Decided to get the firebox next week

[studiomaster]

Get a different interface then...?

 

[tone_aot]

Alright. Sorry about the back and forth decisions but i'm gonna get the firebox. What is a good firewire card to get from newegg.com? They have several for great prices.

 

[Ethan Winer]

> I already have an m-audio audiophile 2496 <

Then you're all set. Spend your money on something you really need. For example, how's your monitoring?

> I was just thinking i might get better overall quality <

Why do you think the Firebox sounds better than the Audiophile? Both have a frequency response that's plenty accurate, with distortion and other artifacts well below what's audible. I would expect both sound cards to sound exactly the same. In fact, if they don't sound identical, one of them is broken!

--Ethan

 

[dgatwood]

I was also very much looking at a Firebox, until I read deep enough into the manual and FAQ and realised that unlike the Firepod, you cannot connect multiple Fireboxes to the computer at the same time.

Can you set the sync to external? If so, just buy a Mac and you'll never have to worry about this problem again. Set one to external, use S/PDIF to drive it with the other one. Usually, the inability to chain multiple devices is a Windows driver limitation, not anything fundamental about the hardware.

 

[dgatwood]

If you don't already have the FireBox and you don't already have a Firewire card, I wouldn't get either. There's nothing wrong with a Firebox! I use one with my Dell laptop and it's great. But the whole point of a Firewire or USB sound card is to avoid having to open up a computer to install a conventional sound card. If you have to dig around inside the computer anyway you should consider a standard PCI sound card. The only exception might be if you also need the Firebox's built-in mike preamps.

No, the advantage to an external interface is that it will still be useful in five years. FireWire is an external bus, which means that you can easily adapt it to new hardware almost universally. PCI is an internal bus, which means that the cost to adapt it for machines that don't have PCI is horrendous.

PCI is a deprecated standard. The Mac platform already dropped it across the board, and other PC vendors are also transitioning away from it. Over the next few years, we'll see PCI Express (PCIe) completely replace PCI. As that happens, the price of maintaining PCI slots in your motherboard will creep upwards until you realize that you've spent more on keeping that old PCI audio card working than you would have spent buying a new FireWire interface.

Further, if you ever move to a laptop, you won't be able to use the PCI interface, but that FireWire interface will work just fine.

In general, if you can buy a PCI audio card for not much more than a FireWire card, buy the PCI card, as your next machine will probably have FireWire and you won't use either one in it. Otherwise, buy the FireWire card and buy an interface that you'll still be able to use with your next computer.

 

[gcapel]

I own a RME mulitface and it's rock solid. If you get the bundle (interface and pci card) its around 800.00 or 900.00 bucks.

Just thought I'd throw it in the mix here.

 

[tone_aot]

> I already have an m-audio audiophile 2496 <

Then you're all set. Spend your money on something you really need. For example, how's your monitoring?

> I was just thinking i might get better overall quality <

Why do you think the Firebox sounds better than the Audiophile? Both have a frequency response that's plenty accurate, with distortion and other artifacts well below what's audible. I would expect both sound cards to sound exactly the same. In fact, if they don't sound identical, one of them is broken!

--Ethan

Okay! You just saved me $300 bucks! One of the main reasons i though it would give better sound is because it has balanced ins/outs. I still would kinda like a card with that. I might just go for the echo mia midi, which is basically the audiophile with balanced ins and outs. I heard the echo mia sounds better tho, even tho better is pretty subjective.

 

[Monkey Allen]

My mobo had built in firewire sockets, so didn't have to worry.