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

[ArchivalAudio]

I have retired
my Presonus Firebox... may try to sell it or use it as a book end...

I got a MOTU Ultralite, and recorded my first show with it last nite... [Reeble Jar, Blackalicious, and Spearhead at the Cuthbert Amptheatre, Eugene OR] it was great!

it was and has been relativly error free, aside from some original install issues...
but it is solid
and I runs in the background, no glitching even when running Airport, firefox, Azueus w/ multiple bitt torrents up loading and downloading. without using CHUD and nap off
so far it is everything the firebox has not been for me.

no glitchyness...


more later

peace thru music

[mechcon]

I have now a macbook pro, and yeah, I knew the problem would occur on it too with my presonus firebox. till I can afford to get a motu, i'll wait it out, as the firebox is still a damn good interface, its just the only squabble is the initial power-up via firewire only.

[ArchivalAudio]

since the Ultralite did not exist when I got my Firebox
I needed to wait
but wished I waited
since the Ultralite is hand down
so much more error free
and easy to use
no turning off Nap w/CHUD
no nothing it just records
and plays in the background

solid

so sorry I wasted 2 + years with my firebox
I believe that Presonus grear works well with windoz PC's
but my experience with MACs and them has proven less than favorable

soon I will try to do a comparison of likes and dislikes
but it is bound to be biased toward the MOTU
sine it works great!

peace
thru music

This post has been edited by ArchivalAudio: Fri 8 Jun 2007, 05:43

[billoetjen]

Anybody have unusual trouble recording live electric bass through a Firebox?
I'm using an Inspire and I get awful clipping/overdive at even low levels. Thinking of switching to Firebox.

Lemme know.

Bill Oetjen

[EDIT LPM: please do not write your emails in clear in the forums, it's stated in the rules. We don't give up your email, don't give it to spammers! Use the SAFE email link next to the poster's message on the left under his name]

This post has been edited by lepetitmartien: Thu 18 Oct 2007, 05:18

[mortalengines]

Before you switch over to a new interface. I gotta ask this question. Are you using the Hi-Z input on your inspire? Does the inspire have a Hi Z input? If not, then you may want to just go out and find a D/I box to run your bass through before going into the inspire. D/I's range anywhere from 50 to 80 dollars US (and maybe cheaper, but you want a good relible one). That would be much cheaper than buying a new interface.


www.myspace.com/mortal_engines

[Mac Daddy]

mortalengines. You are right about D/I. It is much better sounding than "Miking" a Bass. I know the "Purest" will have a dozen reasons why a bass sounds better "Miked" but you must take into account how much sound control does the room have, what type of amp, microphone, hum? You eliminate these problems with D/I. Line 6 has excellent Tools for Guitar and Bass. I love the "Live" sound, but not on Recordings unless it has been Recorded at the highest level of control. Bass "Dominates". Period. Bass shake the Elements, imagine what it can do to our little DAW?!

D/I is a good rule in general, you can shape the sound better with software, it's impossible to match the live Bass or Guitar "Live" sound into a computer. Well, nothing is "impossible", but, it takes a "Sonic Engineer with an awsome set-up to Record Bass, properly. You really have a better chance D/I.

[arvidtp]

I'm considering getting a MOTU ultralite to replace my firebox (i could still SPDIF-sync and aggregate the two interfaces to make one big interface - so I'm not throwing away the firebox)

So, I have good and bad news about the firebox. I just did a test with it vs. a MOTU traveller that my friend has. I tested preamps and CPU usage:

Preamps:
The MOTU preamps are much quieter. No question. I used a pair of damn nice Danish Pro Audio omni mics (that unfortunately i dont own - their owner said they were ~$1500 a piece) placed right next to each other (they are tiny and fit together on one mic stand), one plugged in the the firebox preamp 1, one into the traveller preamp 1. We recorded drums, acoustic guitar and speech.

It was difficult to hear a difference between the preamps when sound was loud, but when amplifying quiet guitar plucks or chimes from the drumset, you really notice the difference, at least in noise. I cant say much about the sonic quality otherwise, except to say that it was otherwise comparable. First I calibrated the preamps so both gave approximately the same signal level by playing a tone on speakers. Then I normalized sections of the recorded audio of the drums and guitar so that the peak (whatever sound was being used) was the same. The MOTU preamp had much less background noise than that of the firebox. The noise in the firebox preamp sounded very harsh too. Not like tape hiss.


