The Focusrite Red 4Pre and the Red 8Line are both Dante equipped, 1U professional Thunderbolt interfaces, which offer similar facilities for similar prices. What exactly is the difference? We investigate.

I’ve been a longtime user of the Red 4Pre. I’m extremely happy with it and as someone who constantly changes their setup according to exactly what new gear I’m looking at, I’ve found it to be more than adequate for everything I’ve thrown at it. It’s by no means a new product and as the first of the Red range of professional interfaces, it has since been joined by the Red 8Pre and the Red 16Line.

These two interfaces both had very clear points of difference between them and the Red 4Pre.

The Red 8Pre, as the name suggests, adds an extra 4 mic preamps. While I’m all for having as many preamps as possible I’m also realistic about how much of the time I spend recording drummers and ensembles of musicians - not as much as I’d like! The days when you needed to specify your rig for the maximum number of inputs you’d expect to need are long gone and while we’ve always had ADAT inputs, Dante make this maximum much more flexible. For the kind of work I do with 58 inputs I’m never going to max out a Red 4Pre. The extra mic preamps are always a good thing but I decided I’d prefer the convenience of 4 XLR inputs on the back of the unit rather than 8 available only via D-Sub, especially as If I need more preamps I can just bolt some on after the fact via ADAT or Dante.

The Red 16Line is again a markedly different product from the others in the range. Perfect for someone looking to incorporate significant amounts of analogue outboard or a console, this interface is equipped with, as the name suggests, 16 line inputs and outputs on D-sub and has become very popular with people working in Post who are looking for an accessible route into Dolby Atmos. This is principally because of the Red 16Line’s ability to assign all its analogue outputs to the monitor control, providing an Atmos-capable monitor controller but an overlooked aspect of the Red 16 Line is the provision of two mic preamps via XLR on the rear panel.

Red 4Pre and Red 8Line Rear Panels

The newest addition to the Red interface line, the Red 8Line is a contraction of the Red 16 Line. It features the same IO apart analogue inputs and outputs 9-18. The interesting thing about this is that, although the model naming doesn’t make this immediately apparent, because the Red 8Line has two mic preamps and the Red 4Pre has 8 Line inputs and outputs, they are almost the same. The Red 8Line could just as easily have been called the Red 2Pre. So is that all there is to the differences between the two?

In the table below you can see a quick comparison and some of the key differences between the Red 4Pre and the Red 8Line.

** Delay compensation - Delays the Analogue Input and S/PDIF Input by 1 to 253 samples in order to align with the Dante Input.

On first inspection, the number of mic preamps seems the biggest difference. Taking into account my earlier comments about how much freedom there is today when it comes to adding mic preamps to a rig as and when they are needed I’ve come to the conclusion that two is the number of built-in mic preamps I need. For overdubbing in mono or stereo I’ll typically use my 2 channel 1073 which is permanently patched to analogue inputs 5+6 of my Red 4Pre via a custom loom with only two XLR tails for neatness. The place where I do need two internal mic preamps is when using my Townsend Labs Sphere L22. This mic needs two preamps and they need to be digitally controlled and linkable. My 1073 is neither of these. The Red 8Line has the two built-in mic preamps I need but no more.

Other Differences Between The Red 4Pre And The Red 8Line

Are there other significant differences? The biggest is purely practical but I’ve always been irritated by how the analogue inputs and outputs on the Red 4Pre don’t correspond to each other by default. They are offset by two because of the headphone amps. This isn’t the case with the Red 8Line. As you can see from the diagrams below the default position of the headphones has moved to make setting up hardware inserts in Pro Tools straightforward. You can patch your way around this in Rednet Control but it’s so nice not to have to!

The difference in power consumption between the 4Pre and 8Line is huge - 34W vs 120W. Having used both units extensively I was surprised which way round it was as I’ve always found my Red 4Pre to run hotter than the Red 8Line. Maybe the redesigned cooling is responsible here. As you can see in the picture below, the Red 8Line has two fans on the side and the Red 4Pre has one. Fan noise from both is inconsequential.

The Line level is switchable on a per-channel basis on the Red 8Line, something which isn’t possible with the Red 4Pre and there is the option to add delay compensation between the Dante and the analogue and spdif connections in the Red 8 Line. However, that does leave something, which is rather more of a big deal to some - TB2 vs TB3.

The extent to which the Red 4Pre’s Thunderbolt 2 connection and the Red 8Line’s Thunderbolt 3 affects you will depend on your particular setup. My Mac is TB3 but all of my peripherals are TB2. Cabling and particularly TB2 to TB3 adapters are expensive. The bandwidth differences between TB2 and 3 for audio applications don’t concern me but a TB2 peripheral in a TB3 environment does cause a potential bottleneck. One thing is for certain. In the future, the difference will only become more significant and for this reason if for no other I’d choose the Red 8Line. I have no information on whether a Thunderbolt 3 equipped Red 4Pre is likely to happen any time in the foreseeable but even if it was, for my needs if I were to choose between them I’d go with the Red 8Line. It has everything I need and no more.

This detailed look at these two interfaces has made me look again at a piece of hardware I rarely think about. My Red 4Pre has been a flawless performer in the 3 years I’ve had it and has risen to every challenge I’ve encountered without breaking a sweat. I could do the majority of my work with far less but It’s great to know that no matter what happens next, it’s covered.