Presonus Firebox or Edirol UA25?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Linden
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Linden

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Hi,

I'm thinking about to get a Audio/MIDI interface with good features and inexpensive price for my laptop. There are two in my mind right now: Presonus Firebox and Edirol UA25.

To me, Presonus Firebox looks more reliable and user-friendly;
Edirol UA25 seems to have more features (I guess so due to so many buttons, and its capability of recording out-going audio if i'm right) and low price compared to Presonus.

I really need some recommendations and advices on these two items.
or any better one u want to suggest, please let me know.

Thank u so much.
 
i bought and returned a Firebox. I recorded one live concert with it to my laptop (with a pair of MXL 603's), and the recording came out fine (sounded better than the venue that night, IMO). i thought the preamps were fine and it had ample phantom power for the mics. controls/knobs were a little on the floppy/cheap side.

headphone amp had ample gain, but not as much as i would've liked--to monitor the signal with my Sennheiser HD280's required cranking the headphone amp to the point of distortion. in a non-live concert setting this would likely be a non-issue....but it wasn't optimal for use in a live concert setting.

major complaints:

bus powering requires a 6-pin firewire connection, and my laptop's got a 4-pin one. i could use it, obviously, but i couldn't power it from the bus. that's reason #1 why it got returned. obviously i could simply get a laptop with a 6-pin connection, but i have no desire to drop $3K on a laptop to make it work with a $400 interface.

reason #2 was that the firewire cable connection in the back of the box wasn't secure AT ALL. if you even so much as *touched* the firebox while it was recording, you dropped samples (ie: minor "skips" in the recording). this thing was *very* particular.....sometimes tweaking the gain knobs would make the thing drop samples. not very good, especially if live concert recording is something you hope to do with this thing. it should be fine if you're gonna set it on the coffee table while you lay down a song idea (set it and forget it)....but for continuous recording over the course of an hour, you sometimes need to adjust the gain on the fly, and that was a sketchy proposition at best.


so in terms of "performance" or "sound quality", i thought it did just fine (definitely sounded better than the M-audio MobilePre i briefly had a couple years ago).....but it wasn't even close to "rock solid" enough for me to keep it.


cheers,
wade
 
Thanks mrface for sharing ur thought and experience. I'll take it into my consideration.

So, I wonder if anyone has a comment on Edirol UA25, its features and quality, please feel free to do so.

I really appreciate it.
 
I have no experience with the Edirol unit, but unlike Wade I love the Firebox. Sound quality for such a small all-in-one interface is amazing and it's built like a tank. The price/quality ratio also is hard to beat.

As far as the headphone output, I tend to agree that the sound quality isn't as good as for example an Aardvark Q10 I used to have (using AKG K240 Studio headphones). That's really the only weakness I have experienced.

You'll run into the same problem powering any firewire device on a laptop, as typically only desktops offer 6-pin connections.

Sound-on-Sound recently had a review of it. There's a link to it on the Presonus website http://www.presonus.com/firebox.html
 
maybe i was a little "strong"......but as i said--i thought sound quality was more than acceptable on the Firebox.

i thought the knobs were a little flimsy, but on par with gear in its range. the headphone amp couldn't cut through a venue with big PA stacks blaring.....but i bet most interface headphone amps would have that problem. i DID find the firewire cable flimsy--which was not great for crowded venues full of drunk people.....

if i were looking for a 2-channel interface which i could set on the coffee table and record at home with while noodling on the couch....or to put up a pair of room mics to record acoustic sessions, i'd buy the Firebox in an instant. you bet. drivers were stable and it worked flawlessly out of the box. i'm considering a Firepod as my next interface b/c i thought the preamps were quite nice sounding.

however, i was looking for a mobile, live-concert recording interface, and the firebox wasn't exactly what i was looking for. i think i'm going to have to make the jump to the Apogee MiniMe or Grace Lunatec V3 before i find something of the caliber that i'm expecting.


so please don't mistake my "review" as negative--it just wasn't what i needed.


cheers,
wade
 
KonradG said:
if i have 4 pin firewire i cant use the firebox?
Click to expand...
You can, but you won't be able to power it from your computer/laptop, you'll need to use the power adapter that comes with it.
 
pennylink said:
You can, but you won't be able to power it from your computer/laptop, you'll need to use the power adapter that comes with it.
Click to expand...

cool thanks alot. looks like im getting that instead of the mbox. i want to learn protools but it seems like the firebox is better (not usb). im already using sonar 4 producer edition. im also wondering if the pres are better on one opposed to the other, but according to my forum search, theres not much difference. i heard there is a firewire adapter for the mbox too, dunno if usb would even hurt me that much (acoustic w/ back up instruments adding up to 5-12 tracks per song.) also, will my shitty laptop sound card have any effect on the quality produced by the mbox/firebox?
 
KonradG said:
also, will my shitty laptop sound card have any effect on the quality produced by the mbox/firebox?
Click to expand...
Sorry for the slow response time, KonradG... the mbox/firebox is an A/D converter/interface AND soundcard, so it basically will replace whatever on-board (read "shitty") soundcard your laptop has. Of course the laptop speakers won't sound much better, you'll need monitors for that.
 
I use the Firebox and I am very happy with it. It is strong and I feel the knobs are fine. To me, they are definitely not flimsy...but I do agree that the connector on the back for the 1334 cable is very touchy and poorly designed. It should be a stronger housing. But for me, I am one of the coffee table users...not live...so it's just not an issue for me. All said and done, a great buy.
 
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