negatives of these certain interfaces?

[i dont know]

I can't decide between the MOTU 8-pre, Presonus Firepod/studio, and the Echo Audiofire 12. I have been researching these for the last couple months, trying to make a decision, but all I ever find is praise or problems with drivers, which I assume can happen with any interface.

I need to know which of these has the worst of the worst negatives.

and trust me, I have scourged the forums of BBS and Gearslutz, along with many other sources, I just really need a straight forward opinion.


If you have anything better to offer in this price range, I would love an opinion or just any kind of facts you would like to share. (price range being 400 to 700)

thank you!

 

[Tifstorey]

Well, i've used the Presonus Firepod and can give that a high praise. Excellent piece of kit with some nice pre's on it. A friend has the MOTU and also says it's a good piece of kit. Never used the Echo.

It's always tough when buying a new interface. I just bit the bullet myself and bought one of the 3-4 i had in mind (Using the Presonus Firebox now, a smaller version of the firepod) and thankfully didn't regret it.

 

[eeb]

I had a firepod and although I did love it while it was working as soon as I needed customer service they treated me like a piece of shit. I would never deal with presonus ever again

 

[SonicAlbert]

I've had great service from Presonus. Different people might have different experiences, but based on the customer service I got from them I find it hard to believe they would treat anyone badly.

 

[dgatwood]

I had a firepod and although I did love it while it was working as soon as I needed customer service they treated me like a piece of shit. I would never deal with presonus ever again

Warranty service took five weeks for me. In the end, I got a new FIREPOD out of it, but still, it was a lot of downtime. Hopefully your mileage will vary.

The FIREPOD has the most negatives, IMHO. There's a known reliability problem with the FireWire ports (search for firepod and "red light of death") that causes them to lose connectivity to the host permanantly, and firmware updates can fail without appearing to fail, resulting in parts of the unit failing (in my case, S/PDIF, but others have experienced something similar to the red light of death after a firmware flash, too).

Actually, on further study, it looks like there are several issues that can cause the RLOD. The PHY apparently lacks ESD/short protection and the ports use soft aluminum that provides little resistance to reverse insertion or connector flex, which will fry the PHY. There are cases of solder joints breaking on the ports and/or the connector that hooks it up to the main board. Occasionally, it's just a loose cable.

 

[i dont know]

i mostly hear negatives about the firepod or presonus in general. I have heard motu's 8 pre is really reliable but has a problem with pc drivers, or something like that. I just need an 8 inputs in my interface. i plan on doing drums along with other instruments. i also heard the echo audiofire 12 doesn't have pre-amps...

 

[dgatwood]

i mostly hear negatives about the firepod or presonus in general. I have heard motu's 8 pre is really reliable but has a problem with pc drivers, or something like that. I just need an 8 inputs in my interface. i plan on doing drums along with other instruments. i also heard the echo audiofire 12 doesn't have pre-amps...

MOTU had lousy PC drivers several years ago. Most folks these days have no trouble with them, though a few people have problems due to their FireWire card itself (e.g. USB/FireWire combo cards, IRQ conflicts, XP Service Pack 2 problems with FireWire 800 cards, etc.). Not much the audio device vendor can do to fix that sort of issue.

You are correct about the Audiofire not having pres.

 

[eeb]

Warranty service took five weeks for me. In the end, I got a new FIREPOD out of it, but still, it was a lot of downtime. Hopefully your mileage will vary.

The FIREPOD has the most negatives, IMHO. There's a known reliability problem with the FireWire ports (search for firepod and "red light of death") that causes them to lose connectivity to the host permanantly, and firmware updates can fail without appearing to fail, resulting in parts of the unit failing (in my case, S/PDIF, but others have experienced something similar to the red light of death after a firmware flash, too).

Actually, on further study, it looks like there are several issues that can cause the RLOD. The PHY apparently lacks ESD/short protection and the ports use soft aluminum that provides little resistance to reverse insertion or connector flex, which will fry the PHY. There are cases of solder joints breaking on the ports and/or the connector that hooks it up to the main board. Occasionally, it's just a loose cable.

ahh yes this is exactly what happened to me (the red light of death)

out of nowhere too.. presonus told me because i live in canada there's absolutely nothing they will do for me unless i want to send it in and they will look at it charge me 80$ just to look at it then charge me 70$ an hour plus parts plus shipping.. the estimate was pretty much on par with a brand new firepod. I was very happy with it until then and I even told them that I was a very happy customer when I first called.. I mean shit breaks .. that's fine.. but they didn't seem like they could care less about me so they lost me as a client. that's all.

