Firepod/newb question...

[layneness]

So I've been eyeballing the Presonus Firepod as a means of doing a sort of mixerless setup with that and my laptop. I mainly wanted to get it to do drum tracking, but also to serve as a basic preamp.

I've been trying to research it, and I've noticed that the 8 front inputs are roughly the size of XLR inputs, but they don't actually look like them. I'm not very savvy with gear. Obviously the drum mics are XRL and so I was wondering what the deal is, and if I can't rig my 7 drum mics to it by way of XLR then how would I? what item would i get to, essentially, record drums onto my laptop?

 

[KingDiamond]

The male XLR should just plug into any of the eight inputs on the front of the firepod. The connectors on the front panel allow you to use XLR or 1/4" phono type plugs (TS/TRS).

 

[dgatwood]

So I've been eyeballing the Presonus Firepod as a means of doing a sort of mixerless setup with that and my laptop. I mainly wanted to get it to do drum tracking, but also to serve as a basic preamp.

I've been trying to research it, and I've noticed that the 8 front inputs are roughly the size of XLR inputs, but they don't actually look like them. I'm not very savvy with gear. Obviously the drum mics are XRL and so I was wondering what the deal is, and if I can't rig my 7 drum mics to it by way of XLR then how would I? what item would i get to, essentially, record drums onto my laptop?

They are Neutrik combo connectors. The first two are XLR/TS with instrument pres on the front, while the other six are XLR/TRS with balanced line inputs on the front. The first two channels also have balanced line sends from the preamps and balanced line returns back to the rest of the hardware so you can use a normalling patchbay for the equivalent of front-panel line inputs.