Recording interface for Kemper?

Quote from Stringtheorist

Guys, I'm wondering whether the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 would fit my needs? It's USB but all my Firewire ports are connected to backup drives, so Firewire isn't ideal for me right now ...

Why? I'm pretty sure you can slave through FireWire, can't you?

Quote from Stringtheorist

I can? How does that work?

Ah ok, I looked up some of my devices and i guess it depends on the unit.
With my UAD satellite there's two FW 800 connectors so slaving is possible, my Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 only has one, but several FW external drives that I have also have two connectors.
What do you have? If your FW drives have 2 connectors try slaving.

I have a Saffire Pro DSP which is a good interface. However, I do find that the TC electronic preamps on my desktop Konnekt 6 sound much warmer and more 3D for guitar. I also find the saffire mix interface unnecessarily confusing and the gain is pretty unevenly bunched when trying to set levels. I think a lot of the TC interfaces have been discontinued but you may be able to pick a bargain up. I hear the Impact Twin is very good and it has SPDIF and DSP fx. I love the desktop Konnekt 6, no spdif but it has huge input meters and it has a simple interface, dsp reverbs and a great sound.

p.s - the tc interfaces are all firewire which may be a dealbreaker.

Quote from Stringtheorist

Both of my drives have spare FW800 ports. If I hook up the interface to one of them, is it easy to set up Logic to read it as the input device?

I'd just hook 'em up in serial to see if your Mac and Logic can see both and access both fast enough.

what connections do you have available on your setup? You mentioned all your Firewire ports are taken up by HD. Do you have USB3? Or Thunderbolt?

USB3 is faster than Firewire and almost on par with Thunderbolt as well. I use an UA Apollo Twin via Tunderbolt. No latency and I use some of the great plug ins to get a bit more out of the Kemper. I use the Mic/Line inputs but I can also connect another 8 channels of ADAT and S/PDIF I/O via Optical on the Apollo.

If you have USB2 and Firewire only, try running it with a firewire hub or even USB2 Hub. It might just give you enough bandwith to do audio recording

Well... You could go with an iOne or iTwo (USB2 and works also with iPad) by PreSonus... Or find an old UA FireWire Apollo.

you could get a 800 to 400 FireWire adopter for FW interfaces...since most of them are FW 400 and your spare FW connection is an 800.

I wouldn't go for the 2i2. Get the 6i6, or another interface with s/pdif. S/pdif makes life easier both for recording and reamping. No problem using an USB interface on the Mac. I have an interface with both USB and firewire. Performance is identical, if not better on USB (Using Macbook and Mac Pro).

Are you going to use both the Axe II and the Kemper in the same projects? Remember that the Axe is locked to 48k and the Kemper to 44.1k (meaning you can only record one of them digitally).