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

[entfred]

What is the quality of Logic compared to your previous ProTools?
Are you using Logic Pro?
I thought ProTools was the standard, though rather expensive?

I will be using a few Shure SM57s and have a cheap condenser
mic. Has anyone used a really expensive condenser mic with
Garage band on Firebox or some other preamp? Curious to what
it would sound like with really good hardware.

Does Logic provide a lot of advantages over Garageband?
It better for a thousand bucks!

I remember Pro Tools costing quite a bit, too, and that is just
for the scaled down consumer version.

[arvidtp]

Me too! goodbye pro tools with Mbox!

Man, Logic is more powerful than Pro Tools LE on many fronts including # audio tracks, MIDI stuff, notation, effects, processor efficiency, softsynths and overall flexibility. Also its more standards compliant and less buggy/fussy about your system setup because of that.

Pro Tools does do really well - really user friendly - on the strict audio editing part and is a standard for recording studio sessions because of that, which is why i am keeping mine around despite the fact I almost always use logic now.

And i'd say logic offers a lot that Garageband doesnt!

This post has been edited by arvidtp: Fri 3 Jun 2005, 22:39

[SadPandas]

I have been using the firebox for about a week now and I really enjoy the sound and how easy it is to use. Im using it for simple tsks like recording my s.g. through the pod x.t. pro to work out some parts for some projects. The sound quality is fine for what im using it for and the design is nice. I have been wanting to update to tiger but have held out till i hear more people having success with it. Anyone still having problems with their units? Problematic units anyone ?

[ArchivalAudio]

Hi
my life has gotten busy...
My unit is or seems to ber funtctioning very good , excepttill have not tried the SPDFi option.... with my replacement unit.
I wanted to mention my battery experience, since
arvidtp said he only got about 45 minutes of recording powering 1 phantom powered mic with his powerbook and the firebox

I did want to say that when I recorded in the field my RODE NT5's Phantom powered, battery only, I got a about 3 hours of recording and my batery in my 12" ibook was at 26% when I stoped, one band played for about 50 minutes and the other about 2 hours ... in between I just closed my ibook up to put it into "sleep" mode which was for about 15 minutes. I was using cubase LE that came shipped with it, and had pre set up new projects for both bands while I was at home.
I should state that I did Power the Firebox with an external 12v Sealed Lead Acid 3.4 amp hour (powersonic) battery. this I had originally gotten for my Denecke AD-20 ? PS-s combo. This way the firebox is not being bus powered while the battery itself is quite heavy, it saves on laptop battery power.

that my latest
addition

question?
I am stiil new to laptop recording
when recording like this my ibook my screen went inot the sleep mode, it went black, at one point I freaked out and thought it had shut down, and tried to restart it, bad!
then I had to restart recording. this happened again, and I noticed I just had to use the trackpad to "wake" it up, and it seem like it was still recording , with no glitches. is that true?
I thought I had switched my ibook to Never sleep and never power down the Hard drive and screen saver off.
Can one record , glitch free, if the computer goes into sleep mode?

thanx
-- Ian

This post has been edited by ArchivalAudio: Sun 12 Jun 2005, 19:36

[arvidtp]

Thats a cool idea to power the firebox with a battery. Any special precautions you have to take when choosing/using a battery for something like this?

There are two modes of sleep: Display sleep and full sleep. Display sleep just shuts down your display, and everything else keeps running - theoretically fine for audio recording - except with some gear. Digidesign hardware/Pro Tools for instance will often crap out if display sleep activates. I have not tried display sleep with the Firbox-logic combo while recording - i am so conditioned from my Mbox to be afraid of sleep! but i assume the firebox should keep recording fine.

Full sleep shuts down everything except (to the best of my knowledge) the RAM, which is maintained in a static state. You cant record audio when this sleep goes on, as your Processor and HD are not running You can set the different timings in System Prefs > Energy Saver.

Some more comments about my Firebox experience:

I was wrong, the "firebox control" boost buttons do take effect immediately. Dunno if something was weird first time i tried. It has been giving me trouble lately with CPU usage however - sucking up like 7.5% of my CPU for no apparent reason while running in the background. But the good thing is you dont have to run the control utility all the time. You can just launch it to make the settings work and the quit it. Matter of fact i have it set to do that with an applescript whenever i log in. I hope Presonus can fix this little annoyance sometime in the future.

Also I got a loss of sync today after sleeping my powerbook with logic and Jack still running and connected to the firebox. Upon waking the firebox claimed to be in sync (blue LED) and played back fine, but input was crackly coming through the software. A trip to AudioMIDI setup with a change and change back of sample rate quickly fixed this though.

Other than that the box continues to function very well. Tried out the instrument inputs with my bass - sound great to my ears (the sound qualtiy, not the quality of the bass playing since i was playing it )

peace.

