30 May
2009
30 May
'09
10:57 a.m.
It's that question again, and it's here for you to answer and gain cookie
points!
Here's my array of the chosen ones:
ECHO AudioFire 4 [[
http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/FireWire/AudioFire4/index.php ]]
Edirol FA-66 [[
http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?ObjectId=731&Paren…
ESI QuataFire 610 [[ http://www.esi-audio.com/products/quatafire610/ ]]
Focusrite Saffire [[ http://www.focusrite.com/products/saffire/saffire/ ]]
That was narrowed down from [[
http://ffado.org/?q=devicesupport%2Flist&filter0=&filter1=&op2=…%5B%5D=perfect]].
All these satisfy my need for mobility and at least 2 DI and MIC inputs.
From what I know, they pretty much cost about the same,
or within 100-200
bucks apart.
* All except the Focusrite are hybrid inputs, so it has the upper hand
there.
* Only the Focusrite has onboard DSP effects, BUT unsupported on Linux
(ffado)
* Only the ESI officially mentions support for Linux
So here's the homework for you guys:
Reorder the list in decreasing order of merit. Conditions include (in order
of decreasing importance):
* Preamp Quality
* Linux Support Extent
* Beauty
* Portability
If that one's too tough, then just pick 1 (or 2/3 depending on which of
those you have firsthand experience with) =p
Thanks and good luck!
7:01 p.m.
On Saturday 30 May 2009 14:58:58 Ray Rashif wrote:
And oh yes, I forgot to mention that my laptop's
FW chip is a Ricoh R5C832,
if that makes any difference :)
See http://subversion.ffado.org/wiki/HostControllers
Looks bad. Except for Scott, there are _no_ positive reports for that chip but
lots of bad reports...
Arnold
31 May
31 May
2:05 a.m.
Oh shite..This is like the biggest disappointment this year.
Could there be a fast routine I could run at the store to test whether it'd
work? I'll be bringing my laptop with me so I guess I should at least be
able to determine whether the device can be used.
Thanks for the response so far guys.
Scott: Is your lspci -v output similar?
~$ sudo lspci -v
...
08:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
(prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30b2
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 16
Memory at d4101000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
Kernel driver in use: ohci1394
Kernel modules: ohci1394
...
3:24 p.m.
Ray Rashif wrote:
Oh shite..This is like the biggest disappointment this
year.
Could there be a fast routine I could run at the store to test whether
it'd work? I'll be bringing my laptop with me so I guess I should at
least be able to determine whether the device can be used.
Thanks for the response so far guys.
Scott: Is your lspci -v output similar?
~$ sudo lspci -v
...
08:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
(prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30b2
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 16
Memory at d4101000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
Kernel driver in use: ohci1394
Kernel modules: ohci1394
Same except latency. Here ya go:
# lspci -v | grep -i firewire -A12
03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (prog-if 10
[OHCI])
Subsystem: Dell XPS M1210
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 19
Memory at ef9fd800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
Kernel driver in use: ohci1394
Kernel modules: ohci1394
I really have no answer why it's worked out for me so well. Maybe the latency setting
is a factor? A long time ago I tried adjusting that in 8.04 to get it to work but it
made no difference. The FFADO wiki has said it doesn't work since Ubuntu Studio 8.04.
It didn't work in 8.04 for me so I tried 8.10 and it worked great. 9.04 works too.
However, I prefer Fedora/CCRMA now. YMMV.
2 Jun
2 Jun
4:12 a.m.
Thanks, this should at least serve as comforting fact. From
http://forums.archaudio.org/topic/need-help-getting-presonus-firebox-going/…
BIOS upgrade seems like a probable solution if I do end up with an
issue.
I figure I should go ahead and dry run every one of those 4 at their stores.
3 Aug
3 Aug
5:49 p.m.
I'm happy to report that a Saffire Pro 10 has worked fine with my chipset.
My friend uses it with Windows and he has noted that it's a little dodgy on
that platform as well, so Ricoh is well-known to be bad regardless of
operating system. Anyway, connected, all inputs tested working fine..just a
little disappointed that i could not get less than 5ms jackd latency. Will
be using it this saturday for an orchestral recording. Wish me luck!
5:56 p.m.
