Any luck with Presonus?

B

Bisson820

New member
Hey guys, just wanted to gather some information on Presonus and try to find someone familiar with this company.

I'm looking to buy an interface from Presonus and would like to ask some questions.

So if you have experience or knowledge about Presonus interfaces please let me know.

please dont answer with things such as "go read about it, or, do some research" since... that is what im doing haha... but you can only trust so much of what you read which is why i'd like to someone that has experience or knowledge about the product.

some questions are...

Do they make respectible products, are they known for being shitty? is it like.. "Stay away from them" or is it a "yea they make some pretty good stuff.."

are there any consistent known issues?

not only does it allow decent quality, are there a lot of technical problems with them?


Thanks!

Tyler
 
I use a presonus firepod, the precursor to the firestudio.

I have not experienced any problems with it and it suits me fine.

Installing a firepod on XP was one of the easiest instals I've ever had to do. But I believe the firestudio is a bit trickier.
 
I won the Firepod to, it has served me fine, easy to install both on pc and mac (mac needed no install) works witthout glitches and ect.
Pre's in it sounds pretty decent, great bang for the buck.

I sell quite a lot of Presnous gear in my store and I found them to be more stable than a lot of the competition.
 
how's this:

I bought a $150 BlueTube stereo mic pre to use while my $2500 Jensen pre was being repaired. I was surprised at how good it was. It was totally useable, not a piece of junk.

One day I blew it up by plugging in the wrong ac adapter. It was several years out of warranty.

Can you believe this: I had to pay to ship it back to Presonus, but for that they replaced the pc board, gave me a new ac adapter and shipped it back to Hawaii - all for free, all out of warranty.
:eek:

John Hardy, who made the Jensen pre, did the same thing - out of warranty, free parts, free labor and free shipping.
:eek::eek: (that's two in a row)

So to me, they are both #1 companies... now don't get me started about M-Audio... :mad:

I've never had any other companies do that for me and I will advertise for free for both of them forever!
 
I have a firebox, I use it for live recording to a laptop and in the studio to capture stereo, it's not my main recording device but it sounds great and I have had no trouble with it.

I also had a Blue Max compressor a while back, I was not sure I liked it, there was nothing wrong with how it worked it was just personal choice, so I sold it to a friend that wanted a compressor for his home studio. However, I listen to an old CD I produced the other day and I remembered that I had used the blue max on the upright piano, the piano sound great so I am in the market for a blue max again.

So positive experiences.

Alan
 
This is a bit larger in scale than what you're looking at, but we just moved to a a new upgraded studio about 6 months ago, and we're using the Presonous StudioLive 16 digital mixer and have been very happy with the sound of it's inputs as well as it's operation.

G.
 
I have 3 Firestudio 26x26's and a Digimax FS. I use two of the Firestudios at the two houses (anyone wanna buy a house?) that I own and work between (leave one at each place). The Digimax rides in an 8 space rack with one of the Firestudios for my rare location recording projects. The other Firestudio will probably be put on the market when I have time to properly verify complete operation of the unit. Overall, as you can probably tell, I am pleased with the units, but, in my last experience, their service department can be very unresponsive (don't even bother to try to call them because they don't bother to answer the phone).
 
I also use a Presonus Firebox.

I have very limited experience working with competing products, so I can't really say much about how it stacks up, but I can offer the following:

- it was easy to install, and has been reliable for the 18 months I've had it
- I'm quite happy with the results I get with it, generally
- main beef: preamps don't have enough clean gain to get a good sound from a dynamic mic (i.e. Shure 57) when used on vocals or acoustic guitar (guitar amp is no problem)
 
this has all been very helpful, thank you so much!

Mattdee, what did you do about the sm57 problem? im guessing you got some preamps. what did you get and how has it worked for you?
 
The problems people talk about with DICE II chipsets in the Firestudio line are real, I can attest from personal experience with a Firestudio 2626.

They seem to mostly happen with laptops, and when using Sonar in particular. I've been trying to stamp them out for the better part of a year and though I have something that operates reasonably well, it's still not 100% yet. It appears that these problems are diminished (or gone completely) when using other DAW software.

Based on the research I've done, it appears that both Cakewalk and Presonus are aware of the problems that some users are seeing, but neither seems to have done anything to definitely eliminate them. Also, don't believe the rumors that neither company can be bothered to solve the problem: both have released several updates to their respective products trying to solve the issue.

If you're gonna go Presonus, make sure you're following all the compatibility guidelines that Presonus has released (a quick search on the Presonus forums will turn them up). It's really a shame that the drivers have such a bad reputation: I really like the hardware on my Firestudio and the form factor is about 99% perfect in my opinion.
 
