Opinions of Profire 2626

[Mattseymour]

I need to get some preamps/converters. Can't wait for the new ada8200 and would rather avoid Behringer anyway. I notice a few people happy with the Profire as a converter rather than an interface. What are the long term experiences with these?

[John Murphy]

For what it is worth I do not like mine. If you want to change a setting you have to hook up firewire to a computer if you can get it to work. Don't forget no hot plugging so you have to shut the unit and the computer down to plug and unplug for each unit in the system. For me that had to be done 5 times (very time consuming). I also had lots of problems with random snaps that I never did get to go away. The snaps may have been due to cold (I did find a couple of posts in recording forums that had the same problem with snaps in the outputs do to cold temps). It was a winter retreat and the room would be very cold in the mornings. the snaps would be almost gone by the end of the day and than would be back the next morning. Never thought I would be wishing for the high temp from a B :). Also do not get me started about there customer service. That is a whole other mess.

I do have 13 Behringer units in installs that have been going for 2 to 3 years with no problems.

Just my 2 cents
John

[gdougherty]

I need to get some preamps/converters. Can't wait for the new ada8200 and would rather avoid Behringer anyway. I notice a few people happy with the Profire as a converter rather than an interface. What are the long term experiences with these?

My original Profire was purchased about 5 years ago as an expansion to an 01v and method of recording 16 channels with it 8 in and routed out as expansion to the 01v, 8 off the 01v preamps and out the adat card back to the Profire. The sound quality is above decent, noise floor is low and that first Profire now lives in my host rack alongside 3 newer units and works as perfectly as the day I bought it. The build quality is solid and has worked well for a few years in a portable rack with 2 Ada's slaved to it. The config for standalone is done while hooked to a host via FireWire and preset as far as whether the outs are fed via adat or the preamps and where it gets its clock source. I leave mine set feeding outs from adat and clocking from the adat in all my use scenarios.

[gdougherty]

Fwiw, mine have been quiet with no popping. I've had to shut it down once or twice after booting as an interface because the signal and clip light stayed on solid. If you're going through a 4-pin FireWire connection you're actually fine to hot plug and it works just fine with the driver since the 4-pin doesn't pass power that can kill the host card or the unit. Does remind me, I had my original unit replaced under warranty because I neglected to pay attention to that and killed the fw interface. Support has been just fine for me.

[JLepore]

I have had mine do the all-lights-on thing. It's always been caused by a static ditcharge when I go to plug something in.

[gdougherty]

I have had mine do the all-lights-on thing. It's always been caused by a static ditcharge when I go to plug something in.

Wonder if its poor grounding caused by the inline transformer feeding the unit DC power. No ground on the other end anyway so really nowhere for it to go unless you grounded them to some other grounded gear in the rack.

[Steve L]

I have sold 7 Profires and have 2 still in stock as SAC/SS demo units. Never a problem with any of them. Five are in studios. The one demo unit is on 9-10 hours a day showing potential SAC users the system. It is used with a Lenovo R400 with a Ricoh chipset and still is rock solid at 1/128. FWIW
Steve L.
Audio-Video Electronics
Mountain View Recording
Richmond, KY

[Mattseymour]

Annoyingly it looks like I'm just going to have to go with more ADAs. Everything else is just too expensive for me at the moment.

Having looked at all the options, only the digimax FS is a direct replacement, that won't need additional rack panels and loom making up. They're about £500 (approx $809) each. Three profires plus the extra bits and pieces I'd need (including a larger rack to house the external PSU bricks) would cost me almost $2000.

Damn you Behringer and your low low prices.

[RBIngraham]

Digimax FS units are not even in production anymore. So unless you found some old stock sitting around, they are used products. I'm not sure where you found that price, but I would not pay $800 for one. They were only $500 to $600 brand new when they were still shipping as current product. Used they seem to get about $250 to $400 depending on condition and how desperate the seller is to get rid of them.

I recommend going with Digimax D8 units for the inputs and then figuring something else out for outputs. I have a MOTU system so line outputs is not an issue. But there are other options for D to A as well. But then I like NOT having any connections on the front panel, having all that **** hanging off the front of the rack always drove me crazy. SO glad it's all gone.

[Mattseymour]

Hi Richard,

I'm in the UK... so that dollar price is a rough conversion at the current exchange rate so you guys realize how much everything costs over here ;)

Didn't realize they were discontinued, seem to be available as a brand new unit at many suppliers around here with Thomann in Germany showing good stock. They must have bought a pallet load that are sitting around. Cheapest I can find 'em is ***163;469.

My stage rack has been three ADAs with the appsys extender. Everything in at the front, 8 outputs on a panel at the back in a shallow Gator case. It's really neat and I'm loathed to make it any larger. Moving the sockets to the back would make it significantly larger. The other think I like about the ADA setup is having either mic or line input available. With something like the profire I'd have to choose one or the other.

[airickess]

Hi Richard,

I'm in the UK... so that dollar price is a rough conversion at the current exchange rate so you guys realize how much everything costs over here ;)

Didn't realize they were discontinued, seem to be available as a brand new unit at many suppliers around here with Thomann in Germany showing good stock. They must have bought a pallet load that are sitting around. Cheapest I can find 'em is ***163;469.

My stage rack has been three ADAs with the appsys extender. Everything in at the front, 8 outputs on a panel at the back in a shallow Gator case. It's really neat and I'm loathed to make it any larger. Moving the sockets to the back would make it significantly larger. The other think I like about the ADA setup is having either mic or line input available. With something like the profire I'd have to choose one or the other.
You should start looking on eBay. On there I found a place that sold me a new Art TubeOpto8 for $400. I'm sure you can find better deals than the ones you quote. Even the M-Audio Octane units are on there for less money, and apparently they are the same preamps as the Profire units, except they are just A-D units.

[Mattseymour]

No, really, those deals are not to be found in the uk. Certainly not at the moment. It's not through lack of searching.
The basic rule of thumb is whatever the dollar price, the figure is the same in ukp. The profire unit is available for $400 and I can get it for £400 which is $647

[airickess]

No, really, those deals are not to be found in the uk. Certainly not at the moment. It's not through lack of searching.
The basic rule of thumb is whatever the dollar price, the figure is the same in ukp. The profire unit is available for $400 and I can get it for £400 which is $647
Why is that? You cannot go onto the ebay US site and bid?

[Mattseymour]

Not really. There are plenty of folk in the US who will ship to the UK but at around $60 and then it can get caught in customs and have 20% tax added if you're not careful.