Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 or 40?

[Noise Radio]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a reliable 8 in/out interface and it seems to be down to those two. I know that the Pro 40 is a replacement for the Pro 10 and not the 26. Normally, the number of ins and outs offered by the 40 would be plenty for what I do but I like the option of having another 8 channels of ADAT on the 26. Also, the line ins being separate instances on the 26 and wordclock are nice (but not absolutely vital).

The thing is, I have heard great things about the Focusrite pre amps but less than glorious reviews about stability and drivers. Because of this I normally wouldn't even consider the 26 but it seems like it is going to be replaced by a new model in the near future and prices have dropped accordingly.

The Pro 40 seems to resolve issues I've been hearing about but I'm wondering whether the issues with the 26 are as serious as people make them out to be (or even if they've been resolved). What about the initial problems with Firewire and Mac? I assume Apple addressed those...

Basically, I want to spend more time recording and mixing than I do trying to get my interface to work.

Other contenders I've been looking at (albeit being more expensive) are the Presonus Firestudio and the M-Audio ProFire.

Thanks!

[matt keen]

Its too early to tell about the stability of the Pro60 - though Max seems to rate it, and runs many 26's on his Mac based set up

Because stability was my number one priority I ended up going for Motu last time round - rock solid, descent if unexciting performance.

Will go for the new Saffires if reliability proves good - so I won't be an early adopter

[Noise Radio]

In that case, are there any comments concerning the 26? I'm wondering whether the issues I've been hearing about have been sorted in recent updates.

[James Perrett]

My Saffire Pro26 has been very stable although I've not used it for more than a few hours continuously. The hardware is great but my biggest gripe with it is that the firmware and control panel leaves a great deal to be desired - and it doesn't look like Focusrite can be bothered to look after their existing customers and do anything about it. Minor changes in the control panel cause a complete reboot of the unit with lots of clicks and pops and buzzes in the monitors.

Cheers

James.

[matt keen]

I will be very surprised if a lot of the software stuff is not fixed with the 40 (E.g.like the things James has just posted)

[planetnine]

Its too early to tell about the stability of the Pro60 - though Max seems to rate it, and runs many 26's on his Mac based set up

Because stability was my number one priority I ended up going for Motu last time round - rock solid, descent if unexciting performance.

Will go for the new Saffires if reliability proves good - so I won't be an early adopter

is this a typo or do you know something I don't..?

>

[Noise Radio]

Hmmm... looks like the main thing I've been hearing about the 26 still haven't been resolved. How much do the rebooting and noises affect the operation of the unit?

[Dave B]

(sigh) It's all been gone into before ....

Saffire Pro is rock solid and steady on my Macs and they have differing FW chipsets so yes - it's fine on a Mac.

Reboot? No .. just resetting the settings. Without going into the whys and wherefores, it's just something the box does and it's pretty much out of Focusrite's hands. As for abandoning their customers - hello?! They have been pretty whizz at responding to problems. Even down to keeping an eye out on forums such as this for issues. Most of which can be traced down to iffy FW cards..

Simple answer : do you need 16 channels of Adat or 8? If it's the latter, then the 26, otherwise I'd sign up for a shiny new 40 - once they start shipping ....

[grab]

If you've not got the thing hooked up to monitors, it's not a big deal. Just remember to switch off your monitors every time before starting it up, or changing ASIO settings or clock settings. Shouldn't damage anything, but it ain't pleasant to listen to.

Also think about monitoring. You only get one stereo zero-latency mix on the Pro 26, where the Pro 40 (according to early reports from Max) lets you patch/mix any inputs to any outputs.

[James Perrett]

Without going into the whys and wherefores, it's just something the box does and it's pretty much out of Focusrite's hands.

I would love to go into the exact whys and wherefores - and until someone gives me the exact reason why it has to do this I'll still continue to say that Focusrite have done a half baked job with the Pro26. Focusrite should have full access to the firmware for the unit - even though some of it may be written by third parties.