Bisson820 said:
this has all been very helpful, thank you so much!

Mattdee, what did you do about the sm57 problem? im guessing you got some preamps. what did you get and how has it worked for you?
Click to expand...

Sorry to jump in here. I don't know whether the internal preamps in the firebox are different to those in the firepod . . . but my guess is that they are not (but I concede they might be different).

I have not experienced the "sm57 problem" that Mattdee has. When I've used dynamic mikes I've been able to get a good clean signal from them. I note that getting this is not a problem when miking a guitar amp, but it is for vocals or guitar. This suggests that these latter sources may be very quiet.

But my main reason for jumping in is that I don't think it is the best idea to get more technology to fix a problem that should not be there in the first place. You should be able to get good, clean signals from the interface and its internal preamps from the start. If you aren't, then you need to examine why before throwing an external preamp into the mix.
 
I'm hoping that "57" was a typo and that it should have read "7b" instead ;). That would make a little more sense. There's a lot of inexpensive preamps that have problems providing enough gain to many LDDs like the 7b. But the57 should not be an issue.

We have the Presonus XMAX preamps in the StudioLive, which are the same ones they have in the Firestudio, and regularly use SM-57s, Audix i5s and Sennheiser 421s through them for various purposes with no problems.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
This is a bit larger in scale than what you're looking at, but we just moved to a a new upgraded studio about 6 months ago, and we're using the Presonous StudioLive 16 digital mixer and have been very happy with the sound of it's inputs as well as it's operation.

G.
Click to expand...
I have the Digimax as an add-on to my MOTU piece and have been quite happy with it. The StudioLive is the coolest piece of gear I have seen in a while. I think one of the guys at work is planning on getting one. The rest of us are insanely jealous.
 
thebigcheese said:
I have the Digimax as an add-on to my MOTU piece and have been quite happy with it. The StudioLive is the coolest piece of gear I have seen in a while. I think one of the guys at work is planning on getting one. The rest of us are insanely jealous.
Click to expand...
It really makes for a great live mixer in it's design too (hence the name :D). Next season we're going to be adding live sound services to out Product service offerings, and may wind up using that board (or a second one) for that purpose.

The one thing I miss in the StudioLive is the lack of DAW control, but for the cheap price it's not that unexpected.

G.
 
Thanks guys! glad to hear there are contrary points of view because i was getting worried.

what was said about the SM7b is "concerning".. because im planning on getting one.

have you had experience with the sm7b needing a preamp? if so what did you use?

Also i was looking at getting a TLM 103.... preamp?

(as you can tell, preamps are on my "learn list")
 
Bisson820 said:
what was said about the SM7b is "concerning".. because im planning on getting one.
Click to expand...
The 7b is a great mic, I don't want to discourage you there.

The only caveat with the 7b (and a few other other LDDs) is that it's a relatively low output mic as compared to the pack average. All that means is that if you have a preamp that doesn't provide all that much maximum gain - as many of the econo-pres tend not to do - you may find yourself disappointed in the (relatively speaking) lower recording levels you get from that signal chain as compared to other mic/pre combinations.

Don't hold that against the microphone; some of the best 4-digit ribbon mics out there will give you the same problem with a cheap preamp. It's a matter of getting the right preamp.

G.
 
Bisson820 said:
any idea of what preamp works for you?
Click to expand...
There are a thousand preamps that "work for me". That's like asking what one microphone "works for me". A lot depends upon what mic I'm talking about and what my preamp budget is.

But just one example of a nice all-around preamp that isn't entry-level and isn't a $2000 boutique job either would be a Grace m101.

G.
 
Bisson820 said:
Thanks guys! glad to hear there are contrary points of view because i was getting worried.

what was said about the SM7b is "concerning".. because im planning on getting one.

have you had experience with the sm7b needing a preamp? if so what did you use?

Also i was looking at getting a TLM 103.... preamp?

(as you can tell, preamps are on my "learn list")
Click to expand...
All mics need preamps. Preamps just bring mic level up to line level, but they all have their own unique character (just like mics).

I've noticed a lot of Shure mics tend to be fairly low output. Before I broke my 57, I always had to crank the preamp to get it about the same level as the others. When you are looking at preamps, just look at the specs to see how much gain you'll be able to get from it. Well, look at reviews, too, I'm just saying that if you're concerned about the signal level from the mic, look at the amount of gain you'll get. M-Audio's Fast Track interfaces are not likely to be enough; I sold both that mic (the 7b) and a Fast Track to a guy once and he was freaking out because it came out so quiet.

If you're recording digitally, which most of us are these days, the level isn't that much of a problem. Making it louder in your DAW doesn't really add any additional noise.
 
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