Ray Rashif wrote:
I'm happy to report that a Saffire Pro 10 has
worked fine with my
chipset. My friend uses it with Windows and he has noted that it's a
little dodgy on that platform as well, so Ricoh is well-known to be
bad regardless of operating system. Anyway, connected, all inputs
tested working fine..just a little disappointed that i could not get
less than 5ms jackd latency. Will be using it this saturday for an
orchestral recording. Wish me luck!
Good luck, Ray, and thanks for the report. I plan to purchase a Firewire
audio interface soon. :)
Best,
dp
6:42 p.m.
On Monday 03 August 2009 21:48:57 Ray Rashif wrote:
I'm happy to report that a Saffire Pro 10 has
worked fine with my chipset.
My friend uses it with Windows and he has noted that it's a little dodgy on
that platform as well, so Ricoh is well-known to be bad regardless of
operating system. Anyway, connected, all inputs tested working fine..just a
little disappointed that i could not get less than 5ms jackd latency. Will
be using it this saturday for an orchestral recording. Wish me luck!
5ms is _really_ short enough. Anything below 20ms is good enough for playing
piano (and doing software monitoring). And to compare it with the other
operating system not to be named here, that is actually pretty good.
If you only record, be sure to use higher latencies to give your disk more
time and to allow larger junks to be processed. But not to large as the
firewire-host could not like that. :-)
Be sure to test your setup before. And be sure to tell us how it went!
Have fun,
Arnold
16 Aug
16 Aug
12:14 a.m.
And it was a success (as far as software is concerned), less the trouble
with figuring out proper levels. I have a hard time not relying on the
metres to determine headroom, so I ended up having to normalise everything
due to poor levels. A few xruns, but insignificant (upon starting new apps,
running commands, etc.) On the gear side, sad that my order of 6 KSM44s did
not pass. Ended up with 4 x Rode NT4 and a Zoom H2, with very bad hall
acoustics and software reverb.
And yes, 5ms is good enough. Was just being a nerd :)
30 May
30 May
2:54 p.m.
Ray Rashif wrote:
Edirol FA-66
I bought this one a couple of months ago, and I'm extremely happy with
it. Very stable, sounds good, like the multiple outputs, lower latency
than my previous USB card.
This is my only experience with firewire and the most expensive/best
card I've owned, so the others might be even better, but the edirol is
making me smile :-)
--
Atte
http://atte.dk http://modlys.dk http://virb.com/atte
3:40 p.m.
On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Atte André Jensen
<atte.jensen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Ray Rashif wrote:
Nice looking little unit and the price is marked down at Amazon to $247.28.
Not that I'd use it but how fast can you set the sample rate when
using this device with Jack? If you can use 192KHz is it actually
stable?
- Mark
Edirol FA-66
I bought this one a couple of months ago, and I'm extremely happy with
it. Very stable, sounds good, like the multiple outputs, lower latency
than my previous USB card.
This is my only experience with firewire and the most expensive/best
card I've owned, so the others might be even better, but the edirol is
making me smile :-)
--
Atte
http://atte.dk http://modlys.dk http://virb.com/atte
4:45 p.m.
Mark Knecht wrote:
Not that I'd use it but how fast can you set the
sample rate when
using this device with Jack? If you can use 192KHz is it actually
stable?
Not as it is right now (or at least it craps out when playing something
that plays fine at 48000), but haven't done anything for it. Works great
at 48000 and that's enough for me. I'd rather make music than fiddle
with settings, so I have no idea if something better is possible...
--
Atte
http://atte.dk http://modlys.dk http://virb.com/atte
5:20 p.m.
On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Atte André Jensen
<atte.jensen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Mark Knecht wrote:
Thanks. I was just curious. I cannot imagine I'd use it either, but
knowing what Linux/Alsa/Jack can do it always of interest to me. My
main sound card as well as my good D/A go 96K but other A/D's in my
system are limited to 48K so I don't bother going beyond that.
Cheers,
Mark
Not that I'd use it but how fast can you set
the sample rate when
using this device with Jack? If you can use 192KHz is it actually
stable?
Not as it is right now (or at least it craps out when playing something
that plays fine at 48000), but haven't done anything for it. Works great
at 48000 and that's enough for me. I'd rather make music than fiddle
with settings, so I have no idea if something better is possible...
--
Atte
http://atte.dk http://modlys.dk http://virb.com/atte
5361
days inactive
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days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
13 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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Arnold Krille -
Atte André Jensen -
Dave Phillips -
Mark Knecht -
Ray Rashif -
Scott