I'm sorry if I'm upsetting some of Focusrite's friends around here but maybe Dave or Max would like to get one of their technical guru friends at Focusrite to contact me and tell me exactly why I have to put up with what appears to be a complete unit reboot every time I change sample rates. I would hate to be doing a session that involved both video and CD mastering with this unit - it would be rebooting all the time. Until I get a satisfactory technical explanation I'll continue to be of the opinion that the Pro26 software and firmware is only half finished.

It would be interesting to know whether the Presonus and M-Audio products based on the same chipset suffer from the same problems.

Cheers

James.

[. . . Delete This User . . .]

My General understanding of it goes something like this.

, it's essentially because the chip sets at the heart of the thing didn't do what the vendors told focusrite it would do when the unit was being designed.... and were very much left , holding the baby.....

so a lot of technical whizz kid kludging went on to make it work at all.... and it's dependent on the firewire host doing specific things in a specific way... which only some of them do.... which is why in the support notes there are some quite specific chip set recommendations for the hosts.

and why the thing was delayed from launch by between 4 and 6 months while the beta testers knocked the crap out of the early production units trying to break it in enough ways for sensible fixes to be found....

it's no simple matter changing the core of the system, and would have involved scrapping all the units then built, re-designing from scratch , and losing more money than sustainable in the stock already bought to build units, the tooling and development costs and so on....

But it was eventually made to work.... and certainly in my experience, work rather well.... i have no trouble with them on PPC or Intel Macs. , nor on our PC.

my Pro26's make no noise on start up... they're connected directly to my AE22 speakers... and it all powers up at the same time from a master switch.

but it could be better..... especially in the software... and the next generation will be..... (and indeed, the Pro40 is.... )
The Pro40 is built on an entirely different DSP and firewire platform.... for precisely these reasons.

although a different set of compromises has been made... for example you can only use 1 Pro 40 in a system.... multiple units are not supported by the driver set... , the overall reliability and user experience is far better at this stage than it was with the Pro26.

and it doesn't use Apple's firewire driver set.....

support for the pro10/26 generation is still ongoing, and where it is possible to fix the few remaining problems , i imagine they will do so

the huge variations in firewire implementation amongst the assorted host chip set manufacturers really doesn't help .... especially given that even within the same brand, there are different implementations.... so it just being brand A , or Brand B is not enough to ensure complete compatibility either..... and it's not just focusrite suffering from that either....

(incidentally, other manufacturers fell foul of similar problems with certain units that were due to market at about the same time as the Pro26... and were similarly delayed in shipping usable units and software... not sure if it was an identical chip set , or just one from the same source )

it definitely seems to remain more problematic on PC platform than Mac though... and I guess this is largely because of the already mentioned variance of firewire chipset behaviours.... and probably also a little to do with different motherboard & system implementations that expansion card drivers , as well as the interface drivers, have to work with....

that's not to say everyone should go buy a mac.... or imply anything of related meaning.... it's simply calling it the way it is.

if you have recurring problems of ANY sort with these units, then please keep emailing focusrite about them.... Mick and the guys in support can hardly continue to press for re-writes if people are not continuing to report issues. \\

saying it once is not enough... if you continue to have problems, after every update, re-report them .... that way the guys in the support department can continue to show a user base demand to management, and thus justify continued resource investment.

[James Perrett]

Thanks Idris - that goes some way to explaining what is going on. So the Bridgeco chips are bad then... but I've seen quite a few bad things about the DiceII chipset which seems to be the main alternative (unless RME have started selling their chipset to other people).

Still doesn't help with the dodgy control panel - although maybe it makes more sense to Mac users.

I really must reiterate that I'm happy with mine for the purpose it was bought for and so far, provided I don't touch the control panel, it has been glitch free.

Cheers

James.

[. . . Delete This User . . .]

Pro40 is related to TC hardware somehow... not sure how...

[wardo]

Pro26 - haven't had any driver issues for well over a year, and even then only when first bought, all sorted out very soon after - focusrite's customer service was very good.

runs solid on newish imac and dual 2ghz G5 powermac although stay at 48khz mostly so cannot comment sample rate issues. gets lots of use and is on for hours every day.

you get used to the software, it's not that bad!

[James Perrett]

Pro40 is related to TC hardware somehow... not sure how...

