M In A Pickle, Saffire Or Fire Options

[Blue Sky]

hi, i am trying to make my mind up between the firebox by presonus and the saffire by foucsrite. i would like to hear ur oppinions. i want something that i could travel with but when i get home i can hook it up to monitors, a mixer and everything else there is in a home studio.

This post has been edited by cstar1989: Sun 18 Sep 2005, 11:06

[Blue Sky]

The FireBox's footprint is no bigger than a CD jewel case (lying flat). The Saffire is more like a Mac Mini standing on its edge. The shape is a real pain, actually, because while it might be thin it's still quite long/deep, so it still eats up a good amount of desk space. I can't believe they stuck with the Mbox shape, to be honest. Rackable/stackable gear is so much better. Also, the swivel foot Focusrite talk about as a feature is bobbins - it doesn't swivel like an office chair, which is what they imply. All you can do is lift it up, rotate the foot 90 degrees and then put it down again. So that's, er, two positions - parallel to you or pointing at you. Big effing deal! The Saffire might seem to have more to offer on paper, but in real-world terms the two units aren't that different. Plus you can only run four inputs to the Saffire - the FireBox offers six. Sound quality, the FireBox is excellent and the Saffire is good, too. There have been a few crackles with my FireBox, but nothing that has caused me permanent problems. I just preferred the simplicity of the FireBox and the fact that it does everything I need. 192KHz sample rates? Who can really tell much difference from 48 to 96, let alone double that?

thanks again! i think im going with the firebox for sure. i was talking to someone about it and he gave me good info too. plus iv been trying to make myself like saffire but i just cant get over that it looks like a kitchen appliance.