ART TubeFire 8 Reviews

[brandondrury]

ART TubeFire 8 @ Musiciansfriend



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Is The ART TubeFire 8 The Right Audio Interface For You?
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ART TubeFire 8 Description
The ART TubeFire 8 FireWire Recording Interface is an excellent 8-channel preamp for recording direct-to-drive to FireWire equipped Macs or PCs. Fitting nicely into a single rack unit,TubeFire 8 has 8 quality second-generation Class-A vaccuum tube mic preamps and eight balanced outputs. Every input channel has both XLR and 1/4-inch TRS balanced inputs with, 70db of gain, -10db Pad, high pass filter, phase invert, clip indicators, and wide range LED meter for monitoring levels. These ****, tube driven mic/line inputs provide clean, quiet gain and a high-level of transparency.

On the flip side, the ART TubeFire 8 can be turned into a reliable multichannel audio output for your computer through its high-quality D/A converters and 8 balanced outputs. You can use the headphone output or for low-latency input monitoring, or you can combine the channels for an integrated mono or stereo mix for general monitoring of audio playback from the computer. Either way, you'll be impressed with the quality of the sound you're getting.

As a bonus, TubeFire 8 is packaged with Cubase LE software.

[shambolic]

Quality: 9
this is a solid piece of kit, quite rare these days it is heavy and feels like it could take a fair few bangs. I love the sound of this kit. The pres are pristine clear without being brittle and you can dial in tube character as you wish, I do this when I DI my stratocaster via a boss od2 and Voila I have a genuine valve sound with all the subtle harmonics. I also like to record hot for a lot of things and let the tubes do their natural compression. Not sure I would say the valves add ****th but they add bags of pleasing character. Don't listen to those who without hearing it, moan about starved plate not doing anything - listen to this box itself, it really works.
Had some glitches with the drivers at the start but theyt updated them and everything is running perfectly

Reliability: 9
havent has any major problems apart from as i said, the first drivers. I got onto support and they replied very quickly and helpfully. Seem like nice guys.

Overall Rating: 9
I love this product,more than any tech item in my studio (including my Oberheim Xpander- just)
it's opened out my recordings and given me some real authentic Od guitar without having to mic up a speaker. the only reason it hasn't got a 10 is because it doesn't have adat/spdif or midi.

[nickcorcoran]

hey i just read your post, i think i might have the same problem you have.
the streaming state on the drivers main page goes to an error about once every 5 minutes, then all i have to do is re click the internally synced option and it works. is thi s the same problem?

[shambolic]

i used to get clicks on the early drivers, have you been to the ART site and got the latest drivers?

[nickcorcoran]

yeah i have the art tubefire driver 3.2.0

[shambolic]

what Os are you using?

[nickcorcoran]

windows vista x64

[shambolic]

hmmm never used it in 64bit or in vista, I'm on win7 - you might want to send a mail to ART themselves they are quite helpful. Worth downloading DPC latency checker and seeing if you've got any major spikes going on. I know Vista can have problems with that.

[nickcorcoran]

i emailed ART about a week ago and they still havent replied, but ill give that DPC latency checker a try, thanks man.

[shambolic]

Also I remember that certain wireless cards can interrupt the data flow on firewire. if you are getting spikes try turning off the wireless card if you have one.

[llanafreak44]

Is it clean enough for DI's? I don't want any tube coloration.

[shambolic]

You can keep the tube coloration out by keeping the gain down, but wouldn't it be better getting pre's without tubes if that's what you need? Any way it can do clean as well.

[llanafreak44]

You can keep the tube coloration out by keeping the gain down, but wouldn't it be better getting pre's without tubes if that's what you need? Any way it can do clean as well.

The reason I was looking at this interface is because it looks very good and reliable, but the tube only pre's are throwing me off! Oh well. Thanks anyways.

[CellarOwl]

I recently picked this up as my first FireWire interface after upgrading from a 1 i/o USB device, but I'm having problems getting started. Anytime I run my DAW (Acid 6) while the TubeFire is connected, any audio (playback/recording) runs at about half speed and is severely distorted through my monitors/headphones. This includes recording quality, which I've only boosted to the appropriate levels to avoid clipping. The only time the audio isn't compromised is just basic playback of mp3 files through iTunes or Winamp. This sounds like a complete noob of an issue (sorry), but I'm just at a loss and can't find any basic layman's walkthrough online.

[shambolic]

make sure the sample rate acid is running at is the same as the Tubefire. Not sure where you set that on Acid but you set it on the tubefire in pc by clicking on the driver symbol down on the right of the taskbar and then you have a choice of rates to apply

Sample rate is in figures of 44.1 or 48 or 96 etc.