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Author Topic: M-Audio Profire 2626  (Read 14945 times)
Marc JX8P
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« on: June 11, 2009, 09:38:02 AM »

To make my setup a bit more flexible in light of computer upgrades as well as to up the amount of IO my system has, I decided to get the M-Audio Profire 2626. Some basic info:
8 analog ins with preamps (both XLR and line-in)
8 analog outs
2 ADAT connectors
1 S/PDIF coaxial connector
Leading to 26 ins (8 analog + 16 adat + 2 S/PDIF) and an equal number of outs. of course, the ADAT connectors would require a seperate ADAT-to-analog converter to connect to them directly. This box is a firewire interface, and it also functions as a standalone ADAT converter which is quite interesting. I'm expecting it any moment and will post as soon as I have some info on how it works in my systemm.
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« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2009, 10:10:50 AM »

I think Moon could be interested in this, I know he is also looking for a new audio interface

k
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« Reply #2 on: June 11, 2009, 11:59:49 AM »

I'm currently looking for something like M-audio's 2626. I'me very curious....

Moon
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« Reply #3 on: June 11, 2009, 03:51:48 PM »

I'm currently looking for something like M-audio's 2626. I'm very curious....
Moon

Me too!
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Marc JX8P
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« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2009, 08:49:58 PM »

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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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! Smiley 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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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...
« Last Edit: July 04, 2009, 04:00:31 PM by Marc JX8P » Logged

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« Reply #5 on: June 20, 2009, 11:07:21 PM »

Marc,

Other than the lack of pre-amp capability for unbalanced inputs, this unit has it all!

Excellent review (but then, I expected nothing less... Wink)

Oren.
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« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2009, 08:47:06 AM »

MArc, thanks or the excellent review. Quiet interesting; I was surprised about the issue with the unbalanced inputs.

I'm very intersting on the cpu consumption of this unit. Does it compares to the EMU1820 ? What about the latency settings?

Anyway, great to hear you're happy with this unit.  Smiley

Moon
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« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2009, 09:03:47 AM »

Although this is quite interesting, my old 2496 does all I need. Also M-Audio seem to be far less helpful to the linux community with this piece of kit than previously.

I believe there is some talk about them making the API details available so commumity devs can produce drivers, but so far it's only talk Sad
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« Reply #8 on: June 21, 2009, 05:53:00 PM »

Hi guys, glad you enjoyed the review so far. I will take a look at the latency settings in the next part, although I can already mention that I played around with my sequencer and soft synths a little and that the latency is good; the default setting for the asio driver was quite playable with my GMedia ImpOSCar and I suppose I could get the latency even lower with some experimenting. Considering support, they're already supporting Mac, XP and VISTA and they're I believe working on getting support for Windows 7 done.
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« Reply #9 on: June 21, 2009, 08:16:29 PM »

Although this is quite interesting, my old 2496 does all I need. Also M-Audio seem to be far less helpful to the linux community with this piece of kit than previously.
I believe there is some talk about them making the API details available so commumity devs can produce drivers, but so far it's only talk

M-Audio is now owned by Digidesign, the makers of ProTools.
In some circles, ProTools is taking quite a beating from folks switching to a combination of Audacity and Ardour in Linux.
The attraction is improved stability, of both the operating system and the DAW.  wOO

 A fellow here in Victoria who produces surround audio for IMAX movies on a hardware workstation told me that the audio material he receives from ProTools users is prone to drop-outs and odd glitches. He is hoping to switch from their current hardware system to a computer (laptop) based DAW for improved portability during remote IMAX installations, and Ardour/Linux is on the top of his list of potential replacement software.

My Delta-series soundcards work very well with Linux. It is possible Digidesign may be developing new M-Audio hardware to be incompatible with Linux, by design. Both MacIntosh and Linux are Unix-based operating systems, so if they can make their hardware work with Mac, they could easily do it with Linux.
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Marc JX8P
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« Reply #10 on: July 04, 2009, 04:00:57 PM »

Just added a short addition to the post with the review, Part 2.
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« Reply #11 on: July 04, 2009, 10:41:39 PM »

... 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...  I continued my testing, which basically means that these tests also reflect the impact of the di box on the audio quality... the +20 dB level button of the DI800 proved very useful...Overall, the DI800 works wonders...

Marc,
How did you choose the D1800 from all available pre-amp direct boxes? What was your second choice? Which one would you go with if cost was not a factor?
Hmmm.....? Wink
Oren.
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« Reply #12 on: July 05, 2009, 12:23:33 AM »

I chose the DI800 because it wasn't too pricey and offered eight channels with some useful features such as that +20 dB boost. It also had some good reviews in a gear forum that I occasionally visit for opinions. Behringer stuff occasionally gets spoken of badly but in my experience it works fine. If cost was not a factor I would have looked at Radial di boxes because they get spoken of quite highly but in this case that was way more than I wanted to pay. And like I said, I did use it to record some stuff and compared to the recordings my 1820m made there was negligible difference. Actually, if cost were not a factor I would have probably hired someone to get this all sorted since it was quite a hassle to set up! Wink
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« Reply #13 on: July 05, 2009, 01:53:39 AM »

... If cost was not a factor I would have looked at Radial di boxes because they get spoken of quite highly but in this case that was way more than I wanted to pay...

Marc,

Radial is a Canadian company located about 200 kilometres from my home. Great gear, no compromises. They employ Canadians and pay Canadian wages, but the price you pay is a bargain when you realize that the equipment will still be performing flawlessly decades from now.
Radial Engineering Ltd. · 1588 Kebet Way, Port Coquitlam, BC V3C 5M5 · Tel (604) 942-1001 · Fax (604) 942-1010 · email: info@radialeng.com wOO

You know your stuff, Dude... Cool

Oren.
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