Need help deciding on a moblie interface

[20Hertz]

Hi all,

First time poster. I was hoping I could get some advice on purchasing a new recording interface for use with a laptop. At this point all i'm looking to do with it is record my band's rehearsals and shows (when they start happening). I have a Mackie 1402VLZ->Echo Mia at home in my pc that I use for my own project stuff, and when we record demos or anything more I prefer to do it in a studio.

So I've kind of narrowed it down to these two, based on features and reputation for good sounding pres.

Presonus Audiobox
can't post urls because I'm new :/

E-Mu Tracker Pre
can't post urls because I'm new :/

A couple of questions I have:

First of all does anyone have experience with the tracker pre? It seems to be very new and I can't find any reviews of it except for this one, which concludes well after some scary looking THD graphs which I admit I don't understand..

can't post urls because I'm new but it's at Audiofanzine.comm



The cons I can see are:

Audiobox:
-reviews often complain of touchy pres with big lumps in the gain depending on the mic used
-limited to 48K sample rate, although I'm not sure that's that big of a deal...from my understanding bit depth is much more important for general sound quality...not trying to start a war, btw.
-no line inputs

E-Mu Pre:
-brand new, not many reviews
-no midi (not a huge problem but I was looking forward to not having to buy another midi interface to replace my non-vista compatible old one


Both seem to have the basics of what I want (two simultaneous channels, phantom power, good pres, decent DACs, work with Vista and OSX). It would seem that either of them will do just fine with my stated use. Another question I'm wondering about is whether technology has increased enough in the last few years that I should possibly be looking in the $200-300 range with the idea using whatever I buy as my primary interface instead of just a mobile solution.

Ok I realize I asked about 100 questions. Bad first time post behavior. Sorry and thanks in advance for any sage advice you all can give.

Chris

 

[20Hertz]

I just realized I have slightly more money than I thought, so now the question might be a different one

If I'm looking to spend more like 2-$300 (with the idea of having it serve as my primary interface, as well as my mobile interface), what would folks recommend. I like the looks of the Presonus Firebox, and have heard good things about it..

 

[dgatwood]

I just realized I have slightly more money than I thought, so now the question might be a different one

If I'm looking to spend more like 2-$300 (with the idea of having it serve as my primary interface, as well as my mobile interface), what would folks recommend. I like the looks of the Presonus Firebox, and have heard good things about it..

For mobile use, I would not recommend the Firebox. It (along with, AFAIK, the other bus-powered Presonus interface whose name escapes me) has a flaw in its power supply design that causes it to draw more inrush current than the FireWire specification allows. Computers that fully implement the FireWire 1394b spec (including all Macs built in the past two or three years) won't power the things up unless you use an external wall-wart power supply.

While this may not be a problem for your current machine (depending on the machine), there's a real risk that you might buy a new laptop one day and find that the FireBox is no longer usable in a mobile fashion. Since you indicated that mobility is important, I would strongly advise you to steer clear of ALL Presonus interfaces. They are not suitable for mobile use until this problem is corrected, and they have stated categorically that they do not intend to ever fix it....

 

[20Hertz]

hmm good to know, but wouldn't using the included wall wart take care of that problem?

 

[20Hertz]

so anyone have a suggestion for a better (than the firebox) ~300 interface for what I want to do with it?

 

[eh91311]

so anyone have a suggestion for a better (than the firebox) ~300 interface for what I want to do with it?

Would you consider a used interface? If so, a used Presonus Firepod or FP10 is a much better choice than the Audiobox or Firebox. 8 mic pres with more usable gain than the ones in the Firebox, SPDIF I/O, zero latency monitor knob (mono mix) for headphone mixes. MIDI, very stable Windows XP drivers, records up to 24/96 without issues. Not so sure about the Vista driver's stability. You can find one for $300 or less used if you look around.

 

[dgatwood]

hmm good to know, but wouldn't using the included wall wart take care of that problem?

If you have to be plugged into a wall outlet, that's not what I would consider mobile.... By that definition of mobile, my rolling rack with a pair of MOTU 8Pre interfaces is mobile.

If you don't care about having to always have an outlet handy, though, then the only bad things I can say about Presonus are that they have a bad habit of suddenly failing, though maybe that's just the FIREPOD.

 

[20Hertz]

bought the firebox, couldn't get it to work. If I powered it via the wall wart and didn't connect the firewire I could get output from it. Enough to verify what others have said about the pres being kind of weak for regular dynamic mics. So I started looking at other options. I like the looks of the firepod but saw a lot of complaining about reliablity.
Anyway, long story short I decided to go with a company I have had good luck with, and who is serious about driver compatibilty: Echo.
Was about to buy an audiofire 4 but then I was reading the specs and convinced myself that it made sense to spend another $180 (got a great deal from GC) and get the audiofire 8, which has better converters. Now it's really not as portable..
But I'm a bass player who lugs around a couple of hundred pounds of cabinets regularly, so a 1u rack that needs to be plugged into the wall isn't a big deal. If I ever need to, say, record animals in the wild I'll look into a simple usb device, most likely