Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56
Two channels of modeled classic preamps bolted onto a 26-in FireWire interface — the Liquid Channel's trickle-down, and the most interesting box in the Saffire range.
Overview
The Liquid Saffire 56 is what happens when a company decides its most exotic technology shouldn't stay locked in a $3,000 single-channel box. Focusrite's Liquid Channel had made a stir back in 2003 by offering dynamic-convolution emulations of dozens of coveted mic preamps and compressors — an incredible bargain next to a rack of the real things, but still out of reach for most project studios at three grand per channel. The Liquid Saffire 56 carried that same modeling process into a multichannel FireWire interface priced at $999, and that price-to-technology ratio is the entire reason the unit matters.
The architecture is straightforward once you separate the two halves. Two channels are Liquid preamps, each capable of emulating ten different high-end and classic units using the same dynamic convolution approach as the Liquid Channel. The other six channels are conventional Focusrite preamps — the same lineage the company had been building for over 25 years, and the reason the Saffire range's advertising could honestly claim the mic pres were the heart of the design. All eight analog inputs double as line inputs, and two of them accept front-panel instrument inputs. Around that core sits S/PDIF and two ADAT Lightpipe ports, word clock, and MIDI I/O.
The I/O count deserves a caveat that Electronic Musician (the review by Brian Smithers) flagged directly: Focusrite claims 28 input channels, but two of those are loop-back signals from the onboard DSP mixer. Useful, yes — but counting them inflates the headline number. Strip those out and 26 independent external signals can be routed into a DAW. The output side is more honest: 28 independent output streams, comprising 10 analog TRS outputs plus the digital connections. The first two output channels carry anti-thump circuits to protect monitors at power-up, a small courtesy more manufacturers ought to copy. Two headphone outs with independent volume controls round out monitoring, one doubling outputs 7 and 8 and the other doubling 9 and 10.
The DSP mixer is where the Saffire earns its keep in a working studio. It's a software-controlled, DSP-based router that lets any 18 channels reach any of 16 output channels with zero latency, and it can fold two channels back to the DAW. That's the kind of routing flexibility that turns an interface into a monitor console for tracking sessions — cue mixes, talkback routing, the whole business — without adding latency to the path.
Sampling rates run up to 192 kHz, with the expected Lightpipe channel-count reductions as you climb: at 96 kHz it's an 18-in/20-out interface, and at 192 kHz it drops to 14-in/16-out. The two mixer loop-back channels remain available at any rate. Focusrite's own advertising for the range billed the conversion as professional 24-bit/192 kHz with JetPLL jitter elimination, and described the Liquid Saffire 56 as the flagship of the line — combining Liquid technology with Saffire PRO FireWire interfacing, a vast I/O count, and what the copy called future-proof, rock-solid driver stability. That's marketing, and it reads like marketing, but the flagship positioning is borne out by the spec sheet.
The Liquid emulations themselves are the draw, and they're worth understanding rather than romanticizing. The dynamic convolution process recreates the relationship between mic and preamp to get as close as possible to the original, and a Harmonics setting introduces progressively higher amounts of second-, third-, and fifth-order harmonics to capture the variation between different examples of a classic unit. Ten emulations are available across the two channels.
How close does it get? Electronic Musician ran a rigorous shoot-out at Full Sail University, matching a pair of Berliner CM33 mics and a pair of SE Electronics 4400a mics in as coincident an array as they could manage, running one of each into a Liquid preamp and the others into hardware preamps — a Focusrite Red 1 and a Universal Audio 610 — for direct comparison. The verdict was nuanced and worth repeating accurately: each emulation discernibly sounded more like its hardware equivalent than anything else, and the family resemblance was palpable, though neither matched perfectly at any Harmonics setting. Both hardware preamps had a more open high end than the Liquid pres. The Flat setting sounded quite good, but the New Age 1 setting — the Millennia HV-3D emulation — sounded terrific on the baritone sax, open and clear and lifelike, and reportedly great on vocals too. The reviewer's honest conclusion: anyone looking for perfectly authentic emulations will probably remain a skeptic until they do their own shoot-out, but viewed as a full-featured, reasonably priced interface with the bonus of two channels of extraordinarily varied sounds, it's difficult to resist.
That's the fair read. The preamps don't sound quite as open as their hardware equivalents — that's the con on the report card — but eight good-sounding Focusrite mic inputs make the unit very convenient even if you never touch the Liquid channels. The reviewer noted the interface worked perfectly with both Logic and SONAR, though a smaller buffer (and therefore lower latency) wasn't achievable on an older Windows XP notebook than with his usual interface. Installation and configuration were described as brainless.
Collectors and buyers chasing one today should understand what they're getting: a FireWire interface from an era when FireWire was the professional interconnect of choice. As Mix (July 2010, p.17) described it, the Liquid Saffire 56 was the flagship of the Saffire range, combining Liquid technology with Saffire PRO FireWire interfacing to deliver authentic preamp flavours, a vast I/O count, and rock-solid driver stability.
That's the practical rub. The Liquid preamps and the DSP mixer are the reasons to seek one out; the FireWire connection is the reason to check what you're plugging it into. The unit is a flagship from the Saffire range, and the range itself — the PRO 40, the PRO 24 and PRO 24 DSP with their VRM monitor-and-room simulation, the PRO 14, the Saffire 6 USB — establishes where the Liquid Saffire 56 sat: at the top, with the most I/O and the only Liquid channels in the family.Similar items on eBay
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