Echo AudioFire?

[Xander562]

I had almost decided on buying the Apogee Duet, then I came across these units. How are they? Do they compare with the Duet? Better/worse? Do they integrate with macs the way the Duet does?

[AviationFan]

I don't have any experience with the Duet, so I cannot compare the two. But I am a very satisfied Echo AudioFire8 owner. The audio quality is outstanding, reflected by the great technical specs, and it plays very nicely with Macs. (I run it on a Mac Pro with Leopard.) Good build quality, too - it's a little heavier (read: rugged), has a built-in power supply (as opposed to yet another power supply that I need to find room for under my desk), and it's rack-mountable.

- Martin

[6Stringer]

I'd like to know more about Echo Audiofire as well.

I did some fairly exhaustive research and concluded that the Echo Audiofire series represents great value. Echo Audio has a reputation for writing some fine drivers and their Mac support seems first rate. This is difficult to evaluate, but it seems Echo has incorporated decent mic pres and does a respectable A/D conversion in the Audiofire range o' products.

Apogee has a great reputation and the Duet obviously integrates well with Garageband and Logic. How does the Echo Audiofire do with Garageband and Logic?

Some observations...
Echo AudioFire 4 is $299 and includes Tracktion 2.2
Apogee Duet is $499, includes Maestro and offers less I/O capability.

Are the mic pres and the A/D converter really superior in the Duet? How is Maestro? On purely a Garageband and/or Logic recording quality basis, I'm really wondering if the Duet is worth the difference.

[joiss]

I have a Echo Layla 3G (same spec of Echo AudioFire 8) and I recently compared my Echo with my new Apogee Duet.

I compared pre mics of Layla 3G with pre mics of Duet: the sound is similar, Duet is a little more clear.

The output at -10 db sound better with Duet than with Layla (similar sound but more volume). (Duet hasn't a +4db output and so I can't compare with that!)

The Duet sounds great but the Layla 3G sounds great too and the drivers are very stable.

I'm using Layla + Duet as an Osx audio aggregation and with OsX 10.5.4 everything works fine at 24bit/96KHz; I founded some problems with the same configuration under OsX 10.4.11.