Behringer announces FireWire interface

elektro80 · Last edited by elektro80 on Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:22 pm; edited 1 time in total

http://www.behringer.com/FCA202/index.cfm?lang=ENG

The price is stunning but the feature set isn´t. At 915,- NKR / SEK including taxes.. and approx. 99.99 USD, which is even less than the price here in Scandinavia, Behringer has managed to bring a FireWire audio interface to market at the same price point as the low end USB interfaces.

As for quality, technically it is quite reasonable to expect a pretty decent performance from this one.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

blurb:

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 5:47 am Post subject:

Obviously Behringer will be selling shitloads of this one. With Digidesign sitting on top of M-Audio I guess we will see Behringer soon offering 8 ins/8 outs FW interfaces and there will also be a major overhaul of the mixers soon too. I am expecting to see Behringer adding FW to a lot of gear really soon.

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 5:57 am Post subject:

As for entry level products, I still think an 8ins/8out with ADAT for more channels, balanced analouge signal paths and a basic software based mixer for signal routing IS the perfect layout. ..much like the MOTU 828 mrk2.
Products like the FCA202 are lacking sensible features for field recording/location recording and I find this a bit annoying.

seraph · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 6:59 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 7:03 am Post subject:

I think you are right about this.

mosc · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 8:59 am Post subject:

Yes, as a start of a product line this is good. For laptops, I'm not so sure it is all that valuable. Most laptops have stereo in/outs. This just gives you that. Maybe the quality is better, maybe not really. You still need us a protable mixer for live recordings. So this is really a little bit better than a fancy cable. Now, if they put this inside one of their cheap little mixers, like the UB1202 or something, then that would be really useful for on-the-road with the laptop.

http://www.behringer.com/UB1202/index.cfm?lang=ENG

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 9:05 am Post subject:

Most laptop audio I/Os are rather sad. The real issue here is that when you are taking your laptop to gigs and whatnot you then would REALLY want to have balanced audio I/Os in order to connect well to pro and semipro gear.
Most probaly this product has a similar audio quality as some of the M-Audio 24/96 low end stuff.. and those products are pretty decent and far better than most laptop analog I/Os.

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 9:06 am Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 9:12 am Post subject:

Yes, if you look at this as a DI box, it is still a very good deal.

Still, I've just been swapping out the mother board in one of my computers and since my MOTU 828MKII is off in Boston with it's parents, I'm using an onboard sound card. The sound quality is excellent. Really...

The entire mother board costs $60 (less CPU chip and memory). Includes not only the computer stuff but two raid controllers, ethernet (gigabit), 4 USB 2.0, ports, serial parallel, etc... and the sound card (6 channel with digital out). This was a low-tech cheapie motherboard, BTW.

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 9:20 am Post subject:

Well.. it isn´t really close to being a DI.

As for MB audio ports and A/D - D/As .. some are "decent" and some are not. In general these are rarely not anywhere close to what you would expect from semipro gear. Anyways.. Kassen is getting the EMU PC thngie for his laptop. He might have some thoughts to share with us on this subject. However, Behringer issuing the FCA202 is not a bad thing at all.

jksuperstar · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:06 pm Post subject:

I have the EMU PC thingie and it is a great device. I can't recommend it enough. How does one write a review for something? Is there an html template somewhere?

mosc · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:08 pm Post subject:

No need for html. You just create a new topic in the review forum. Format it nicely and when finished, we can promote it to the front page to be an article.

mosc · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:10 pm Post subject:

check this out: http://electro-music.com/article.php?t=8463

jksuperstar · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:32 pm Post subject:

Wow! I just noticed they are including the Freeware program Audacity for recording! I think this is great! It will certainly give Audacity a lot of
promotion, and hopefully funding as well.

Go Open Source!!!

It also includes the freely available Kristal, which I haven't heard of before, but will certainly look into (not opensource, but free for non-commercial use)

sergeaudenaert · Joined: Nov 01, 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Belgium

I recently checked out another cool freeware - the Kristal Audio Engine, a freeware multitrack for PC. A great way for novice users to start multitracking Wink

Serge

mosc · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 2:10 pm Post subject:

Yes, go OPEN SOURCE. I'll have to try that one out.

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blue hell · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 2:23 pm Post subject:

See : http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/ for this Kristal thingy.

I like this Behringer device for that price !

(but I'll await reviews :-)

sergeaudenaert · Joined: Nov 01, 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Belgium

blue hell · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 2:52 pm Post subject:

For converson to mp3 I like dbPoweramp ( http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm ), which uses Lame also. This one can do conversion to Ogg (and lots of others) as well btw.

sergeaudenaert · Joined: Nov 01, 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Belgium

blue hell · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 3:06 pm Post subject:

You're welcome.

Had a look at the review you pointed us to, but Im not sure, listen to a reviiew ... hmm, I really prefer to read reviews. Ah well, I'm going to check it out anyway, for the VST stuff.

(and I meant of course a review of the Behringer box, see ... all the rest is really OT here :-)

sergeaudenaert · Joined: Nov 01, 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Belgium