I am looking to purchase a new interface and my budgets is roughly $500-1,000. My current interface is an EMU 1820 which is awesome, however, it only has two mic pre's and I am looking to record drums in the near future. Since I will be recording drums I will need at the bare minimum...4 mic preamps. I also have an Apogee DAC so DA conversion is not much of a concern.

I'm not sure whether I should purchase high quality mic pre's, or invest in a new audio interface all together.

Any suggestions and recommendations are very much appreciated.

MOTU 8Pre ($550 USD) will get the job done and then some. 4 channels is not very many for drums, so going this route will leave money left over to buy some additional mics, if you need them. The MOTU preamps sound very clean, especially for the money.

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shop around (ebay/craigslist), get RME Fireface 800, be happy. Nothing quite as good in that price range. The only downside, it has some FireWire compatibility issues on some systems/OS's - Apple more prone than others. If you go that route, check RME forums first to see what ppl are complaining about and whether it applies to you.

It's a small fraction of systems that are affected, as I understand.

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very happy with my saffire pro 40 - kinda wish i would have checked out the DSP 24 version though since I don't need as much I&O's right now or will in the near future

This may be a stupid question, but if I only have an Apogee DA converter, and if I were to purchase a Motu 8Pre, where would I be routing all of my tracks/instruments?

For my EMU 1820 it comes with Patchmix software. Also, my Apogee is getting its signal from the EMU 1820 interface to play audio from the computer...

I'm just a bit confused how I would approach the routing/configuration options if I were to pick up ONLY mic pre's. Thanks for your help you guys, great suggestions.

quote:

Originally posted by Sound O fTrance This may be a stupid question, but if I only have an Apogee DA converter, and if I were to purchase a Motu 8Pre, where would I be routing all of my tracks/instruments?

Which Apogee model do you have?

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Sonar Platinum | Ableton Live 9 | Logic Pro X | Access Virus TI2 Keyboard | Kurzweil PC3X | Nord Lead 4R | NI Maschine

echo audiofire 8?

I have the Apogee Mini DAC