1/31/13 M-Audio Profire 2626

Sound On Sound : Est. 1985

In this article:
M-Audio Profire 2626 Vital Statistics

Audio & MIDI Interface [Mac/PC] Getting Kitted Out

Profire & Pro Tools
Published in SOS September 2008 In Use
Review s : Computer Recording System Print article : Close window Summary
Alternatives

M-Audio Profire 2626 £479

M-Audio's new interface is equipped with eight mic pros
preamps, eight analogue outputs and an Excellent value for money.

impressive range of digital I/O - all of which has With eight preamps and a flexible cue
mixer, many users won't need an
been crammed into a 1U rack and given a very additional mixer or other hardware.
Solid driver support, plus compatibility
attractive price-tag. with Pro Tools M-Powered.
Good sound quality.
Sam Inglis cons
Only 18 of the 26 possible inputs are
When M-Audio joined the Avid group a few years back, it was widely assumed available to the cue mixer.
Operation is restricted in some ways
that their product range would sit beneath that of their new siblings Digidesign. with Pro Tools M-Powered.
Since then, however, they've produced one or two pieces of kit that must have Minimal hardware metering.
raised eyebrows at Digi HQ. The Project Mix I/O, for example, was more than a summary
match for Digi's 002, despite costing little more than half as much, and a quick Photos: Mark Ewing
The Profire 2626 packs a lot of
glance at the spec of the new Profire 2626 suggests that they might have done functionality into a 1U rack unit,
without ever making it over-complex or
it again. With eight mic preamps built in, a sophisticated DSP cue mixer, and a comprehensive array of digital difficult to use, and will fulfil many
I/O, it offers all you need to record a typical band to your Mac or PC, and the UK retail price is a mere £479. project studios' requirements
admirably.

To put that into perspective, Digidesign's 003 Rack still officially retails at £834, despite lacking four of the information
£479 including VAT.
Profire's mic preamps and eight channels of its ADAT digital I/O. Admittedly, Profire buyers also need to fork
M-Audio +44 (0)1923 204010.
out for their recording software of choice, but it still looks like a very cost-effective way of putting together a Click here to email
multi-channel recording rig — and if your recording software of choice is Pro Tools, the M-Powered version www.maudio.co.uk
offers almost all the functionality of Pro Tools LE.

Nor are M-Audio conceding any ground in terms of sound quality. In hosts that support it, you can record 24-bit
audio at up to 192kHz, provided you accept the usual reductions in channel count associated with using ADAT
I/O at high sample rates. The 'Octane' preamps in the Profire are said to offer excellent quality and a larger-
than-usual gain range, while so-called 'JetPLL' technology is claimed to eliminate jitter in a "critically
acclaimed" fashion. (Where do M-Audio find critics who spend their time acclaiming jitter elimination
technologies?)

Vital Statistics
Firew ire audio & MIDI interface
Compatible with: Mac OS 10.4.10 and later, Windows XP SP2 and later, Vista.

Analogue inputs: eight, balanced, on combi XLRs.

Built-in mic preamps: eight, plus two front-panel high-impedance instrument jacks.

Analogue outputs: eight, balanced, on quarter-inch jacks.

Headphone outputs: two, on quarter-inch jacks.

Digital inputs: 16 via ADAT, two via co-axial S/PDIF.

Digital outputs: 16 via ADAT, two via co-axial S/PDIF.

Other I/O: word clock, MIDI, optical S/PDIF (shares optical port with ADAT).

Sample rates: up to 192kHz, with some limitations.

Getting Kitted Out

The Profire control panel software is a departure from previous M-Audio designs, and is centred around the
ability to configure its built-in DSP mixer for low-latency monitoring. With all the digital I/O connected, a total of
26 mono inputs and outputs are available to recording software (eight analogue, 16 ADAT, two co-axial
S/PDIF). Up to 18 of these sources are available for setting up cue mixes within the control panel mixer; so you
could, for example, combine a stereo return from your recording software with up to 16 directly monitored input
signals. These signals can be sent in varying amounts to up to seven different stereo aux sends, so if you have
an additional eight-channel D-A converter, you can create seven different low-latency cue mixes for performers
on top of the control room mix. (Only one aux is available at sample rates above 96kHz, though.)

