtime kernel I can run it 
with 4ms latency in JACK with no problems, but I prefer to run it at 8ms 
on a stock kernel instead.

To get it working under Linux, you need FFADO SVN (Ubuntu Maverick 
actually ships with a recent enough SVN version for it to work, and I 
think Debian Squeeze might, too), and you need to use the old Firewire 
stack; FFADO does work with the new stack, but there's a bug in there 
somewhere that causes audio output to fail on DICE-based devices like 
the PRO40 when using FFADO on the new stack.

You'll also need a Firewire controller if you don't have one; I was 
lucky enough to have a TI-chipset controller on my motherboard, but it 
hopefully won't be hard to track down a PCI card with a TI chipset.

Thanks
Leigh