I just purchased and installed the perfect companion to my Fireface 800 – an Octamic D! This means that the Alesis AI3 and Behringer ADA8000 are out the window.

Even though I now only get 8 ADAT channels in instead of 16, the Octamic D supports S/MUX (sample multiplexing) which means that the 8 channels can be run at 96 kHz using two ADAT connections. Also, the converters are probably much better. I’ve noticed before that most stuff sounds more defined using the Fireface outputs compared to the ADA8000 or AI3. The ADA8000 sounds better than the AI3, according to my ears.

Installation was very simple, I connected the Octamic’s MAIN and AUX ADAT outputs to the Fireface’s ADAT1 and ADAT2 respectively. On the back of the Octamic are six dip switches that I set to internal sync (Master), 48 kHz and “Double mode” (=sample rate *2). The Fireface automatically detects itself as slave (synced by ADAT)  and is set to 96 kHz  when the Octamic is turned  on.

The manual of the Octamic D if anyone is interested!