 

[dgatwood]

ahh yes this is exactly what happened to me (the red light of death)

out of nowhere too.. presonus told me because i live in canada there's absolutely nothing they will do for me unless i want to send it in and they will look at it charge me 80$ just to look at it then charge me 70$ an hour plus parts plus shipping.. the estimate was pretty much on par with a brand new firepod. I was very happy with it until then and I even told them that I was a very happy customer when I first called.. I mean shit breaks .. that's fine.. but they didn't seem like they could care less about me so they lost me as a client. that's all.

If you want to fix it yourself, you might be able to. The FireWire hardware is on a separate board connected with a cable. Check the solder joints on the connectors at both ends of the cable. Check the solder joints on the FireWire connectors themselves. Check to make sure the cable is plugged in. Check the inline bus fuses on the FireWire data lines, though if those blew, chances are only one port would be dead.

See if the device will pass FireWire traffic to a hard drive. If so, the PHY is good and the problem is between the PHY silicon and the main board. If not, check the power supply to the PHY silicon and make sure there's not a problem there. A failure in the PHY power could again be caused by a fuse.

 

[eeb]

If you want to fix it yourself, you might be able to. The FireWire hardware is on a separate board connected with a cable. Check the solder joints on the connectors at both ends of the cable. Check the solder joints on the FireWire connectors themselves. Check to make sure the cable is plugged in. Check the inline bus fuses on the FireWire data lines, though if those blew, chances are only one port would be dead.

See if the device will pass FireWire traffic to a hard drive. If so, the PHY is good and the problem is between the PHY silicon and the main board. If not, check the power supply to the PHY silicon and make sure there's not a problem there. A failure in the PHY power could again be caused by a fuse.

umm well I could check the solder joints but other than that you're speaking some wierd insane space language to me.. that shit completely goes over my head

although it would be great if i could get it to work again.. considering how disappointed I am with the delta 1010..

 

[dgatwood]

umm well I could check the solder joints but other than that you're speaking some wierd insane space language to me.. that shit completely goes over my head

although it would be great if i could get it to work again.. considering how disappointed I am with the delta 1010..

PHY... the FireWire PHYsical layer chip. Should be a little square about the size of a fingernail. Easiest way to check for power is to power up the FIREPOD with nothing connected, plug a cable into the FireWire port and see if the correct pin shows voltage.

 

[eeb]

PHY... the FireWire PHYsical layer chip. Should be a little square about the size of a fingernail. Easiest way to check for power is to power up the FIREPOD with nothing connected, plug a cable into the FireWire port and see if the correct pin shows voltage.

so there are actual fuses on the board?

everything lights up on the firepod.. i actually still use channel 1 and 2 for the pres. It just doesn't sync up.. It would be rad if the problem was just a soldering thing on the firewire cable.. I always noticed that it felt loose.

 

[dgatwood]

so there are actual fuses on the board?

Firewire bus fuses look like little inline surface mount parts. Some devices use self-healing fuses, but I'd be willing to bet the FIREPOD doesn't. You pretty much have to have a schematic to know for sure what you're looking at, since surface mount parts are all pretty much indistinguishable, or at least they are to me.

If you see a little surface mount part in the middle of the trace from the connector to the PHY (you'll only see traces from the connector to two things: power and the PHY, so those two traces shouldn't be hard to spot), measure resistance across the thing, and if it is completely open and not just high resistance, you can assume it isn't a resistor, and if it is open in both directions, you can assume it isn't a diode. I can't imagine a capacitor in a signal line, though now that I think about it, that would block DC from the PHY, and I really wonder why manufacturers don't do that to protect the PHY from shorts.... Anybody good with digital electronics who can answer that?

everything lights up on the firepod.. i actually still use channel 1 and 2 for the pres. It just doesn't sync up.. It would be rad if the problem was just a soldering thing on the firewire cable.. I always noticed that it felt loose.

Definitely work checking.