best audio interface

[M Burnett]

Greetings all,

We're running QLab 3 thru an 8 channel AudioFire Echo to our console.  We're looking at doing the same thing in our 2nd theatre.  However, I see that AudioFire isn't making the Echo any more.  What would be a suitable substitution?  Suggestions are welcomed!

thanks

Mike Burnett

Angelo State University

[Brendan Patrick Hogan]

The Focusrite Pro40 has worked well for me.

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[Chris Drohan]

Always liked the Focusrite Saffire 18i20. Good amount of analogue I/O (10 outs on Jacks). Seems to be a solid performer I've had it on numerous shows and installs.

[Sam Kusnetz]

Hello Mike

The interfaces we've heard the fewest complaints about are:

- Anything made by Metric Halo

- Anything made by RME

- The Focusrite Saffire series

- The Roland Quad capture and Octa capture

- Dante DVS

The interfaces we've heard the most complaints about are:

- Anything made by Behringer

- Anything made by Echo

- Anything made by M-Audio

- Anything made by Avid (due to lame drivers)

- Anything made by Presonus

- The Focusrite Scarlett series

Obviously this list is not comprehensive, nor is it intended to be completely authoritative. Some folks have had good success with, for example, M-Audio, but we have the benefit of being able to aggregate thousands of users' experiences.

Cheerio

Sam

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[Patrick Andrews]

Are there many QLab users out there using MOTU interfaces? I've had good experiences with them for recording and am considering one for a QLab rig.

[Sam Kusnetz]

Patrick

Lots of folks use MOTU devices. They've had a long history that includes all of the following, in basically this order:

1. The MOTU 828 was released, and it was the first really affordable, high quality multichannel interface, and there was much rejoicing.

2. MOTU Ultralight and 828mk3 devices went through a rough patch with hardware failures, and there was much gnashing of teeth.

3. MOTU drivers went through a rough patch, and there was much rending of garments.

4. MOTU's customer service people made a substantial and admirable effort to reach out to the theater community, and solved the driver problem, and there was much rejoicing.

5. MOTU started building really awesome looking AVB-based products and so far very few folks have used them with QLab and told us about it, but my fingers are crossed that they're going to be just amazing.

I may have missed a few details, and again this is not an official Figure 53 policy, just my personal observations.

Best

Sam

On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 12:16 AM, Patrick Andrews <pandr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Are there many QLab users out there using MOTU interfaces? I've had good experiences with them for recording and am considering one for a QLab rig.

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[Jevans]

For what it's worth when we upgraded a local theatre in 2014 we installed a MOTU Ultralite Mk3 using USB, and have had zero problems related to the soundcard that I'm aware of other than people forgetting to turn it on. My personal soundcard (after asking the group here for advice) is now also a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40.

However, when the opportunity arises (usually only when on Yamaha consoles) I will always use Audante DVS, as it reduces the hardware count and has also been rock solid once configured for me.

Thanks,

John 

[Patrick Andrews]

That pesky power switch problem, tough one ;)
Thanks for the info guys!!

[Robert Kaplowitz]

FWIW - working with the 24AI and 24AO (the AVB devices) this week, on an install with Charlie Richmond's Soundman Virtual Audio Core, and we're getting a major amount of latency.  I don't know if it's the MOTU or Soundman (though I think it's the former), but if you're going to be doing mic cues, it might be worth renting before you buy on the AVB stuff.  If playback only, they're rock solid, and the latency doesn't matter, since it's throughout the system. (The reason we're pretty sure the problem is with the MOTU drivers, if only because they've released what they're calling a "low latency Beta" which makes me think that, yes, there's a lot of latency otherwise.)

[Charlie Richmond]

It is definitely the MOTU system, unfortunately.  SoundMan-Server latency is sub-millisecond from live input to output, regardless of processing applied - except user invoked added delay of course!

Thanks for this report, Robert - I was wondering how this was going.

Charlie 

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[M. R. Miller]

What kind of latency are you seeing and over what connection? The AVB line has a latency of ~1.4 RTL through the computer at 96khz/32 sample buffer via Thunderbolt. The AVB network latency is fixed at .625ms between boxes across up to seven network hops. And if you aren't going into the computer, the latency from input to output through the converters and mixer and DSP is under 64 samples.

In short, if you are seeing high latencies something is up! If you are in the US, definitely call into our support and they should be able to help you diagnose the issue. Otherwise, shoot me an email and I will help you sort it out.

Michael Miller

Lead Software Engineer

Digital Performer | MOTU

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[rbing...@sbcglobal.net]

One thing to keep in mind with the MOTU AVB products is that what is true on one OS is/may not be true on others.  I would say this is true across almost every manufacturer.  About the only manufacturer I have not seen drastic differences between driver quality with regards to Mac vs PC is RME.

Just some examples...

Figure 53 seems to have lots or reports of issues with Echo Audio products, but I've used many of them for years and rarely had issues (and while Andy likes to point out they suffer from the Pin 1 issues, I have never had any actual problems in the field because of that).  But it's worth pointing out that most of my usage of them has been on PC based systems, not Macs.  (although I use them all the time with QLab systems now and they work well for me)  It's a moot point anyway since Echo Audio has essentially closed up shop at this point so unless you're buying used it doesn't matter.