[ArchivalAudio]

arvidtp
thanx for you indepth info...always good posts!
as far as the battery thing....
SLA (sealedLead Acid) batteries are the way to go to power field units!
they are heavy= read FULLOF LEAD!
NO Memory!and can be charge at any point in the discharge process...
Precations?
well an inline fuse is always a good idea,
but if youlookat the back of the Firebox its states: "12 to 24 VDC (Volts Direct Current) or115 VAC (Volts Alternating Current) 10watts... the wall wart adaptor supplies 16 voltsAC ? go figure?
but anyway I have a POWERSONIC PS-1230 which is a 12Volt 3.4 Amphour Battery and a PowerSonic 12volt -300MA "float"charger model# PSC-12300A
the float is useful so as to not overcharge the battery, and when full voltage is reached it "floats"the charge there, not adding any extra voltage.
Power Sonic Batteries have a good reputation in the SLA catogory this is the batteries that Eco-Charge uses. Panasonic make good SLA batteries too,(i have a couple of these 6V SLA's leftover from my ol Sont D-7 DAT) but Powersonics chargers are very good too and reasonably priced.
I think I got mine both from Portable Power systems...
for my ol denecke 20bit AD20 and dual Phanton PS-2 a fewyear back....

using the SLA to power the firebox in the field help increase battery life in your laptop,as it is the same as plugging in the wall Wart that came with the unit...it is now NOT being powered via the 6-pin firewire but by the "external" power supply ...
I have not tested the Firebox with this SLA set up for duration, before degradation, but I do know
that using ths battery for the Denecke AD-20and the PS-2 Phantomsupply I caould get over 23 hour of operation Power my RODE NT5's (that appaerntly draw more current than most 48v phantom powwered mics!) before the battery dropped below normal operating voltage, which for the dencke PS-2 was like 8 volts.... I think?
the fire box is sure to be more of a power hog,but this way you can save the battery of you Power/ ibook
..

does that help?

I hope
thanx
-- Ian

This post has been edited by ArchivalAudio: Thu 16 Jun 2005, 07:24

[arvidtp]

thats cool.

Ok, so here;s the story. Getting a bit frustrated with the firebox for the 1st time. Trying to use it to perform with in MaxMSP. Seems like patches that the internal card can handle the firebox keeps popping and clicking on. I have to go from 128 samples buffer and signal vector size, to 256for both for it to work smoothly. and even then there is a click every few minutes (not bad, but there all the same). I keep getting these CPU spikes. activity monitor shows kernel_task spikes in CPU up to like 95% every once in a while while the firebox is plugged in. None when its not. Whats up? i heard something about this from someone else. They said Presonus or maybe apple claimed it was normal and should not affect operation. But it does - my pops are usually synced with such spikes, occurring about every 15 sec when at 128 samples buffer. It cant be normal for firewire audio interfaces. I dont like it for normal operation of the computer either (when crunching big files, who wants an unused audio interface hogging CPU? arrrrg

I still get pops every once in while when on 256 samps even though MaxMSP reports my CPU usage as down to about 34%!(activity monitor showed much higher, around 60-90% for MaxMSP) My internal card runs with no discernible clicks/pops at up to about 55-60% processor load in Max at 128 samps buffer normally. Its these darn CPU spikes belonging to the system that happen every once in a while with the Firebox plugged in. I tried everything i could think of to turn off, not turn on, restarted several times...

So then i tried Logic 6.4 - adding spacedesigners until it choked - i got to i think 5 and logic reported nearly maxed CPU (music have been 90-100%, but there's no numerical display in logic) but the firebox did not click or pop at all, at 128 samples buffer. What the heck? Of course it clicked (choked) when i added the 6th, but the 5th was definitely showing 90-100% usage with no pops. Is there a difference in the way that MaxMSP and Logic access a coreaudio device that makes this disparity in popping/clicking? Or is Logic's CPU meter just wussy? But no... the 6th space designer REALLY choked the machine (unresponsive for about 15 sec) so that could not be it...

This is starting to anger me - its like i can only use half the processor power i did before in MaxMSP if i still want decent latency using the Firebox. Would a MOTU or something like that be better? and RME? Cause i could (very reluctantly) i think still return the firebox until the end of the week... I really like it with logic ad stuff, but its not really cutting it in Max right now and I dont know why.

Anyone have any ideas?

This post has been edited by arvidtp: Wed 22 Jun 2005, 06:07

[entfred]

I tried changing the "optimization" settings, as shown below, but
the right click did not work. Has anyone tried this? I am using a
Microsoft Mouse.

FIREBOX CONTROL PANEL ADVANCED SETTINGS:
You can “Right Click” on the FIREBOX control panel icon to select between three
different computer optimization settings. These settings optimize the buffers and audio
streaming settings based on the speed of your processor. If you are experiencing
audio drop outs, it is recommended that you select a lower CPU setting.

I got some pops at first with the firebox hooked up to the Mac Mini,
but then they mysteriously went away.

I was able to record some guitar tracks using Garageband and
it seems to sound fine. I think the 1GB Ram in the Mac was
well worth the extra $$.

I still like using my Fostex VF08 better than a computer for
recording, but I am hoping the higher sampling rate will
ultimately give me better recording quality on the Mac, once I
get the hang of this.

Has anybody compared to quality of the Mac/Firebox recording combo
with a stand alone hard disk or Ram based recording box? From what
I read, you pay a lot for good digital to analog converters.

[twits celso]

The "right click" settings for the Firebox are PC only, not for Mac.

My Firebox sometimes hogs CPU also, but I've found that it's actually usually the Firebox Mixer software that's doing it, not the Box itself.

[khvt]

Twits,

How do you then change the software mixer to be less hoggish?

khvt