As well as the aux sends, the cue mixer offers the usual level faders, pan, mute
and solo controls, but there's no EQ or other signal processing, so if your singer
wants to hear reverb on his or her voice, you'll have to swallow the latency and
set up a monitor mix within your recording application. Not that that's too much
of a hardship: as you'd expect from a company who have been developing
audio interfaces for many years, the Profire's drivers handled low-latency

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1/31/13 M-Audio Profire 2626
operation very well indeed in the review system.
The Profire's control panel
The two front-panel headphone outputs are hard-wired to analogue output pairs software is clearly laid out and
1/2 and 3/4 respectively, and one feature that will be familiar to users of other it's quick and simple to use for
M-Audio products like the Firewire 1814 is the Master Volume knob. This setting up cue mixes.
operates in the digital domain, and the control panel is used to choose which
outputs are affected by it. The Profire can also operate as a stand-alone device when not connected to a
computer, and the control panel allows you to configure settings for this mode, too.

Profire & Pro Tools

Considering the close relationship betw een M-Audio and Digidesign, I w as disappointed to find that Pro Tools M-Pow ered is somew hat the poor relation
w hen it comes to softw are partners for the Profire. Sample rates above 96kHz aren't supported, w hich probably w on't bother many users, but you
also lose the second pair of ADAT ports, bringing the total I/O count dow n to 18. And, although you can still hear input signals w ith near-zero latency
via the Profire's DSP mixer, if you choose to do so you'll spend a lot of time muting and unmuting tracks w ithin Pro Tools.
For a long time, Pro Tools has offered tw o input monitoring modes: Input Only monitoring, w here you alw ays hear the input signal, regardless of any
audio that might have been previously recorded on a track, and Auto Input monitoring. In this mode, the input signal is heard during recording and w hen
the transport is stopped, but is muted during playback, so that you can hear previously recorded audio on the track in question. (This has obvious uses
w hen you w ant to drop into a previously recorded take.)
How ever, if the input signal is being independently routed to the outputs, as it is w hen you employ the Profire 2626's cue mixer, neither of these
monitoring modes is any help. What you w ant then is for the input signal w ithin Pro Tools to be permanently muted, but playback of previously recorded
material on a track to function as in Auto Input mode. This w asn't possible w hen the Digidesign M Box w as launched in 2000, and it still isn't possible
eight years later; you have to manually mute tracks for recording and then unmute them w hen you w ant to hear w hat you've recorded, and there's no
neat w ay to drop in on an existing track w hen monitoring via the 2626's cue mixer. It's about time M-Pow ered users got something like the Low Latency
Monitoring functionality that's available for 002, 003 and M Box 2 Pro users in Pro Tools LE.
Some control panel functions, such as the ability to change buffer sizes, are disabled w hile Pro Tools is running. Mostly this isn't a problem, but it's a
little annoying that although you can make changes to the cue mixer and save its configuration, you can't load stored mixer settings w ithout quitting Pro
Tools.
In order to use the Profire 2626 w ith Pro Tools M-Pow ered, you need to dow nload the v7.4cs5 update, w hich may necessitate Window s upgrades if
you w ere running a pre-7.4 version. In the review system, this exhibited a really odd bug, w hich I hadn't experienced in previous versions. While
recording some guitar overdubs to previously recorded drums, I occasionally heard snatches of w hat sounded like the w rong audio parts appearing in
the playback. This didn't happen very often, nor for more than half a second or so at once, but it w as disconcerting — not least because it sometimes
seemed to be playing back audio parts that I hadn't yet recorded! Assuming Digidesign haven't discovered the key to time travel, it's possible that Pro
Tools w as somehow dropping in fragments of audio from different Sessions. It w asn't usually repeatable, but I did end up w ith one Session w here a
'foreign' snippet of vocal w as clearly audible in a recorded guitar track, even though it didn't show up in the w aveform display, and I hadn't actually
recorded any vocals in that Session. Not fatal, but bloody w eird.
Digidesign say that to date they've had no reports of other users experiencing this problem.

