Echo AudioFire Soundcard

In another nice upgrade for the voiceover studio, I now have an Echo Audio AudioFire soundcard/interface in the signal path. This is a substantial improvement over the Presonus interface I was previously using and was never happy with. It took some time to research and choose the right replacement soundcard for my studio. I wanted something simple, since I usually only record two channels at a time at most. I also wanted something reliable that was rock-solid for recording and provided quality audio and would work with my computers. E-MU was a contender as they make very good products, but they are going out of business. The Apogee Duet was also intriguing. Echo Audio's AudioFire was the winner, as they have a great reputation and will be around to provide support and driver upgrades (they upgrade their drivers very frequently). I also like that my AudioFire is small and runs without generating much heat (the Presonus was like a toaster). Thanks to technical gear maven and voiceover pro Gregory Houser for his opinions on the Echo.

The Presonus was rock-solid for playback, very flexible for routing, but was not rock-solid for recording and did not provide the level of quality audio that I wanted to provide to my clients. The Presonus, in the end, was a fradulent device incapable of providing the 96kHz recordings it claimed that it could. A long-delayed replacement driver from Presonus may have solved the issue (some people claim that it's still not a 96kHz device even after the upgrade), but it introduced an unreasonable amount of noise. I'm glad that the Presonus experiment is over and that I can move on to a much better device with Echo Audio. The improvement in sound is obvious: the Echo is much more present, detailed, and rich while the Presonus relied on the crutch of smeared hyped frequencies at the low and high ends to mask the fact that it lacks midrange detail.

If you're more concerned about playback and signal routing, by all means buy a Presonus product, they're great in that regard. If you want better recordings for the same money go with Echo Audio.