Recording - November 2019 - 44

REVIEW

Arturia AudioFuse 8Pre
Eight excellent preamps are just the beginning...

REVIEW BY MIKE METLAY

n our April 2018 issue, I reviewed AudioFuse, the first Arturia offering in the audio interface category. It took a while-the prototype was
shown at Winter NAMM 2015-but in the end, the AudioFuse was
worth the wait. Breaking the mold of conventional interfaces, it provided
a wide variety of useful connectivity in a sturdy and self-contained package, as portable as it was powerful.
Perhaps the biggest AudioFuse surprise was the quality of its DiscretePRO preamps; the impressive specs on paper were matched by a truly
sweet sound. In fact, AudioFuse preamp quality exceeded that of far
more well-established competitors. It's remarkable that Arturia could set
such a high bar on its first release, having never built a preamp before.
While AudioFuse did take three years to make it out the door, patient
insistence on the best seems to have paid off for Arturia.
At Winter NAMM 2019, Arturia showed preliminary designs for an entire
family of AudioFuse interfaces for various applications. Most notably, the new
AudioFuse units offer dual functionality. They are both audio interface and
high-quality expander, adding additional preamps and channel count to an existing setup VIA ADAT I/O. The first one, the AudioFuse 8Pre, is now shipping.
I put one of the first units in the US through its paces for a few weeks.
When the original AudioFuse was released, we heard from a fair number of studio owners and home recording musicians who wished that
Arturia would make a rack unit with eight preamps rather than two, perhaps trading off some of that insane, go-anywhere connectivity for a more
basic set of I/O options. The AudioFuse 8Pre pretty much nails that perfectly, with all the necessary features needed to make the entire package
a well-rounded solution for small studios.

8Pre

As you might expect from the name,
the centerpiece of the AudioFuse 8Pre
is its eight DiscretePRO preamps.
We'll start with those, because they're
really what sell the box. The basic
specs are impressive: dynamic range
44 RECORDING November 2019

of 119dB, a whopping 73dB gain
range (+3 to +76 dB), equivalent input noise better than -129dBu, and
>104 dBA total harmonic distortion
plus noise. The frequency response
is ruler-flat: 20Hz to 20kHz, with less
than ±0.07dB variance.

All this adds up to preamps that are perfectly happy with any, and I mean any,
microphone-from the hottest condensers
to the most finicky vintage ribbons and
low output dynamics-and capable of
providing gain at the outer reaches of its
range without introducing a ton of noise.
As for the sound of these preamps,
to this reviewer's ears, they don't have
one. The DiscretePRO design appears to
be very much in the ultra-clean camp,
with truly impressive clarity on every mic
I threw at it. These preamps are meant
to get the job done and not leave you
wishing that you had something better;
just patch in an outside preamp if you
want to add a specific color and vibe.

...and then some

These fabulous preamps are contained
inside a very elegantly designed 1U rack
enclosure with plenty of features for small
studios. Each of the eight analog input
channels has a front-panel control set that
includes switches for 48v phantom power,
phase reverse, and a 20dB pad, along
with a seven-segment LED level meter and
indicators for whether the preamp input is
set for mic, line, or instrument. Channels
1 and 2 are provided with 1/4" inputs as
well as balanced 1/4" send and return
jacks for inserting outboard gear. The instrument level inputs are sweet-sounding,
boasting a healthy 1.1MΩ input impedance that won't mess with the tone of your
electric guitar, and will avoid the 'quack'
of piezoelectric pickups better than many
other interfaces. All eight inputs have
rear-panel TRS/XLR combo jacks, with 1
and 2 repeated on the front panel.
The front panel finishes off with a
monitoring section that includes separate volume controls for the speaker and
headphone outputs, selector buttons for
sample rate and sync sources, and a
button that toggles between USB and
ADAT operating modes. A power on/
off button features the Arturia logo.

Recording - November 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2019