Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 External Fire Wire Sound Card Product Review

I purchased the Focusrite Sapphire Pro 14 to go along with my Yamaha HS80M studio monitors. I was looking for a firewire soundcard with at least 2 TRS outputs (or XLR) for my monitors, along with a cue output, and hopefully SPDIF output for a mixer. The sapphire pro 14 was the perfect choice, both on price point and on the fact that it matched all of my search criteria.

Lets take a look at the specs first:

• Two pre-amps from focusrite.
• High quality 24-bit 96 kHz firewire interface
• 8 inputs and 6 outputs
• Focusrite VST plug-in suite
• Cue control and 1/4" TRS jack on the front panel
• Awesome control software

What I Love

The control software is absolutely incredible. It allows you to control the channels for each output and input to and from your DAW (and works well with VDJ as well). I haven't used the VST plug-in suite much, so I can't comment much on that, but that was a cool add-on. The interface basically controls everything about the card, and is very easy to use.

The front controls fro the cue are great when cueing tracks from ableton, or using your cue for things like listening to sounds before putting them into your mix. There are many outputs on the interface itself, so there's plenty of extra ways to set up your monitors for cueing and for playback.

Things I Don't Like

There isn't much I don't like about the card itself. I haven't found a way to output stereo to the TRS ports (which would be nice for outputting to my DJM 800). There may be a way to do this in the future (I thin there may be a way to output stereo audio using the 3rd and 4th ports), but for now there is no way that I have found. That is also my only complaint. The SPDIF output works when you only need to output one master channel.

The sound card itself is pretty solid, and hasn't given me any problems in the year+ that I have had it. It's a great soundcard for the price.

Happy producing!