DAW Interface Question - To Upgrade or Not?

Warrior

Warrior

Power User
So I may be giving my interface to my son to get him started with his own recording rig/DAW. If so, then it's a no brainer. OR..... I may buy him a different one and that's got me thinking about upgrading my interface anyway.

I'm currently using a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP, Mac OS X and Reaper (Sometimes Pro Tools).

I don't need more than the 2 mic pres it has. I'm wondering if I upgrade to an RME Babyface Pro, will I notice an "improvement" in audio quality - both recording and playback?

Perhaps the pre's will have an improved noise floor over the Focusrite?

I'm currently using a Cloud Lifter on my mics to boost the gain.

The only thing I currently mic are acoustic guitars and vocals. Everything else is Axe-FX or VI's.

Appreciate any feedback.
 
Don't really know about the sound quality of the pres, but RME is one of the best for driver support and handling low round trip latency. I have an older FireFace 400 and I'm going to keep it around because it does everything I need it to and does it well. If you are doing virtual instruments from a keyboard, or if you monitor effects when tracking you will probably notice a difference there. Someone else may be able to tell you more about how the pres compare.
 
In my experience changing the preamps will have the least noticeable difference/ to money relation in recording equipment. To get better sound it's way more noticeable to change mics or get one good eq and one good compression plugin (maybe a good reverb but the axe should do the trick) and then get to know these plugins very well.
My recording sound gets better overtime without changing from my interface and a lot of your results depend on the signal before the preamp (mic position, playing, the sound you dialed in).
If there is a noise issue maybe have a look how you hard the signal is hitting your channel fader. Most plugins tend to have a sweet spot around -16 db input volume and work best with that.
If you have to normalize your file after recording you should raise the gain on your input because normalisation raises your volume AND your noise level. Compression and noise gates can have the same effect without raising the noise so much if used properly.

I would consider buying your son the same interface. The fact that you allready know it can be a big help if he struggles to set it up correctly.
 
Gday warrior,
RME stuff is great - they seem to have hit the transparency / quality / headroom goals many years ago and haven't wavered since. Highly recommended.
Thanks
Pauly

Warrior said:
So I may be giving my interface to my son to get him started with his own recording rig/DAW. If so, then it's a no brainer. OR..... I may buy him a different one and that's got me thinking about upgrading my interface anyway.

I'm currently using a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 DSP, Mac OS X and Reaper (Sometimes Pro Tools).

I don't need more than the 2 mic pres it has. I'm wondering if I upgrade to an RME Babyface Pro, will I notice an "improvement" in audio quality - both recording and playback?

Perhaps the pre's will have an improved noise floor over the Focusrite?

I'm currently using a Cloud Lifter on my mics to boost the gain.

The only thing I currently mic are acoustic guitars and vocals. Everything else is Axe-FX or VI's.

Appreciate any feedback.
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Hi
 
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