PreSonus FIREBOX

  • Thread starter Thread starter ericlingus
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ericlingus

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what do you think of this. I've been thinking about getting this. I don't have enough money for the firepod and I really don't need all those inputs right now anyways. What are some compatability issues with it? Will it work well with athlon?
 
Oh and I plan on recording direct in for the time being. But eventually will start micing so I definately want that option available. Also I want to work with MIDI as well. Will this cover all my needs?
 
I use a firepod with a computer with an athlon chip. No problems at all.

I've looked into the firebox for a friend, and it seems to be almost the same thing just on a smaller scale. The only thing that the box lacks fromt he pod is the "mix" knob. This allows you to mix your input signal with your playback signal (input would be what you are recording, playback is what is already recorded - that you're recording with). This is very handy because, say you are doing vocals and you've got everything else recorded. If you get your input set on your vocal channel where you want it, and you want to hear more vocals in the mix, just turn the mix knob towards inputs. If you want to hear more of the instruments you've already recorded, turn it towards "playback". Hopefully that made sense.

Anyway, kind of went on a tangent there - you could do essentially the same thing buy turning the channel volume up in your recording software, but its nice to have the feature on the front of the firepod.

I think the FireBox would be a great tool - especially if you don't need all 8 mic pre's and 10 inputs of the firepod. I think eventually if you did need them, you could daisy-chain them together anyway, so you'd be set.

My friend did get one on ebay the other day, and he found an ebay dealer who was giving away a free gift with it for $300 with no shipping. The free gift was your choice of some great gear. I think he got an MXL V67G for free with his. All the gifts were worth about $100. I think the dealer was Hollywood Audio" or something like that.

I'll see if I can't find it really quick.
 
Found it. The Ebay store is Hollywood Pro Audio.

Here is a link to a firebox - free shipping and free gift for $299. Pretty good deal.
 
thanks for the response. I won't be able to get it on Ebay because I won't get my money for my DAW for another month. I have about a 3000 dollar budget to by a complete DAW. Do you know any sites that build custom audio computers? I've found Pcaudiolabs.com. Ever hear of it?
 
For custom audio PC's, check out this place:
http://www.adkproaudio.com/

They get really good press in the forums over at gearslutz.com, and either the guy that owns it, or one of the top people at ADK posts in there. Haven't purchased one myself though as I build my own.

As far as the Firebox, it should work fine with Athlon or P4. I used a Firepod with an Athlon XP3000+ system - no issues. If you're interested in the Firebox, you might try here when you're ready too:
http://www.djmart.com/presonusfirebox.html

No free gifts, but you may be able to negotiate a bit of a lower price on the thing. I've never done that either, but I read (I believe in here) that people have gotten good deals that way.
 
You should be able to get a pretty nice setup for $3000.

I know Sweetwater sells PC's built for audio - but I'd be willing to bet you could get the same thing cheaper from somebody else. Here's a search I did at http://www.sweetwater.com for "computer". They've got a few different options.

If you get a list of things you want, you should try Sweetwater out. You call them and get your own personal sales guy - and usually they'll give you a pretty good deal if you buy multiple things at once. I got my FirePod for $550 with a few other things from them that way. It's always a good idea to call a company and just see if they'll cut you a deal.

As far as a computer goes, I think I'd just buy a fast machine from somebody like http://www.cyberpowersystem.com. Cheaper, and pretty much the same thing. I suppose an audio machine will tweak it differently and put sound dampening parts in it, but you pay more for it.

Good luck, man. You'll have a lot of fun putting this together and using it. Are you doing this for yourself, or do you plan on using it for commercial purposes? One thing to consider is where you're going to record (i.e. what rooms, etc.). I think the biggest thing to getting a nice sounding recording is the room or space you record in - even more important than your recording gear. You can spend an infinite ammount of money treating a recording space, though.
 
you guys hear of pcaudiolabs.com? That's one of the sites i've been looking at to build a custom PC.
 
Firebox is a great unit. I use it with AMD. Watch out for conflicts with sata drives (especially slaved), SP2 and your firewire port. When I first rigged it up I got crashes when trying to save incoming audio data to my sata slave. Ended up there were big conflicts involving the things I mentioned. A patch or two came out to fix it...seems to have been a fault with SP2. Now it's all ok...but I never did go back to 'live' recording of audio data to a slave drive. I record it to the main sata HD now and have a sata slave where I put completed stuff eventually.
 
Yup, I use my Firebox with an AMD64 no problems.

Going back to the first reply, just to clarify - the Firebox comes with a software mixer so you can alter the balance between the software and input signal quite easily. Just thought I'd better mention that... :D

The Firebox is a great piece of gear, in my experience.
 
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