CPU usage:
Well, apple has apparently (in OS 10.4.11) improved their firewire audio drivers, but not completely fixed them.

Now the firebox no longer makes big CPU spikes every 6-10 seconds and in general uses onyl superficially more CPU than the MOTU. But every once in a while - like every 3min, the firebox does still create a big, like 6 sec long CPU spike. I'm skeptical whether this is really caused by the firebox... but I did not see it with the traveller or no interface plugged in. I'm going to continue monitoring the CPU.

I tested idle CPU usage with no audio apps running, and also with a single-track logic pro 8 session loaded, but not playing. I also tested high CPU usage by running an instrument I built in Max/MSP with both interfaces. I used the same buffer size (256 samp, in MaxMSP and Logic) and vector size (256 samp, in MaxMSP) for each interface.

These spikes are in the kernel - the red in activity monitor's CPU history window - not the user space (green) which leads me to believe that they are from the firebox, not from anything I or my user processes are doing.

I didnt get a chance to do the reverb plugins test, so another, real-world test should be done.

Conclusion:
Apple firewire audio driver (and hence firebox) CPU usage is improved in 10.4.11, but not fixed, Preamps on the firebox don't measure up to MOTUs'.

[ArchivalAudio]

well
I love my MOTU Ultra lite
hands down much better than the firebox

I am considering getting my Ultralite's
Mic Pres Modded
by Busman Audio
he's found on Taperssection dot com

Chris is a great guy
he does mic and mic pre-mods to a variety of gear

the pres are already better than the ones in the firebox
could use some better op amps

I am glad I got a MOTU Ultralite
still running OSX 10.9

I may part with my firebox cheap...

[arvidtp]

I'm with you - just got my Ultralite a few days ago

Used it for a gig the 2nd day I had it and it was flawless. I can run DSP live that I could not with the Firebox - for my band I've been wanting to run a basic session in Logic with reverb (for our vocalist), delay (for my trumpet) and a an EXS24 sampler, at the same time as a rather demanding patch I wrote in Max/MSP for the wireless wind controller I built. With the firebox, I could not get them both to run at once at a reasonable latency without without MaxMSP freezing up and crapping out...

But now with the ultralite, I can suddenly do it on the exact same computer! Congrats MOTU, you rock.

Pres are nice and quiter than the firebox. Also I can turn the main outs all the way up, and jack my amplifier way up, and hardly hear any noise in my speakers! The output is so quiet. And no more whine from Processor Nap - no more need to run a script to turn it off all the time.

The attention to detail in the interface is astounding - from the flash memory with presets for the internal mixer that can be saved either from the computer or the front panel and recalled with or without a computer, to the ability to record back mix 1, which can include the computer's output.

A killer feature for me is the ability to clock-sync through coreaudio - the MOTU can grab its clock from ANY coreaudio interface connected to your mac, without connecting via S/PDIF or any other physical connection! This is awesome for aggregate devices, as you are no longer relying on always imperfect jitter compensation code - the devices are synced. I've tried this for about 8 minutes - no clicks or pops, vs. clicks/pops after about 3 1/2 min when aggregating the same audio interfaces running under their own clocks.

This rocks when the MOTU is aggregated with Cycling'74's Soundflower virtual audio device. I created a new aggregate device of MOTU + Soundflower (16 ch), set the agg. dev's clock to soundflower, then synced the MOTU's clock to soundflower's. This basically adds 16 additional channels of virtual software-to-software I/O to the MOTU interfafce for sending audio back and forth between, say, Max/MSP and Logic! And it works flawlessly (so far) - no clicks or pops, minimal CPU overhead. Make sure to sync to the correct soundflower, as the MOTU clock menu does not specify which is the 2 channel version and which is the 16... so I chose the 2nd one because on my system the 16 chan one appears 2nd in the audioMIDI setup menu. And make sure to A) remember that the corresponding soundflower ins and outs will be offset by 2, B) Not make feedback loops with soundflower

This post has been edited by arvidtp: Sat 5 Jan 2008, 01:20