Audio Interface

[mazz]

Quote:Assuming you only need 2 ins and outs, check the Apogee Duet ($495). You won't beat the sound quality in the price range and a very slick package. The review I just read of this says it's Mac only with no plans for a Windows version any time soon.Just FYI.Mazz

[stick]

What? There are people that use something besides Macs? That CAN'T be true.

[kouly]

I have heard stories.

[anne]

I take back what I said about the Presonus firestudio project. Well, I mean it sounded incredible; I just don't own it after my second session with the unit. Just as we were in the middle of our recording session, so inspired by the very good guitar recordings made during the first session with my presonus, the unit failed. The rapid PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP came out of my speakers and then the smell of overheated electrionic circuitry became apparent. Upon rebooting, all vocals were distorting. Out came the plug and back to the store it went.If you are considering a smaller fw interface, the Presonus firebox ($280) or the m-audio 410 ($270) are what were recommended by the pro I know for solid track records.

[Mark Kaufman]

Quote:I take back what I said about the Presonus firestudio project. Well, I mean it sounded incredible; I just don't own it after my second session with the unit. Just as we were in the middle of our recording session, so inspired by the very good guitar recordings made during the first session with my presonus, the unit failed. The rapid PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP came out of my speakers and then the smell of overheated electrionic circuitry became apparent. Upon rebooting, all vocals were distorting. Out came the plug and back to the store it went.If you are considering a smaller fw interface, the Presonus firebox ($280) or the m-audio 410 ($270) are what were recommended by the pro I know for solid track records. Ouch!FWIW, the Presonus Firebox seems to get consistently better reviews then a lot of higher end Presonus models. Not sure why that is...but I will say I am extremely pleased with my new Firebox.

[anne]

Hi Mark - that was a GIANT ouch for sure!Yes, you are absolutely right about the firebox. While the firestudio sounded EXCELLENT with the acoustic guitar (the musician's first comment was "wow, that sounds exactly like what I hear when I'm playing it"), the unit's "defective out of the box" rate was high (according to the pro store). Evidently they are very aware of this and so the new stock have some modifications to correct this problem. The reason I opted to replace the firestudio with the m-audio 410 instead of the presonus firebox was because the m-audio can daisy chain, so I can easily add inputs as needed, and it doesn't use a breakout cable for the connections, which is just better protection against clumsiness for me.I found the presonus interface was a really transparent amp and the sound was great, but I suspected I had a problem when I had to keep hard resetting it. We struggled through the session anyway until we just couldn't keep going due to the units failure. I like the m-audio's very slight darker coloration of the sound, and was recording guitar tracks (guitar going in to the unit then into logic, all sound control by logics built in effects) and the tracks were beefy, clear, detailed - I could not do this with the presonus Firestudio, but that could be because of whatever defect was in the unit. The pro at Grandma's music (albuquerque) did say the firebox uses the same amps as the more expensive presonus units and therefore was less problematic than the firestudio. Had they had any of the higher units (I think its an FP-10) I'd have gotten that but nobody here had them and I opted for the 410. After listening to some of the recordings I made last week with it, I'm glad I did. NOW - the original post by 1decentguy - How old is your Firewire 410? Are you using a mac or pc? And, are you running it off of bus power or the ac adaptor? It may be a driver issue if you are running on the bus power only and it stopped working. M-audios drawback is that its hard to get the right driver for you machine - if its an intel mac, I found the most stable driver for this unit is version 1.7.4 under m-audio's old software list. Hope that helps!