Firebox Woes

[lppier]

Hi I'm in a dilemma, I just got a Presonus Firebox, but I am unable to use it with the 4-pin firewire jack on my Acer 4920 laptop with Vista.
Basically I have 2 choices :

1) Return the Firebox, in exchange for a M-audio Fast Track Pro which doesn't use Firewire. (usb 1.1) My concern here is whether I will be sacrificing audio quality or opening up a new can of worms with the Fast Track Pro. I've heard from forums that the Presonus Firewire's sound is supposed to be better than the Fast Track Pro. Will it be noticeable?

2) Keep the Firebox, get a firewire expresscard expansion for my laptop (which costs 80 bucks), plug it into the expresscard slot on my laptop, plug in the firebox and pray it works.

Please advise, thanks.

 

[Minion]

I maybe be wrong but I think you should be able to use it with a 4 pin FW Port if you also use a seperate power supply for the Firebox....I believe the extra 2 pins on the 6 pin fw port supplies the Power to the unit but being a Laptop there isn"t any extra power available to power an external device so they usually use 4 pin FW Ports....

So you should be able to get a Firewire Hub with an external power supply...

I believe the "Fast track" would be a BIG step down in quality pluss it is USB 1.1 which has problems of it"s own....

Cheers

 

[Wazzacorbett]

I maybe be wrong but I think you should be able to use it with a 4 pin FW Port if you also use a seperate power supply for the Firebox....I believe the extra 2 pins on the 6 pin fw port supplies the Power to the unit but being a Laptop there isn"t any extra power available to power an external device so they usually use 4 pin FW Ports....

So you should be able to get a Firewire Hub with an external power supply...

I believe the "Fast track" would be a BIG step down in quality pluss it is USB 1.1 which has problems of it"s own....

Cheers

I agree, keep the firebox its a great unit, if you have to spend 80 bucks to get it up and running it will be money well spent!. did your firebox come with a power adapter?, they did when i bought mine a couple of years back.

 

[dgatwood]

1) Return the Firebox, in exchange for a M-audio Fast Track Pro which doesn't use Firewire. (usb 1.1) My concern here is whether I will be sacrificing audio quality or opening up a new can of worms with the Fast Track Pro. I've heard from forums that the Presonus Firewire's sound is supposed to be better than the Fast Track Pro. Will it be noticeable?

2) Keep the Firebox, get a firewire expresscard expansion for my laptop (which costs 80 bucks), plug it into the expresscard slot on my laptop, plug in the firebox and pray it works.

3. Use the provided power supply and a 6-to-4 FireWire cable like you use for hooking a camcorder up to a 6-pin computer. Last I looked, you could buy them at Wal-Mart, though they're probably a lot cheaper online or at a real electronics store. Either way, not a big deal.

If you're trying to use this portably (where you don't have a wall to plug in the power supply), then I'd suggest trying one of those cables that comes (or at least used to come) with some portable hard drives that allows you to power a FireWire hard drive off of a USB connector. It has a 4-pin FireWire plug, a 6-pin FireWire jack, and a USB plug. I don't know where you can buy those cables, though. If you don't mind cutting up some cables, you could probably make one out of an iPod USB/FireWire Y cable and a camera cable for the four-pin FireWire connector....