Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 Mic Pres Level

[Pete]

I bought a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, and it works well with Scope, sounds good, etc.

But the level of my mic preamps is low. Like if they're on 10 and speak into the mic capsule, the recording level is OK but still not that high. I don't see anyone else complaining about it on the web - I think it's my particular one.

Does anyone have one of these to tell me about?


Thanks,
Pete

[at0m]

I suppose you connect it to Scope using ADAT and not the analog line ouputs?

How's the input monitoring level in the Focusrite Control app? If it's low there, too, I suggest you talk to Focusrite, check their documentation, or ask on their forums...

[Pete]

I tried it on another computer, and the level was good; Gain knob on 7 got a better level than on 10 on my computer.

That computer is fancier and has Windows 7 - it assigned the default microphone to be the Saffire, with the volume setting all the way up.

Maybe that's my issue, & why only the mic preamps were affected. Checking.

I have XP, and the windows audio devices has the Saffire for the default microphone, but the "Volume" tab is greyed out. Doing the "Test Hardware" steps showed that I can get it to register on the fader, but the Volume setting is still greyed out. Argh.

[valis]

XP's Mic Boost & Volume control affect the soundcard driver/chip itself (the boost changes impedence on AC97 soundcards as well as gain.) So if the soundcard doesn't expose those controls (I don't know of any pro cards that do unless they double up as consumer cards like the Emu stuff...) then you can't access them.

Win7 & Vista on the other hand replace all of this with an entirely software based mixer for 'normal' windows audio apps, including software 'recording device' level control & +10/+20/+30 software boost for a microphone input that ONLY effects a gain change in the windows Directsound audio mixer. However keep in mind that when you use these codepaths you get a LOT of 'mixing' code in between your software & hardware: including multiple mix/sum/gain points, a built in samplerate conversion algorithm (SRC--end of paragrah) and overall higher latency since this is software directsound rather than ASIO or ks-wav/mme. Still, if you want to go this route be aware you will probably want to insure that the samplerates on the 'advanced' tab (win7 recording or playback devices, select device, choose properties, go to advanced tab) matches between your playback (speakers etc) output and recording source. Otherwise you WILL incur a much higher latency penalty due to the forced software SRC...

Ie, XP & Win7 'mic' features are intended for gaming, Skype, webcam work etc. If you want to test your soundcard's mic input for MUSICAL tasks, just open up your audio app and route the i/o as you always would (and ignore whatever windows provides to its 'normal' apps.)

[Pete]

Valis,
Thanks for the good post!

That gives me something to work with.

I think I found that mic inputs 1-4 record lower than 5-8, but they're all low; the knobs are sensitive at 9, mic distance sensitive - hard to get accurate comparison. Could be 2x lower. Using Asio or mme on the XP machine.
On the Windows 7 machine, Audacity (no Asio) was the only recording app, and I didn't test pres 5-8.
So I'll try some more things.

[valis]

Use ASIO on the Win7 box as well and you shouldn't have to configure anything in Win7 itself (all those crummy software settings are purely for consumer Win apps again... not music/pro audio.)