Maybe the Firewire interface is dodgey, I dunno. I usually have to click a button on and off to register the state. I have my usual setup saved to a file as well as to the hardware state, but everytime I open it's control panel window, some headphone output won't always work even though it's routed, and is shown to be routed on the screen.Īnd sometimes digital I/O doesn't seem to feeding anything until I redo the routing from a recalled patch.
Now what I don't like is how bad the Pro 24 DSP drivers are at reflecting the state of controls as shown on Saffire control panel/mixer/routing screen. Buying a cheap 2nd hand Delta PCI card and just using the main card for this and routing it into the Saffire works well, I don't even use the Delta's breakout box of analog I/O, but it's there if more inputs/outputs are needed.Īnd I found the M-Audio drivers offer more inputs for Windows with other programs in Direct Sound audio, which doesn't take over the card like ASIO does. M-Audio is always rock solid in this area. Soft synths don't have a low latency as my M-Audio Delta 66 which I feed into the Saffire Pro 24 via SPDIF. The Ultramix has 8 busses, so with an 8 input audio interface you can have 8 virtual FX process chains and EQ for live processing. Maybe even replacing my analog console with a more simple and cleaner line/sum or rack mixer like the Speck Ultramix or X-Sum and use my plugin EQ and FX units instead. It felt like a revelation, enough for me to consider selling a lot of my outboard gear and going more in the box Nice and playable like outboard processing and only 5% CPU power used if that! I didn't notice any major latency issues. I had my Minimoog go through my analog mixer, then into the Saffire's analog input, Reaper/Wavelab monitoring the input live, running it through a VST plugin stack of a channel strip, 2nd compressor, delay, a reverb plugin, then this goes back out through the Saffire control panel mixer to outputs feeding my amp and speakers.
I was testing it yesterday with a live external synth to VST FX monitoring/recording at 24 bit 96 khtz and it worked great with 3-4 plugin chain and a 256-385 buffer size in both Wavelab 6 and Reaper.
In terms of the soundcard working with good latencies, no complaints there.
Well I have a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP and I find the drivers a bit flakey on my Windows 7 64 bit i7 ghz system.