Firepod pre's

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skiz

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So i own a firepod and do all my recording thru it. Its the only unit ive ever owned and my first venture into recording has been pretty cool. I hear every1 on here talkin bout all these expensive (and no doubt very nice) preamps. I just wanted to know, how nice are the pre's on my firepod? How do they compare to the pre's out there?
 
Yeah, until your recording and mixing techniques become very advanced, preamps shouldn't affect the quality of what you end up with.
 
I think they are good value for money, although I've heard they are not good at getting smooth mids when recording distorted guitars.

Definitely good enough for the home recorder.

Eck
 
They are great for drums and some guitars, even acoustic but I have been trying different preamps lately just for a change. To me I think the Firepod's preamps do a nice job and are clean.
 
Firepod Pre's, FMR-RNP, A Designs Pacifica

I have an FMR RNP preamp (approx $475 - two channel) and just recently bought a rather expensive A Designs Pacifica (retail 2K+ - two channel). In my opinion, you might be better off putting your money into a really good microphone(s) than upgrading to the expensive preamps. I have noticed huge differences with microphones, less with the preamps.
With all tests below, I was using Grado headphones ($180.00) to listen to the differences.
I just got the A Designs two weeks ago, so these tests are still ongoing..

Here are my observations using an AT4047 mic (approx $500.00) on vocals.
The Firepod had the 'darkest' tone of the three preamps. I actually quite liked that..not a bad thing in this digital age. It was less detailed on the high end and had noticeably more bass. It was surprisingly up front and 'present', and beat the FMR on this account. However, on fast transients and peaks, it seemed less able to tame the peaks, so that the sound was a tad harsh (same with the FMR). A small bit of compression would help with this. The Firepod preamps had the least amount of 'air' and spaciousness of the lot. I don't want to say that they sounded 'dead', but definitely 'deader' than the others. This is perhaps the biggest difference. I haven't done overhead drum comparisons among the three preamps, but my guess would be that the FMR and A Designs will pick up room ambience better.
Then again..am I going to notice this difference after a bunch of reverb, EQ etc is added to the final mix? Maybe.. maybe not.

I must say that with lower volume vocals and with a Jim Morrison/Lou Reed-ish delivery, the A Designs just smoked the other two.. the vocals completely engulfed the headphones..With louder 'rock' vocals, the differences were less dramatic.

With bass guitar using Direct Inputs, again, the Firepod had noticebly more bass. However, it was not as tight.. slightly 'muddy'.. but not unpleasant in any way. The A Designs was more focussed and tight. The FMR was somewhere in between the two.

With a drum machine going direct in, again.. the only really noticeable difference to me was the low end.

I did a quick test of electric guitar going direct in, and this was the hardest to distinguish.. however, I really need to mic a guitar (acoustic and electric).

The Firepod costs $300-500, has 8 mic preamps, a bunch of other features, and Digital to Analog (and vice versa) converters all in one package. You can spend 2K on JUST A/D converters. It is quite possible, and probably true, that my complete chain from input to computer is not up to par with the quality of the A Designs preamp. Thus, it can only improve my sound so much. Right now, I would say that it is not two thousand dollars 'better' than the Firepod preamps...

As a note..our band recorded our first CD using just the Firepod and FMR. The engineer had nothing bad to say about the wav files. When I told him I saw a good deal on an API 3124 on Ebay, he said don't bother.. your tracks sound great the way they are (So what do I do.. buy an A designs :)...

I am slowly learning, as with other home recording enthusiasts, that the road to the big studio sound is a long and expensive one.. and one that I will most likely give up on.

Hope that helps..
K
 
Spotter, do you have any samples of your recordings with the pod to share with us? BTW, Welcome aboard! :)
 
Well.. our band has a MySpace site, but I would hardly call that 'Firepod samples' after all of the mixing down, effects, mastering etc...OK.. shameless band plug (myspace/radioshark)... :)
As for the samples that I mentioned in my previous post, I don't really know where to post them, so not sure what to do about that.
 
Good stuff! Congrats!

Do you mind sharing signal chain used for that session? Drums sounds pretty god!

Thanks!
 
Julian.. yes, the drums sound almost TOO good, don't they :) ahem.. OK.. so the engineer did have something to say about our files.. "Mic the toms next time". We only mic'd the kick, snare and two overheads when we did the songs. The engineer ended up putting triggers on the tom hits and used tom samples from his bank of drum samples to give it a fuller sound. The snare got the occasional help from samples, but the kick was untouched. Then again, there are only a few 'tom-heavy' songs, so most of the tracks were natural. We were limited by mic inputs at the time of recording. I now have two firepods, so we will have plenty of tracks to mic all of the drums.
The signal chain was as follows:
Overheads: Two AT4051 mics >> FMR RNP >> Firepod
Kick: Audix D6 >> FMR RNC (approx 3:1 comp) >> Firepod
Snare: SM57 >> FMR RNC (same as kick) >> Firepod
We brought the samples to a local studio. The mixdown went through a Trident (80?) board. I can't remember what limiters and compressors they used, but they really brought out the kick and bass guitar.. much more than I could do in my meager studio.
Funny though.. the final mix was definitely fuller sounding and more cohesive, but it also sounds darker, with the highs somewhat squashed.. I'm not dissapointed, but will take that into consideration the next time we do this.
 
you guys compressed raw mic signals before the preamp even touched the signals? i always thought that was a big no go. care to comment?

btw, the kick and snare sound great.
 
Yeah.. I know.. I've heard that you should not compress before going in, but it 'seems'.. and I am being very subjective.. no real proof.. that the Firepod Pre's don't handle peaks as well as my other preamps, so I added a bit of compression to roll them off.
 
Spotter said:
Yeah.. I know.. I've heard that you should not compress before going in, but it 'seems'.. and I am being very subjective.. no real proof.. that the Firepod Pre's don't handle peaks as well as my other preamps, so I added a bit of compression to roll them off.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "handle peaks"?

If you are getting up near -3dBFS peak, then yeah, like nearly any other sub 500 dollar a channel analog to digital converter out there, they get a little sketchy, but why in the world would you be recording that loud on a 24 bit system anyway?
 
Well, as I mentioned, there is nothing scientific about my methods, but in an earlier post on this thread, I mentioned that I thought the Firepod Pre's sounded a bit harsh when the vocals spiked/peaked or 'pushed the limits', but the other pre's didn't come across that way. I figured some mild compression couldn't hurt on the input signal for kick and snare. It didn't seem to affect the final drum sound, but I probably won't make it a habit.
 
I figure any mid to low price compressor operated that far out of its range is going to make as much trouble as the mic pres operated that far out of their range.
 
Good

Im happy with the pre's in the Firepod, although i had one xlr channel go down in my older model. My father took a look inside and found the relay on the 2nd channel was clicking in and out. Some re soldering solved the problem. But he wasn't impressed with the inside of the Pod at all!
 
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