Some of the Focusrite units seems to be popular here but I've yet to try out any of them and have a reliable experience.  But again I've mostly tried them out for recording/content creation and all my editing and creation work is done on the PC platform.  

With regards to the MOTU AVB units until just a few weeks ago the only interface you could use to connect one to a PC is via USB2. RSD's Soundman is Windows only (at least for running the server software itself) so you can not use the Thunderbolt or AVB connectivity to get audio in and out of your computer on that platform.  USB2 is often just fine for playback but I wouldn't recommend it's use on either platform for any live mixing or audio routing tasks.  It just always seems to require much larger buffer sizes to work properly which makes it useless for live mixing tasks.  None of the manufacturers products I've tried out have really seemed to over come this issue.  I don't know enough to know why, but it just seems to be a USB limitation and I can only guess it's because of the fact that USB has to hit the CPU so often to manage it's data transfers.

The new Beta drivers for the MOTU AVB units allow for thunderbolt connectivity to be used with Windows PCs (which I have to say... it's about time someone did that, so good for MOTU), but so far I've yet to find an add on card for a PC that gives you a thunderbolt connection except for some that are specific to certain makes and models of motherboards.  

Point here is.... always take what OS you're talking about into consideration as what works great on a Mac may well not do so well on a PC and vice versa.  If cross platform ability is important I would recommend crying once and paying extra for the RME if possible.  I think MOTU is probably a close 2nd at maintaining driver equality across platforms.  All others seem to vary greatly, are not cross platform devices or just plain suck on either platform.

Richard Ingraham

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From: Robert Kaplowitz <robka...@gmail.com>
To: QLab <ql...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, May 30, 2016 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [QLab] best audio interface

[Andy Lang]

On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 12:03 PM <rbing...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

One thing to keep in mind with the MOTU AVB products is that what is true on one OS is/may not be true on others.  

That is very true, and the points Richard makes about USB2, etc are definitely things to be aware of.

Figure 53 seems to have lots or reports of issues with Echo Audio products, but I've used many of them for years and rarely had issues (and while Andy likes to point out they suffer from the Pin 1 issues, I have never had any actual problems in the field because of that).

This is not an example of an OS-based difference, so I'm not sure why we're talking about it here. Pin 1 is a hardware issue. All this means is that you've never been in an environment where the other factors were in place to cause the design flaw in those devices to present the problem. Not everybody will have noise from a pin 1 problem, but for those who do, it sure sucks, and there's nothing they can do about it in many cases, and a colossal headache to solve it when it is solvable. The venue I first ran into this on had to scrap a pair of AudioFires and replace them, in a hurry, with RMEs. At their expense. 

But, that aside, I'm not sure what this has to do with driver differences between OSes...

-Andy

[rbing...@sbcglobal.net]

Fair point and you're obviously correct the pin 1 issue is not a driver issue.  Guess my point was that the Echo Audio units seemed to be frowned upon by figure 53 and other QLab users and I always found them to be fairly solid and reliable units. I have had good luck with them on either OS really but obviously I use a lot more PCs than Macs.  I always chalked that experience difference up to the differences between the OS and their drivers.  Maybe the issues that Figure 53 support has received are based purely on hardware issues and my assumption about driver issues were incorrect?  Don't know.    

Doesn't really matter since you can't buy them anymore anyway, at least not new.  :-)

Richard

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From: Andy Lang <an...@figure53.com>
To: ql...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2016 6:14 PM

Subject: Re: [QLab] best audio interface

[Tom Hafner]

One point not to forget is that firewire is on the way out from Apple. Of course it is still working well on older versions of OS X. Considering safeguarding investments I no longer would invest in firewire as it is blocking future upgrade paths. With lasts year release of OS X 10.11 El Capitan this became very clear. So if you're staying below 10.11 and not planning to upgrade over the investment time your good.

[Matt Padden]

True, FireWire is being left behind by Apple, but many manufacturers (eg RME) write the firewire hardware support into their own drivers, bypassing Apple's default drivers. So provided there is a physical FireWire port on your computer and you have a properly supported interface, you should be fine.

Matt

[Robert Kaplowitz]

Hey, all -

Just wanted to follow up on this, as it was a tiny hijack, but it also involved important gear that we all use.

We followed up pretty extensively on this whole issue (which, to re-state, was NOT a QLab issue in any way, so it maybe doesn't even belong here - sorry for that), and determined that, indeed, the problem was with the extant MOTU drivers; it was not the hardware or the Richmond software.

We had already put word out to MOTU about the problems, and my casual note to this list seems to have added some extra focus from their engineering team.  They re-examined their drivers, released a new beta (which solved both the latency and the popping) and, once our PC was running Windows 10 at 64bit and had a Thunderbolt card installed, there was zero audible latency.  Worth noting - there is no Thunderbolt port on the 24AI / AO, so, if you're going to do live mics, you'll likely want to keep it to a 16A; I do know that USB 2 is definitely problematic; can't speak for USB3.

I don't know if any of this would have come up on a Mac with native thunderbolt drivers, but I'm glad we discovered it, and just want to give a shout out to the engineering team at MOTU, as well as to Charlie Richmond's ongoing commitment to his product and users.  (Gosh, that makes Charlie sound like Walter White...)

Long and the short?  MOTU AVB units over thunderbolt with current beta drivers can run mics with imperceptible latency.

-Rob Kaplowitz