Right - here goes... This will be a review in several installments but I thought it would be handy to do it like this since it would also give a bit of an indication to how I learn to work with this piece of kit.
Part 1 - Installation and first recordings
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First of all - the 2626 is a nice, sturdy piece of kit. It looks the job, and it's very nice to have in your rack!
Having said that, there are two niggles: the knobs for the pre-amps are very hard to read so I might make a clearer marker on it at some point. Also, since all the main connections are at the back, you might need a patch bay if you regularly reconnect your stuff. There are two instrument inputs at the front which is handy but unfortunately these are jacks only - it would have been nice to have been able to connect some xls cables from mics to the front as well. Having said all that, there's a plethora of connections at the back: 8 combi inputs for balanced XLR and TRS jack inputs, 2 inputs for a total of 16 ADAT inputs, an S/PDIF input for another 2 inputs (bringing it up to 26 inputs). There's an equal number of outputs: 8 jack outputs (balanced), 2 ADAT outputs (again, 2 x 8 channels) and an S/PDIF output for 2 output channels.
Anyway. Let's start at the start... You get the interface itself, a power adapter with (to my surprise) plugs for several different countries and two different firewire connectors (4 and 6 pin). Installing the software went well, noth on my VISTA32 laptop as on my XP desktop (although I had some trouble with a driver package that turned out to be the wrong one on my XP machine and didn't work - quite understandable since the correct driver package had EXACTLY the same name only it had 'v2' at the end...). Now, while firewire ought to be hot pluggable, M-Audio note that not all firewire interface producers have implemented this correctly so they recommend switching off the interface before starting the computer and only switching it off once the computer is off. Still, it works nicecly and I love the software mixer which is very flexible.
This weekend I started some audio comparisons with my current interface, an E-MU 1820m. The most immediate difference that I noted was that of in- and output levels. The E-MU accepts both balanced and unbalanced, the M-AUDIO only wants balanced. While that probably delivers better audio quality, it also means that while you can use unbalanced jacks in its inputs (at least I did), these are not going to give much of a signal. The pre-amps only work for the XLR inputs so they can't help (in itself I like that the pre-amps don't affect the line level inputs). You can, however, use the pre-amps if you put the unbalanced jacks in the front panel instrument inputs. I have asked around and it seems that the best solution is a DI box which converts the unbalanced signal to balanced signals so I'm probably going to get the Behringer DI800 for that which seems the cheapest solution.
Of course, what's important is the audio quality, so I recorded some audio of my Fantom Xa via the front panel inputs as well as from the back inputs. I then recorded the same input through my E-MU 1820 and normalized all the audio. The patch I used is probably my favourite one and one I created quite a while ago, involving a piano sound mixed with a breathy synth pad which is punchy as well as warm and airy so I thought it would make a good comparison. In short, after normalization all recordings were virtually identical (I listened through my monitors).
I want to do some further tests, involving both recording from a condenser mic as well as an electric guitar but I'm doubtful as to how trustworthy these will be as I'm neither a vocalist nor a guitarist. I also need to connect an adat interface and see how well that integrates.
In all, I'm really happy with the 2626 albeit the fact that connecting unbalanced sound sources (such as most synths) requires a lot of extra power from the sound source to get any kind of level is a kind of a downer. Then again, if indeed a di box solves that then that would both be a solution to this problem as well as the problem of having no connectors at the front as the di box would have these.
Part 2 - Adding a di box and recording some more
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After getting myself a cheap 8 channel di-box (Behringer DI800) I continued my testing, which basically means that these tests also reflect the impact of the di box on the audio quality.
Aside from the fact that the additional expense of the di box was irritating I must say that I really like being able to plug something in at the front of the rack now and the +20 dB level button of the DI800 proved very useful too. All in all, recording my Fantom Xa is now a lot easier and I even had to set it at a lower level than on my E-MU so as not to distort the inputs...
Last time I recorded one of my favourite pad sounds - piano and breathy vocal - which turned out to be all but indistinguishable in the 1820 and 2626, once I normalised the recordings. This time I chose to record a deep bass sound and a drum kit sound, also from the Xa. I used the +20 dB switch boost while recording on the 2626 and after normalising all tracks, the drum kit recordings were virtually identical. The bass did seem slightly different between the recordings, but to be honest I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't really been paying attention and it was more a matter of a slightly different character than anything else. I did seem to notice a slightly different character to the low frequencies where the 1820 seemed to have a slightly more prominent character but again, this was only upon really trying to hear a difference and probably not hearable in a mix - I tend to roll off most lower frequencies on instruments anyway.
Overall, the DI800 works wonders. Next time, integration with an ADAT interface...