Presonus Firebox Or Edirol Fa66, The freak odyssey Options

[albertors]

Hello everybody,
I've been a random lurker here from time to time and I must say I got so much knoweldge I had to free up some space in my brain to make room for it.

Very interesting threads and opinions/reviews, especially (for the these days) the one about the Firebox.

I have a Powerbook 1.67Ghz 1Gb Ram with 2 Firewire800 drives connected (7200rpm and all that jazz) and Logic Pro 7.1 on Mac OS X 10.4.2

I was looking for a low budget audio card that works in this environment of mine and I ended up choosing between the Edirol FA66 and the Presonus Firebox.

The FA66 is priced 320 euros here and the Firebox is 420.

I noticed quite a bunch of people had problems with the Firebox: click/pops, syncing, midi etc. and I was wondering what could happen with my system and that audiocard.

Both of those I mentioned above are class compliant no-drivers required but the FA66 seems a little more reliable, although no real reviews have been made yet.

Bigger issue with the FA66 for me would be to have 1 mic pre that isn't mic/line switchable, while it seems that both pres on the Firebox are mic/line capable.

This said..I would love to know what you people think about these audio cards..what's your latest experience? I know posts like these are a pain in the back and I read as much as I could about these two cards before posting, but I guess there might be an update from some you in this summer time.

Is there anything I should be aware of, any behind-the-curtains ghost in these machines?

Thanks a lot in advance for this and the past knowledge-share I had so much interest and fun diving in!

a|b

[arvidtp]

I would go with the firebox - i like mine. The problems that some mention are really no big deal. I run mine fine doing stuff on my powerbook 1.25GHz in panther. I use Logic 6.4 Pro and Max.

The only problem with the firebox is the cpu spikes it causes can lead to pops/clicks in some software on machines like ours (like not G5s). This generally does not happen in Logic, just in MaxMSP for me. I solved it though by using ProcessWizard to renice apps - make MaxMSP the most important and the Dock the least. That does it for me - works great. And the firebox has never failed me or given any trouble in any live situation or field recording i've used it for. Thats my two cents. peace

[albertors]

Thanks Arvidtp,
I read your reports and opinions about the Firebox very carefully, thanks for sharing all those details: to me they've been definitely useful.

I must say I feel more inclined to get a Firebox, we'll see I'll probably order it these days, then I shall add more feedback so that others can benefit