Soundcard : Echo Audiofire 2
Has anyone ever used this piece of gear ? How does it perform ? How is the sound quality ? The latency ? Is the mini-jack headphone a problem ?
hi peter!
i ordered one today, hope to get it within one week, i´ll report you my experiences as soon as i receve it, i just recently bought a numark dj IO and i am a little bit disappointed about the headphone amplification and the overall soundquality, but it is a cheap gear, but after a little bit of modding it looks quite nice, at least to me
This was a numark dj io???looks awesome!!!:eek:
how have you done that???
hi peter!
yes, did it on my own, love to work with wood, was kind of tricky cause it´s made out of one solid piece of walnut-wood, the blue glowing of the acrylic backplate makes it perfectly fitting to my vci-100, the delivery of my echofire will be delayed, so you have to wait a little bit longer for my first impressions on it
Amazing custom job! Very impressive, and stylish too. So good to see a custom case that isn’t all fluoro mushrooms and tribal tattoo logos.
I’ve been looking into the Audiofire 4 myself. The sound quality is pretty important too me. I don’t really care a lot about the inputs.
Anyway, it’s supposed to have the same A/D/A converters as the RME Fireface 400!
The Audiofire cards are supposed to sound amazing for their price, probably quite a bit better than the M-audio range.
I guess they engineered it with an eye for sound quality instead of a whole bunch of special features. Echo has been making soundcards for a pretty long time and their drivers are supposed to be rock solid.
If you want you can use the digital out to get 2 extra channels or route sound to an external uber expensive DAC.
Sound quality wise the analogue outputs should be the same in both the Audiofire 2 and Audiofire 4.
The Echo site doesn’t state that the headphone output at the front is on 2 separate channels but I guess it is. The one on the Audiofire 2 definitely is.
I would go for the Audiofire 4, if the headphone output isn’t good enough you can then use one pair of outputs on the back and route it to a separate headphone amplifier in any price class you like.
There’s a bunch of info on the card here: http://www.gearslutz.com
was thinking about getting one of these or possibly the audiofire 4’s.. I have a DJ IO myself and I know what you mean about the headphone volume. luckily traktor has some good knobs to turn up the cue volume seperately which is exactly what I wanted.. still not as loud as it should be…
sound quality wise.. its not the ultimate but its a very sturdy first purchase… great for people wanting to get into the scene since the price is pretty good.
very easy to install and the manual includes how to configure for traktor so I was very satisfied… up and running in 2 minutes
not sure what I will do for my next card.. I am tempted to go the traktor scratch path, but since I am a midi controller user not sure if i need to.. would be good to have the option of spinning vinyl or cd’s if its not possible to use my midi…
hi peter!
got it last week, till now the drivers work (both on mac (Mac PRO 2008) and vista (Dell VOSTRO Laptop with vista business 32bit)) flawlessly, the soundquality is really good, the headphone ampflification is excellent.
used it on a gig last weekend, no troubles at all
can highly recommend it, in my ears it sounds a lot better than my previous DJ IO
hope this helps you in your decision, the prices in europe dropped in the last month from 220€ to 159€), which really makes it a bargain
forget to mention the latency on my system is 2,5ms
thanks for the feedback !
i finally got a presonus firebox for 260 € (brand new) !
So how do you connect this piece of equipment to the Macbook? I’ve only used headphone-to-rca before…
I used AudioFire 4 about 1 year, the sound is execellant in it’s price range.
The only one thing I don’t like is the power socket is a bit loose.
So I could run a firewire cable out of my Macbook to the Audiofire 2 firewire jack on the back, then I run what type of cables out of ‘line output’ 1 & 2 to two separate channels on the mixer (and headphone cue from there?)?
Or do I run a firewire cable out of my Macbook to the Audiofire 2 firewire jack on the back, then one ‘line output’ to one channel on the mixer and headphone cue from the front of the Audiofire 2?
I didn’t read all this because I’m getting ready to head out, but just wanted to say I got the Audiofire2 on eBay for 120 shipped, brand new but without the box, and I definitely DO NOT regret it. I picked up some Bose noise canceling headphones, which came with a 1/4 to 1/8 adapter (score) right in the box, so used that for my speakers and the phones fit right in the 1/8 front jack. Overall, couldn’t be happier! As a bonus, the sound quality is really excellent compared to the stock card in my Macbook Pro, especially noticeable through the phones. Drivers work well on mac, and the AudioFire Console is pretty much standard throughout all of their cards.
This is my first real soundcard though so I could be a little biased 
I’ve owned one and used it in professional settings for about 8 months now. It is a great card, portable, never crashes, and is decently loud. The headphone jack works wonderfully for cuing as well as another output (but not as well…)
I connect mine through a firewire cable. Fast and low latency.
“Which cables?”
Use the 1/4" outputs on the back with RCA connector adapter. Just plug the adapters into the jacks, then the RCA plugs into the connector. Blamo. Easy money
can the rca/spdif adapter be used as an input? the specs say that there are 2 inputs (1+2 & 3+4)??
The chip is one thing, the clock another completely different business.
Have never used the audiofire, just wanted to point out that converters are not the only thing you need for a good conversion.
Anyway, is the headphones output an independent output? I mean, can you send differente signal that from the main outputs?
I’m pretty sure you can monitor like you want. Otherwise it wouldn’t be recommended here. With the Audiofire 4 though one pair of outputs is the same as the headphones all the time but you can easily monitor correctly by using the other pair of outputs for the speakers.
I was just testing a UCA202 for someone and it’s only 2in2out. That makes it pretty useless for a DJ.
I’ve seen Surgeon (together with Ben Sims) use the Audiofire 2 at 10 Days Off in Ghent (Belgium). That again makes me believe the Audiofire devices are certainly high quality.
i’ve been using this card for quite some time and am satisfied. sound quality is really important to me and this thing sounds just awesome on my PA. super clear sound!
can anyone give me a link to what latency does? is it the delay between the action in traktor and the output on the speakers?