Presonus Firebox Reviews?, Anyone actually use this yet? Options

[ArchivalAudio]

wondering if anyone has actually used the new PreSonus FireBox? Its been available in Europe for a month now... and just became available here in the US. I am wondering if any has tried this unit out... I am strongly considering gettting one. I would like to hear any reviews of this new interface.

any opinions?
power consumption in the feild? etc.

thanx
-- Ian

[arvidtp]

OK tbird, you're in luck - here's some more of my experiences - mostly good:

Recorded some more outdoors unplugged - frog sounds at a pond. Very nice. Firebox worked great. When i got back though i thought it had crapped out cause when i listened it was all "rice crispy". Turns out it was the 'box not syncing once i got back home during playback. A trip to AudioMIDI setup to change the sample rate to 48000 then back to 44100 fixed that and made me much releaved that my recording session was not in vain.

For performances - yes i was getting lots of clicks in MaxMSP - but these were dramatically reduced when i fired up Process Wizard (great little menu extra) and niced (increased the priority of) MaxMSP all the way and decreased that of the Dock to rock-bottom. If i do this every time i perform with the firebox, it works wonders. Max is therefore more important to the machine than the CPU spikes the firebox causes. Logic does not seem to have to be told that it is most important - i think it acts the same either way, but i have not experimented that much with nicing logic, as realitme performance is not quite as critical there.

I just last night played a concert at a gallery in Provincetown with two other musicians - used my firebox at 256 samples buffer to run my electronically augmented trumpet in MaxMSP and bring in 4 channels of audio in with effects, where some of the channels were played back for realtime effects and recorded and others were just used for the 6 channel recording. We played for 39 min while also recording, and i never noticed any pops or clicks while playing or in the recording (have just done 1st listen through/mix). Because i was pushing the CPU on my powerbook, there prolly were a few clicks during the performance, but they werent noticeable in our cacophony. If they were, they were few and far between. I was very happy with the performance of my firebox. Would NEVER go back to my Mbox, although i did use it for an extra mic preamp last night - just to feed analog to the firebox's 4th input - it was not sending any audio to the computer. It works well like that The mbox might also work nicely as a doorstop with those little penguin wings... no no arvid... remember.....some people still use pro tools....you have to be compatible with them...... haha ok no more inner monologue... hope this post helps!