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Echo Audiofire 2
After searching many sites looking for a good quality simple in and out external firewire sound card I ended up with this, and I\'m glad I did!
All I needed was a stereo in (from my DJ mixer) and a stero out (for my PC to my amp) and nothing else. This does the job perfectly and I am very happy with the performance of both recording and playback.
Set up with Windows 7 64 bit was a breeze and have had no problems whatsoever. Highly recommended if you need a high quality simple solution external audio interface.
Echo Audiofire 2
i wanted something small to squeeze into my already crowded workspace and this fit the bill perfectly. It really is small but has all the features i need including midi in/out (via included cable). Install was a breeze on Windows 7. Please note: the software and Firmware included on the cd were more up to date than the stuff on echos website (5.3 on cd). All rock solid under windows 7 so far. Only reason for not giving 10/10 is no physical volume knob for the outs only volume for the headphones. All in all well pleased.
Problems...
Initially I was very pleased with the unit. It's nicely designed, sounds great and handled the midi data from my faderfox setup into my mac with no problems. However of late it has started to hang with a high pitched whine and the Midi seems to have packed up. I've made contact with Echo but so far no joy. Has anyone else out there in Mac land experienced any problems.
So when it works I'd give it a 9 but as it seems to have only lasted a few months it gets a 5.
Echo AudioFire 2
I wanted to add a few comments of my own to offer a counter point to the review below that gives this great little interface 3 out of 10. The guy seems to have problems with reliability, and blames this on the Firewire port on his Dell laptop. I can assure any other owners of Dell laptops that I have been using this bit of kit for a couple of weeks now and it worked perfectly, straight out of the box, on my Dell laptop.
I am very impressed with the sound quality. I know that I shouldn't be surprised that the difference between plugging my Sennheisers into the laptop's headphone out and the Audiofire's headphone out is so great, but I still was! The difference in the detail that is apparent is incredible.
Since receiving it I have used the Audiofire in a gig situation and this is the only area where I have had to notch it down a rating, although I suspect the Audiofire is not really to blame. Just before I was about to start Reaktor lost the connection to ASIO, and therefore locked up. After restarting Reaktor + the Audiofire it all came back up, the midi connection took a little longer to reappear but got there eventually. I think the problem was to do with loose cabling, as I only have a mini-firewire port on the laptop, and the whole thing is a little shaky. Once I repositioned all the cables so they weren't hanging, I got a solid hours set without a hitch, and this was the only time I have had such a problem. It was the situation I would least like to have such a problem in, but I expect that is to be expected due to us moving out of the safe confines of a bedroom. If you are using the proper sized Firewire port I doubt you would experience something like this and I can't really blame Echo for the dodgyness of the mini-firewire port spec, but is is a small issue I have experienced. To its credit, the drivers remained stable, and once reconnected I was able to get back in business without have to reboot Windows - which would have been enough for me to want to drop it in a pint glass.
So in summary; if you want a great little interface that gives you midi, high quality audio, and a separate headphone out (with routing controllable via the software mixer) then I can highly recommend this solid bit of kit - even if you bought your laptop off Dell.
Echo AudioFire 2
Excellent build...
I could have probably got a better featured card for the money (with XLR\'s on mic in, and phantom power, dedicated guitar inputs etc. ) but I certainly couldn\'t have got a better sound for the money..
External Mixer;
I intend using a small dedicated mixer with it anyway... (a Roland VM3100 pro)so all of my input problems and spdif in\'s and out\'s and headphone and montor feeds, and the dedicated guitar inputs (with FX) are covered.
Using the little Roland desk with the Echo AudioFire 2 makes a fine and small-but-powerful laptop pro-system, and so I\'m a happy bunny..
Setting it up;
Not so easy to configure in multiple sequencers, but eventually got it working perfectly in Nuendo, Adobe Audition, Cubase SX, Cubase VST4, and Sonar 6 pro.
The Echo Software is very good...although Traction is a bit annoying to figure out.. and severely horrible to look at..
Drivers;
Everything on the Echo AudioFire 2 works fine and as it should, even with the driver on minimal latency settings. (Toshiba laptop running XP home, with 4 x pin Firewire connectors)
Solidly made and very well presented.
My experience with previous Echo soundcards;
I bought 4 x Echo Layla\'s (ten analogue out\'s each) for my 32 track pro studio a few years ago, and have been extremely happy with them, (once I upgraded the onboard psu\'s to stop jitter and chatter with the Echo supplied Layla modification..)
Echo gave me excellent support with them then.. and I\'m very glad I went with Echo again for the AudioFire 2..
..
Sound;
The Echo AudioFire 2 A/D / D/A convertors are superb.. The stereo imaging is solid and transparent, and I can hear many things in a mix that previously were unintelligible..
The sound couldn\'t be better at any price... Echo have certainly got their act together with the AudioFire 2.. IMO a great company and a great product...
Delivery from Dolphin was superb as usual (next day almost, even ver the Xmas rush) and I shall buy all of my equipment there in future.. I also bought 3 x Soundscape systems from them last year for my European studio, and service couldn\'t have been better..