In Use

M-Audio have a lot of experience behind them when it comes to designing audio interfaces, and it shows in the
Profire 2626. Installation and getting started are straightforward, and the drivers threw up no nasty surprises or
quirks in any of the recording applications I tried. The control panel software is an improvement over previous
M-Audio efforts, somehow being clearer and easier to use despite also offering more functionality. Cue mixes
and routings are dead easy to set up, even if the labelling could perhaps be more generous, and I experienced
no problems doing anything I needed. My only real reservation is that it's a shame the cue mixer can't access
all of the Profire's inputs simultaneously. After all, more inputs usually means more musicians, so the cue
mixing would probably be most valuable in a situation where all of the Profire's I/O was earning its keep.

Apart from the instrument and headphone jacks, all the Profire's socketry is on
the back panel, which would be a pain if it was in a rack and you often needed
to change connections, but it has to go somewhere! Likewise, some might cavil
The Profire's back panel is
at the 'line lump' external power supply and the flying lead that is used to supply
pretty packed, but space has
the Profire's MIDI, word clock and S/PDIF connectivity, but at the price, these
been saved by using a
seem like reasonable compromises. breakout cable (the connection
for which is on the left, by the
One area where the Profire's front panel looks a little bare compared with Firewire ports) for MIDI, S/PDIF
higher-end products such as MOTU's 896 Mk3 is in hardware metering. All you and word clock.
get here are signal present and clip LEDs for each analogue input, and the only
front-panel indication relating to the digital I/O is the blue power LED, which blinks when the Profire is unable to
sync to an external device. For computer recording, I'm perfectly happy to depend on level metering in
software, which is more precise than a typical LED ladder display anyway, but this might be an issue for buyers
who expect to use the Profire as a stand-alone preamp and converter.

The much-vaunted preamps are said to provide "a 75dB gain range"; how much of that range is positive is not
stated, but there is clearly more headroom here than on many of the Profire's rivals. It's not until the last few
degrees of the gain knob's travel that noise suddenly creeps in. I was able to get a clean recording of
strummed acoustic guitar from an SM57 positioned about 18 inches away, and likewise from a low-output
Electro-Harmonix ribbon mic — a badged version of the Oktava ML52 — but this was about the limit of what
was possible. Condenser mics all functioned perfectly and, as importantly, sounded fine, as did electric
instruments DI'd via the front-panel instrument jacks. I think anyone who's used to previous-generation products
like the Digi 002 will notice some improvement, and it's extremely unlikely that the Profire 2626's preamps or
converters will be the weak link in any project studio's signal chain.

Summary

Overall, I like the Profire 2626 a lot. It does exactly what I want an audio interface to do: it captures input signals
cleanly and accurately with no fuss, it offers plenty of inputs, plus sufficient routing and cue-mixing flexibility that
many users won't need to pair it with a mixer or other outboard gear, and it has dependable and mature drivers
that won't let you down in the heat of a session. And it offers all this functionality at a keenly competitive price.
Most of the flies in the ointment, as far as I'm concerned, are to do with the current version of Pro Tools M-
Powered (see box), and if there's a feeling that Digidesign's support for the Profire is a teeny bit grudging,
that's understandable. After all, this is a product that could seriously dent sales of the 003 range...
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Alternatives
If you w ant to use Pro Tools, the most obvious alternative is Digidesign's 003 Rack. The main advantage this unit offers is the proper integration of low -
latency monitoring into the Pro Tools application; those w ho can live w ithout that may w ell be sw ayed by the Profire's more impressive complement of
I/O and preamps.
Outside the Pro Tools w orld, there are more contenders. The Presonus Firestudio matches the Profire's feature set almost exactly, and looks to have a
slightly more comprehensive cue mixer and routing matrix, though it is a little more costly. It has its mic preamps on the front rather than the back, w hich
w ill be more convenient for some. Echo's forthcoming Audiofire Pre8 also looks a w orthy competitor, w ith eight high-quality preamps and eight
channels of ADAT I/O, plus w ord clock and S/PDIF, though it too is expected to be marginally more expensive than the Profire, and lacks its second
bank of ADAT channels.

Published in SOS September 2008

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