Focusrite Saffire Pro 26
Eight Focusrite preamps, a FireWire bus, and a price that undercuts the fussy interfaces it competes with - if you can learn its software.
Overview
Focusrite built the Saffire Pro 26 as the flagship of its Saffire Pro line of multichannel FireWire interfaces. The pitch was eight of the company's microphone preamps, a pile of digital I/O, and a street price of $699.99. That's a serious number for a box with eight XLR inputs, and the preamps are the reason it exists. Focusrite has spent decades building its reputation on mic preamplifiers. A review in Mix (December 2006, p.131) (December 2006, p.131) noted that the company's "pre-eminent reputation" in that department was the foundation the Saffire Pro 26 was built on - eight professional preamps forming the core of a 52-channel FireWire interface.
The connectivity is the strong suit. Eight XLR mic inputs sit on the rear panel, with gain controls and clip LEDs on the front. Phantom power switches in two banks of four channels. There are eight balanced line outputs, plus a set of balanced line inputs on the front that can be reconfigured as insert jacks for channels 1 and 2 via a software button. Digital I/O includes two ADAT inputs and outputs, S/PDIF in and out, MIDI In/Out/Thru, two FireWire ports, and word clock in and out on BNC connectors. At 44.1/48 kHz the ADAT ports give you 16 additional channels. At 88.2/96 kHz the S-Mux protocol collapses that to 8. Sample rates run from 44.1 all the way to 192 kHz.
Power comes from the FireWire bus or from a wall supply with a locking connector. Drivers and the SaffireControl Pro virtual console are provided for Windows XP SP2, 64-bit XP, Media Center, and 32- and 64-bit Vista. On the Mac side the stated minimum is OS X 10.3.3, though the manual hedges that updates may be required. Focusrite claimed that up to three Saffire Pro units can be cascaded, theoretically yielding as many as 78 inputs and outputs for a Windows DAW. That's a notable trick, since ASIO generally lets a program talk to only one device at a time. Mac OS X supports multiple simultaneous devices natively, so it plays along more easily.
The digital mixer is the center of the workflow. SaffireControl Pro provides an internal mixer for low-latency monitoring during tracking, and the dual headphone outputs can carry somewhat independent mixes. That's useful for a small studio tracking a band. The tradeoffs arrive as you push the sample rate. At 88.2/96 kHz you lose an ADAT input and output to S-Mux. At 176.4/192 kHz all ADAT I/O and the mixer go away entirely, which means you also lose direct input monitoring.
Reviewers liked the sound and were less happy with the ergonomics. Electronic Musician (February 2008, p.110) praised the clean mic preamps and good overall audio quality, called the internal mixer a real asset for low-latency tracking, and highlighted the expandability through the ADAT ports. The same review was blunt about the downsides. The onscreen mixer and control panel are difficult to read and not especially intuitive, the documentation is reasonably complete but scattered across too many places, and the unit is fussy about external clock synchronization. The monitor volume control is digital with 1 dB increments, which produces zipper noise when you adjust it. A hardware knob would have avoided that. The reviewer's summary was that the Pro 26 is an impressive unit with a lot of bang for not many bucks, but not really an entry-level product: you need some experience to get the most out of it.
The Saffire Pro 26 is at its best as a remote recording rig, with eight clean preamps, ADAT expansion for more channels when you need them, and the ability to cascade additional units as the gig grows. The reviewer's caveat was that mixing a room full of fussy musicians on headphones through a software console is no substitute for a real mixer with real hardware controls.
For anyone shopping today, this is a FireWire interface that needs a host with a FireWire port and drivers matched to an older operating system. That's a real constraint. FireWire has largely left modern computers, and the Windows driver situation tops out around Vista. The hardware itself is solid and the preamps remain the draw, but buyers are maintaining a legacy device rather than plugging into a current workflow. Collectors and home recordists who keep an older Mac or a FireWire card around will find a lot of interface for the money.
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