Long known for its PCI and CardBus audio interfaces, Echo
Audio has finally made the leap to FireWire with the AudioFire 8 and
12. Rather than put ourselves to sleep with more specs in this
already-crowded category, what makes it cool:
- Looks: It's really, really pretty in its aluminum case
- Psychic powers: 2 inputs are auto-sensing universal inputs — they 'know' whether that's a mic, guitar, or line in
- Brains: 1.6 gigaflop DSP for digital mixing, extremely low latency hardware monitoring and drivers
- I/O: Nothing left out here — two FireWire, onboard MIDI, 24-bit 96 Khz with full-duplex 10/10
And it comes with Mackie Tracktion.
Compatibility: Mac/Windows (ASIO 2)
Availability: March 2005
Pricing: Unknown
Interesting. Seems roughly similar to Presonus Firepod, and Edirol's, uh, is it the FA-101? Price will determine a lot.
http://www.echoaudio.com/Products/FireWire/AudioF…
I think what will really determine this product's success in the market is the quality of the converters. Echo is known for making pretty great sounding stuff (at least on the higher end), so if the price is reasonable, and the drivers are solid (unlike some of their competitors), this could be a real hit.
Yes, I agree with Indicator here: it's value, not just price. Echo's A/D and driver quality has been great in my experience (anyone else?). And it's nice to see a box that isn't ugly, too, of course.
I also like the auto-sensing inputs: a great feature, especially for beginners (and rumored to be on the so-far-not-available Asteroid from Apple, I might add)
Peter