URGENT! QUICK! TODAY! F/W INT.!

BUMP...

and

what about the Presonus Firebox....?

Any thoughts....? I'm cruising the web now for candidates - I don't have time to audition anything, I gotta buy today!

BTW, here is some general advice on shopping for soundcards I posted elsewhere once upon a time. I encourage you to take special note of the last bit about professional reviews vs forum opinions:

Most of the soundcards people discuss on these boards have respectable sound quality for the price range and low latency (as long as you steer clear of USB 1.1-- USB 2 is fine).

That said, here are some of the other things that really make a difference within a given price range:

1. Extra features. Some sound cards have all kinds of cool auxilliary features, such as integrated software-controlled mixers or onboard effects, or built-in limiters on the preamps or insert jacks so you can use an outboard compressor or whatever. These can be a lifesaver if you need them, or a big waste of money if you don't, and may complicate the operation fo the soundcard for the stuff you need to do every day. It's better to buy a soundcard that does the things you need it to do really well, than to pay for a lot of potentially confusing features that you don't need.

2. Number and type of outputs. Extra outputs are a handy thing to have, especially if your soundcard has internal mixing/routing capabilities. The ability to have all your inputs constantly connected to say, a hardware tuner can be surprisingly useful. And as your studio and ambitions grow, the ability to listen to one version of the mix while your singer or whoever hears a different version in her headphones starts to become indispensible. Having more than one set of headphone outputs is also convenient if you want to keep things small and simple. And if you ever want to use hardware effects during mixdown, you pretty much have to have extra outputs.

3. Number and type of inputs/preamps. Most pro and semi-pro soundcards these days seem to come with two mic/instrument preamps and a bunch of line inputs. If you already have preamps that you're happy with, then those built-in preamps are pretty useless, although they don't hurt anything. If you don't have and don't plan to buy additional preamps, then the line inputs are practially useless for most conventional recording applications. But keep in mind that chances are very good that if you stick with this long enough to actually be using 8 or ten inputs simultaneously, you'll probably pick up some specialized outboard preamps. Preamps should include phantom power. Ribbon mics require better-than-average preamps, usually outboard ones with high gain and variable impedance.

4. Portability and swappability. Chances are pretty good that some point down the road, you'll want to record someplace else. With laptops getting better and cheaper every day, buying a soundcard with a simple and easy firewire or USB 2 connection makes a lot of sense, all else being equal.

5. Ease-of-use and "hidden" compatibility issues. When you find a soundcard that looks like it has what you want, run a quick search on the forums and message boards to see what kinds of complaints/issues people are having with it. Some soundcards don't get along with some chipsets, some soundcard drivers seem particularly finicky or buggy, and so on. Every soundcard always has SOMEBODY complaining about something, but what you really want to look out for is long and/or repeated complaints about similar problems from experienced users that don't have a clear fix.

6. Age of the soundcard and upgrades. Soundcards, like everything else in audio, continue to shoot up in quality while dropping in price. At some point in time, you will probably want to replace whatever you get. Higher-quality, specialized cards from well-respected manufacturers such as MOTU, M-Audio, and Apogee tend to hold their "ebay value" quite well, and can often be re-sold two or three years later for close to the original purchase price. "beginner" cards and "do-it-all" cards with lots of bells and whistles tend to lose their value faster as newer models come out with more bells and whistles. In any price range, sound quality tends to hold its value better than extra features do.

As you look for advice, keep in mind that most people have not really used very many soundcards, even experienced or professional users. When people say "I have such-and-such and it's awesome," that may be the only soundcard they've ever used on a day-to-day basis, other than built-in ones that came with a computer. By the same token, magazines and professional reviewers may be able to compare more soundcards, but they probably haven't tested those soundcards on lots of different systems. A soundcard that they fell in love with on their custom-built audio supercomputer may have tons of angry users out there who can't get it to work with HP office machines and so on. So lean towards trusting the magazines/pro reviewers for information on sound quality and features, and check the message boards and online forums for information on reliability and compatibility.

ORIGINAL: bullet22

ORIGINAL: yep

Not sure where the urgency comes from, but Presonus is a very good choice for sound quality. The build quality is a bit disappointing on those units, with rather flimsy knobs soldered onto a circuit board, but if you keep it in the studio and are fairly careful it should do pretty well.

Heh-heh... Sorry, the urgency just comes from me being really impatient, and the fact I've got a 1 yr old and occasionally I get a few weeks where I seem to just manage to get into the studio for a few hours here n' there.

I'd decided to get a new soundcard so there was no time to waste, to use it tomorrow night I needed to order it today!

Thanks for your response - it's much appreciated.

In the end I went for the M-Audio Firewire 410. I'd seen some harsh review/problems with the Kontact 8, and while the Presonus Firebox was comparable, I went for the more familiar brand (I've gone Audiophile 24/96 to 192 formerly..)

They were close runners, so I just hope I've made the right call. I don't have time to go anywhere to hear them, or mess around ordering both then returning one - so I'll probably never know!

Thanks again

Ryan

Is that a picture of the guy from Spaceballs/Independance Day.....?!

FW-410 is ok. Firebox is better, IMHO.

I had an FW-410, and it worked well, except for the volume knob, which didn't work about 75% of the time. Fortunately it could be controlled with the software, but that didn't excuse the lack of quality control.

