Logic and Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56

3 months ago I upgraded my home production studio with both the Focustrite Saffire 56 and Ocatapre MKII Dynamic. I use them with a Motu 828 MkII for a total of 26 analog to digital ins. I need mic pres because I want to avoid using a console for now. There are things to consider after you've done the research & read all that's out there on the web like the Sound On Sound review, gearslutz etc... Saffire 56 must be on a dedicated Firewire Channel or else it will freeze up. SInce I use an aggregate device setup with 2 FW audio interface devices (Safire 56, Motu 828mkII) I had to install a PCI card that has 3 FW channels, Motu 828 mkII and a FW Media drive attached to card. The internal FW bus hosts the Saffire 56. Octapre is connected to Saffire via Light pipe. Recently I recorded an acoustic upright piano at 88 khz with the Saffire it sounded amazing ! The Liquid pres will be useful but do some research on all the preamps that they emulate to help decide what to use them on. I really like the way Focusrite sounds, but I do have an on going tech support issue with Focusrite since March. I use itunes 9 and when Itunes is at full volume I have found that today's loud masters +3 to +6db range can easily clip the DAW input channel of the Saffire. My workaround has been to lower the Itunes preamp on the EQ leaving the EQ flat of course. Something else I noticed is that in Logic Pro 8 I used to Slam the mix buss pretty hot when I used the Motu 828 MkII to monitor with no clipping but now that the Saffire 56 has taken the place of the Motu, It seems I have to be real careful and almost rely upon brickwall limiting to ensure no transients cause clipping in my studio monitors. Focusrite tech support is more concerned with my Itunes issue and says that Logic is behaving as expected with the Focurite 56. (I am on my 2nd Saffire 56 unit and it is behaving the same way with my itunes and Logic).. Logic's 32 bit floating point and Motu's 32 bit floating point may have been giving me the headroom and I believe the Focurite gear does not use 32 bit floating point but is calibrated to standard digital audio specs.. Again I am real happy with the sound of the Saffire's preamps. There is no latency when you use the Mixcontrol software to monitor your mics in headphones and or studio monitors, Logic output shows up on the Mixcontrol console as DAW 1 and DAW 2 so BFD will be monitored as well in sync with the recording signals. Hope this helps, cheers.

Hello KOiL, have you started using the Focusrite 56 yet ? I'm interested in knowing how your Saffire 56 behaves when monitoring itunes at it's full volume setting which I consider default.

THanks

Interesting points there, a "firewire channel" is called a bus, and focusrite gear has a habbit of not liking to share busses with other devices, liquid mix being the worst offender.

that PCI probably only has one bus, even if it does have 3 ports, the same as most Macs where all the firewire ports are simply wired together.

you may see increased performance using 1 internal firewire port and 1 on your PCI card.

as for the saffire 56, it probably sounds rather good, im still deeply attached to my old saffire 26/io which was its predecessor, its mic amps really are something special for the money.

check out the new interfaces by avid, they have a c400 and c600 with protools 9, i have a saffire pro 24, does the job, wouldnt work with os lion and i wouldnt recommend even trying it until they get the drivers sorted, i had to go back to snow leapord .