[LAU] need soundcard recommendations

[Leigh Dyer]

On 07/03/11 14:42, S. Massy wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 07, 2011 at 02:09:46PM +1100, Leigh Dyer wrote:
>> 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
> Just curious. I thought the saffires needed custom software to handle
> the routing. How does that work under linux?

FFADO does have its own mixer app, called ffado-mixer, which is meant to 
be able to handle all of this routing stuff. There's some discussion of 
how the mixer relates to DICE-based devices like the PRO40 here:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=26483915

I have opened ffado-mixer, and it looks like it works, but I haven't 
actually used it for anything yet. Out-of-the-box, it routes the 8 
analogue ins to the first 8 JACK capture ports, and the 10 analogue outs 
to the first 10 JACK output ports, so I've had no trouble recording and 
playing audio without having to use the mixer.

I can of course route inputs to outputs using JACK, and in fact while 
recording I always tend to monitor in software anyway, through Ardour. I 
know that using the Saffire's internal routing would give me essentially 
zero-latency, but even at 8ms it's close enough to zero for my needs.

Thanks
Leigh



>
>> 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
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>