I've owned three presonus interfaces and the quality have all be very high.

I had an FW-410, and it worked well, except for the volume knob, which didn't work about 75% of the time. Fortunately it could be controlled with the software, but that didn't excuse the lack of quality control.

Yeah, I'd read a review that the "rotary control knob" was glitchy, sometimes not working at all, or you'll turn it - nothing will happen, then half a second later the software 'catches up' - I'm sure not going to control the main outs (into my active monitors) with that thing! I've downloaded the most recent drivers so hopefully that may cure it.

If not I'll return it in favour for the Firebox

I would have gone with an Echo Audiofire2 and the Soundcraft Compact 4. They pair up really nice together and at $300 for the both it's hard to go wrong.

The pres in that board are actually really nice.

The AT3035 you have is a very nice mic and excellent recordings can be achieved with it.

To be honest I didn't look at that combo - it was a quick buy so I went for an all-in-one solution. I am very pleased with the AT3035 and would recommend it 110%, I just didn't want anyone telling me to go out there and buy some £1,500 pre-amp for a ribbon mic etc....

I've asked for opinions before, stated my budget (usually around the £300 - £500 mark for most gear) and I get answers like "The Sonic Labs BS-46 is well worth a look, you can't beat it" only to find out that it costs $30,000 and Madonna's producer just used it! Admittedly, that was more likely to happen on the Cubase forums (back in the day....), but still, I wanted to be clear what my signal/recording chain consisted of.

Heh-heh!


Collective thanks for you time - I appreciate it!

I will post whether the 410 held water, or whether I returned it for the Presonus. It's important to follow up!


Ryan

Holy smokes !! !! !!

The FireBox was WORSE! Way worse...... I simply couldn't use it.

Problems:

1, Firstly, you need to select the sample rate in the FireBox Setup box, and this needs to match whatever you're doing in Sonar. So if you're working in a project at 88.2kHz, and think "how did I track this last year, when I was working in 44.1kHz?" well if you open that project, it won't work - you'll need to change the FireBox to match, and probably re-start your DAW too. Never had that problem before, the soundcard sample rate just changed to match the app sample rate.

2, I was using ASIO at 2.5ms latency at 44.1kHz, recording 2 tracks of audio each with a send to a UAD-1 'verb, you hit record, as soon as you make a noise: <DROPOUT>. My trusty old AP24/96 would've breezed that set-up... and I've got a custom built Pentium 4 DAW, which is usually rock solid (with M-Audio cards/drivers anyway...), not some held-together-with-gaffer-tape PIII ex-gaming machine.

3, I couldn't get the FireBox mixer to respond, so I couldn't see what my input signal was - although the faders worked, the meters didn't.

4, There was LOTS of background noise, which seemed to come from Sonar's audio engine. You could hear mouse-movements and window re-sizes too, and this was no grounding loop, this was audible whilst bus-powered and monitoring direct through the FireBox's headphone output. None of this was present with the other FW interface I used, or my past PCI interfaces.

5, I have active monitors, so I normally patch the outs of my card into a small Berhinger mixer which I use to control my monitoring level (this also allows me to patch external hardware - CD player, old tape deck etc, through the monitors without having to power-up my DAW).... BUT the FireBox wouldn't let me do this because the monitoring signal was quiet and distorted. Again, my AP24/96 and my AP192 and the FW410 had no trouble at all doing this.

6, Much, much, smaller gripe (you can ignore this one) - the controls are really small and very close together (obv this is to keep the unit size down, given) so it's hard to turn one without 'reversing' another, BUT, more annoyingly, unless you've got a lamp pointing directly at the front panel, you ain't gonna see the level that your controls are turned to, 'cos the little line gets lost in the shine (if that makes sense)... So your 'chilled-out' dimmed down control-room is a thing of the past. I like to see "at a glance" if my controls are at ZERO. Couldn't do it with the FireBox, I had to angle myself in the chair to get the light just right to see the paint on the control. Like I said, small gripe.

I simply have to assume that I got a faulty unit, but some problems seemed to be software based and some seemed to be hardware based - so maybe this is just the level of quality with PreSonus? Obv their Pre's are very popular etc... But as an interface, the FireBox simply wasn't usable. From what I could hear, the pre's did sound nice, and the 12dB boost is good, but I just couldn't record with it. Let me reiretate, it sounded GOOD, but couldn't use it. I know a lot of Forum members seem to love this unit - which is what leads me to believe it's faulty - but still, VERY disappointing (and the cause of a very late night trying to sort it....!)

Maybe a standalone PreSonus pre-amp + "soundcard by others" might be the way to go to get the pre's, but I really wanted and all-in-one solution so I'm not stressing about the interface between the two (for example my current pre-amp output is greater than the maximum input of my AP192 - whether or not that causes problems I'll never know...).

So this is the follow-up post. I cancelled the return of the FW410, as I discovered that although the rotary control knob appears glitchy in the GUI, the sound operation of it seems stable (i.e. the faders can be slow to respond, but the actual output/input etc seemed to be a smooth gain change, smooth enough to patch my active monitors straight to the device's main outs - something I've never felt comfortable in doing before).

The FireBox is being collected soon, and I'll run for a while with the FW410 - the difference was incredible.

Like I said, I think (and hope, for PreSonus's sake), that it was a faulty unit, but these are my genuine experiences.


Hope it helps

Ryan