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

[grassbro]

I have been using it for a month and only in Final Cut, it cracks a lot... For anything else it's been great. On a 1.67 15" powerbook with a pair of Neuman's KM184, Logic Express gets everything done, no noise, rich sound. I plan to get it on the field to record instrumental brazialian music in a small club live for a DVD. Will post feedback later.

:edit:

[ArchivalAudio]

Hey
so anyone can you answer this?
sorry if any of these questions have been answered else where,or seem redundant.
I was recording a friend w 3 tracks and had 2 mics and one DI from a guitar.
one vocal, mic one guitar mic, and one Di guitar.
so it was very weird I got these strange digi buzzes and "devil"sounds (her words not mine) when trying to record and have the monitor selected in cubaseLe (bundled with it). I beleive these were similar sounds as tbirdwilson repported on July 10. once we turned off the monitor enable button it (mostly) recorded fine however we could not see the "actual" levels,just the wave form being written.
I am still vey new to OSX less than a year...
I have been a Mac OS 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 user for a while
and was using OS 9 for a few years....
I know we used to be abelto allocate more memory to a progam in OS 8 & 9 by using the get info command [apple]+ [I] but now in OSX there is now way to allocate the memory gain,or is there?

I alsohad this weird thing happen when I recorded Los Lobos in Albany OR
the samesortof glitchy noisesbut only in the right channel,digi noise,when I move the fire boxfromverticleto horizontal (fomin my back pack to on mu back pack) and also turned the gain down on channels 1& 2 (lower than I would have normally have my record levels set) the glitcheyness seemed to disapear???? may be?
pwer haps the hard drive in my ibook is too slow? (i think it'sonly 4500rpm,as opposed to my 7200rpm external firewire drive)
I have also notice when using the SPDIF in as the sync,I get some sort of strange digi noise too....

any ideas?


is there a better program?
is anyone using garage band withthe Firebox?
any luck?

thanx
again
you all are always so helpful!

I just wish I could select multiple outsin the mixer like NO radio buttons.
why can't I have outs 1 & 2 + the Spdif out going together,so I have two output feeds of the same mix or even alternative mixes? that would be super cool!

later
-- Ian

Ok
I thinkI answered my own problem...
got the digi sync to work
I was used to using my EgoSys WaveTerminal 2496 which has a builtin "on the fly" sample rate converter!
the firebox does not!
so when transfering a DAT younot only need to besure that the adio midi set up is set to the correct Khz (in one case 48k) and that when using Cubase that the project is set to 16 bit 48khz...
so...
I have yet to try this but it is possibly where the problems are in weird noises...???
if Cubase is not set to 24 bit,say its project set up is only set at 16bit then the firebox which is only 24 bit woun't record right in cubase...make sense?
anyone??
I know when I had problems I was actually tryinhg to sync to the firebox
but my cubase project wasset at 16 bit...a bitstream mis match. is thsi true?
so should I assume when using the firebox I always have to have cubase set to record in 24bit,unless using the SPDIF in sysnc to a 16 bit source?

I think this is right
any input?

thanx
but I now have successfully ued my fiirebox to transfer some old 16bit 48khz DAT masters with no glitches! whoooohooooo!

thanx
-- Ian

[groovey]

I just finally got myself a FireBox and my my I do like this thing... Been fooling around with it for two days now using my iBook G4/800 and everything seems to be well. And the audio comes out in such a nice quality! Why did I wait for so long... This thread has been quite useful. Thank you all.

[honhim]

Hi guys, I am new to firebox. I would really like to know if it can direct output 5.1 when playback DVD. What software for mounting the channel? It seems can seperate out pairs of channel but not for all 3 pairs at the same time. Thanks.

Regards,
honhim

[paulnajar]

Youn can only address the FireBox direct outs from the host program if it supports that. For DVD playback across 6 channels the dvd player software has to decode the AC3 or DTS stream first (very rare) and then send each channel to the various outputs. Addressing multiple outs is easy. On the Mac OSX I know of no dvd player SW that decodes the 5.1 streams. Perhaps Windows is different....

[honhim]

Thanks, I have tried in window. there is signal send to each of the channels. However, i have no idea to play all the channel at the same time. The firebox mixer is restricted to output 2 channels only, any other suggestions ?

[miaba]

Another firebox question: this unit is advertised to have two mic-pres and two line-ins. does this mean 4 tracks of simultanious recording or two?

[groovey]

It should mean 6, as it also has s/pdif i/o. Haven't tried that one yet, but those four you meant surely work without any problems at all.

[rickenbacker]

As it says on the PreSonus website: six inputs, 10 outputs simultaneously.

[Hearandnow]

I have one. It took me a lot longer than I expected to get a feel for it. I am running Logic Exress and the Cubase SE version that comes with the Firebox on a 2 GHz Dual G5 with OSX 10.4.3. The biggest problem I have come across so far is the need for a dedicated preamp. I run pretty hot electronic field production mics (Sennheiser 416T, Sennheiser Evolution Wireless, AKG C1000S) and I have to do pretty much everything in my power to beef up the signal. The Firebox comes with a plugin preamp called the Firebox Control that gives you 12db of gain boost, but it's a pretty noisy plugin. Overall I am pretty happy with the simple functionality of the Firebox, but internal preamps would have been worth another 100 bucks. Fortunately most of my use of the Firebox will be accepting a line out to a PSC DV Promix 3 field mixer which has a notoriously hot line out.
Hope this helps a little.

Ben Campbell
High Noon Productions
www.YourNextVideo.com