That almost certainly means that it uses the Wavefront DiceII chip which will be the same as is used on certain TC interfaces and the Alesis IO26. Hopefully Alesis and TC have got the bugs ironed out now but early units suffered from similar problems to those you describe with the early Focusrite units - which is one of the reasons I steered clear of those units when looking at Firewire interfaces.

Cheers

James.

[Noise Radio]

Thanks all for the very informative replies!

I just booted into single user mode and found out my iMac has got a Lucent Firewire chipset. Can anyone confirm that this will still work with the Pro 26? (I've been hearing bad things about these sets and FW audio interfaces).

Thanks!

[Raff]

I have just noticed that there is a new update for the pro 26, version 2.3 that was released a couple of days ago. Does anyone know what the fixes are? there's no info on it at all that I can see and I haven't given it a good test run yet.

[Dave B]

I just booted into single user mode and found out my iMac has got a Lucent Firewire chipset. Can anyone confirm that this will still work with the Pro 26? (I've been hearing bad things about these sets and FW audio interfaces).

What part of 'it works fine' is confusing here?

This has been done to death in the Mac forum as well. Funny place to learn about Mac compatibility I know ...

[Noise Radio]

Apologies, I missed the part about your Macs having differing chipsets.

For the record, I've probably read every single thread on the internet about this and other units I've been considering. The sheer amount of sometimes contradictory information does not always make it easy to draw clear conclusions, which is why I wanted to know how things stand today.

I appreciate everyone's input and will take every opinion into consideration when making my decision.

Again, thanks to all of those who replied.

[Dave B]

Yeah ... it's depressing the amount of inaccurate information out there. Firewire is a really odd protocol - it should be a standard but it's a bit of a black art. It's easier (note the relative terminology here) on the Mac as Apple have only really used two chips. But boy can it be a minefield. As mentioned in Max's post above, the Saffire Pro wasn't the only device to get caught in the chip specs crossfire it seems. And yes, the software isn't amazing but it works fine once it is on a stable platform. Plus the various updates have smoothed things out a bit and generally left it a lot happier bunny. Now it's down to remembering to turn it on after the Mac starts and it's fairly solid. I run _all_ channels through mine and it copes without a glitch.

Having said all that, I'm rather keen to get my hands on the new 40...

[Noise Radio]

I just took the plunge and went for the Saffire Pro 26. For a bit over 300 quid, it was just too good to pass up. The new M-Audio Profire 2626 was on my list as well, but since I barely ever use Pro Tools (plus that would have been another 200 for M-Powered) I just decided to go with the cheaper option.

Thanks Dave and everyone else for being so informative!

[Noise Radio]

Oh yeah, one more question (the last, I promise): Could I run the Saffire off a 6-pin FW port (which supposedly provides enough juice) and still use the external power supply (I imagine that would put less stress on the FW port and I think I read it gives slightly increased headroom...)? Or is that not recommended at all?

Thanks!

[planetnine]

Yes NN, that actually gives you more headroom on the analogue ins and outs (press the HH button on the setup screen).

>

[Noise Radio]

Well, I finally got a chance to hook it up! After a brief scare while running the firmware updater (it failed to connect to the unit the first time and then SaffireControl wouldn't recognize the unit until I restarted my Mac), it's been running solid all afternoon. I've tried all the preamps with both dynamic and condenser microphones and they all sound very nice and clean. I need to crank the gain up to 8 or 9 to get good levels with the SM58, but that's obviously inherent to the mic.

Anyway, very happy with my purchase so far! Thanks for the advice!

[lazyrich]

and it doesn't look like Focusrite can be bothered to look after their existing customers

Bit late to this thread, but felt I should chime in with a few points:

I had a unit go up in smoke on me (literally), out of warranty and focusrite replaced it no questions asked, so as far as support goes I have nothing but praise. I can't think of another manufacturer producing budget equipment that you would get that sort of service from.

Focusrite have an open beta program you can find by googleing focusrite beta - has solved issues for me in the past, so if there's something specific you're having problems with it's worth checking.

The most annoying issues I've had with the saffire were on an Aluminium iMac (which i think was one of the first with a new firewire chipset.) Caused intermittent kernel panics.

Just thought that might balance a few of the other comments in this thread.