Excellent product, excellent service..
Happy New Year !!
Richard Brown
Riverside Music Co.
& Media BG Ltd.
UK and Bulgaria / Export & Import and Sales
web-site; http://www.riversidemusik.co.uk
e-mail; rivermuse3@aol.com
or napravobg@yahoo.co.uk
still completely unreliable
drivers installed very well no worries, however I cantw get any sound out of it whatsoever. I had read one good review and two bad reviews and I was a bit worried, I didn't play with it for more than an hour, only installed all the patches and the drivers about six times, sound registered in the sound driver but absolutely nothing came out of the speakers in all my programs that I tried except reaktor.
Also I tried to input MIDI into reaktor and there was absolutely no MIDI signal going either into reaktor or into the audio fire drivers
I know Dell uses a pretty crap FireWire chip , I didn't realise they had changed from PCMCIA when I got it. But even this crap audio fire card works pretty well with a FireWire audiophile, although audiophile still doesn't support MIDI either, it crashes after three minutes with MIDI. And the sound crashes too, the only way to restart it is to reinitialise directxwith a television programme.
very nice construction it's tiny! No volume control-very bad-beautiful finish, drivers not up to scratch.
Hurry up and find a CardBus adapter chip echo! expect some people do have a Dell laptop also.
audiofire2
hi all,
well, im a newbie into the laptop music production idea. but i didnt have a quality sound card on my dell laptop.
i use software synthesizers and sequencer softwares and have composed a few songs for my church choir.
had been looking for a portable but also a quality audio interface (sound card in simple terms!) for my laptop.
so at first i bought the creative audigy 2zs sound card... but i was not really satisfied with the performance it gave (pops, drop outs etc at low latency asio settings...besides everybody knows about the poor asio drivers on creative).
so i tried to do some research into this. it had to be small, but elegant in its performance.
i was not concerned about the number of inputs or outputs that i could get from the audio interface. all i needed was a midi in out and at least 2 outputs and 2 inputs and a quality digital analog converter. the one that seem to fit my needs was the audiofire2 by echo... but i couldnt find a decent user experience about it from any website... every one seem to be excited about this new thing but no one seemed to have tried their hands on this thing!
anyway, i decided to give this audiofire2 a try and i should say from the bottom of my heart that i have not been disappointed by this tiny magic box(it could fit into my palm easily!). i had heard good reviews about the quality
DACs (digital analog converter - the part that does the conversion from the computer's raw digital binary data to analog signals that can be fed to the speakers) that echo makes... and according to echo they put in the same
DAC that is there in the bigger bros of their family (the audiofire 12, audiofire 8) into this audiofire2. the audiofire12 and 8 has got very good reviews.well, i havent heard the audiofire12 or 8 being performed. but im more than satisfied with the audiofire2.
my laptop had a 4 pin firewire... but i got a 6 pin to 4 pin firewire converter bundled in this... that was a surprise for me, coz i didnt think it would come in the bundle... there is a headphone socket in the front whose level can be adjusted with the front knob... i wish there was some hardware knob for the rear output levels too... but cant expect too much for this price, right? that is okay, coz i can control it from the sequencer software, though a hardware knob
would have been great for a live performance. i use around 20 different instruments for each song and use upto 4 software synthesizers at
a time and the samples are pretty big too... and the latency i get when i use asio is under 4ms. when i play my yamaha dx-7
keyboard. so im really happy . coz earlier i used to get 12 ms if i had to have a decent playback without drop outs or pops.
it also has an spdif in out if you ever need to...and then there is the bundled sequencer software - the tracktion, which i havnt used.
if you ask me about the cons- to be true, i dont see any till now, the only thing if at all i could say that would be the lack of a knob to control the output level of the 1/4" outs though they have provided one for the 1/8" socket. i would definitely say that this is the best bang for the buck i could get for an audio interface...
any way to list it if its easy for thos who read-
pros -
great quality DAC, superb dynamic range unlike other converters,
portable and small, easy integration with the laptop ( no hangs when you take the firewire out or power it off without shutting the computer), works with mac os and windows xp, asio gsif compatible, very low latency with asio, WDM/ KS compatible...
overall the best bang for buck!!
cons -
no hardware knob for controllin the output level for 1/4" socket though there is one for 1'8"
i would have given the rating 10 if it had this feature too!!
well, let me tell you one thing to fellows who are confused about which audio interface to go for their DAWs( digital audio
workstation -just a refined word for your computer- for total newbies)... i was in a similar situation when i started out.
looking from what i have read so far if its a laptop that you have - there are only 2 respectable solutions - firewire or the
usb 2.0... out of this, the highly preferred one is the firewire... coz usb 2.0 is not a true peer to peer type of hardware
though the speed in theory is marginally higher than firewire(which has never been achieved when put to test!). in simple words,
the audio and video applications require simultaneous high volume transfers to and from the interface and computer. this is
achieved optimally with only the firewire interfaces. so i would recommend you to choose a firewire option than a usb.
then think about the number of inputs and outputs needed... in my case all my needs has been satisfied with the audiofire2.
good luk choosing one, guys!!
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