All user reviews of 4/5 for the PreSonus FireStudio

The Presonus Fire Studio was an interface that for the first time I used at the School that I attended a year ago. They had a few of these in different rooms (mainly the second studio rooms and no the main ones). The Fire-studio seemed to work great and do exactly what it said it would do. There was nothing that really stood out with it though to make me want to go out and buy it for myself. It had enough ins and outs to power your whole band and record them all at the same time. That would be the only reason I would suggest someone get this is if they have drums recording into it and guitars and other instruments for a big session. But if your just a one or two microphone type of set up there is no purpose to have this.


UTILIZATION

I am not sure if the drivers where updated at all during the year I was using it. We recorded up to 4 or 5 tracks simultaneously without any problems, we actually used this interface to record into the “student” version of Pro tools and it worked just fine. I have heard that it was a pain in the butt trying to get pro tools to recognize and work with it though. But this isn’t something I have personally dealt with.


GETTING STARTED

The Manual is extremely clear and well written, I had to use the manual several times when working on new project that would require different set ups. Each time I had to reference to the manual, it was easy to do and I got right to it without any issues.


OVERALL OPINION

My favorite part of working with the Fire Studio is how easy it was to record so many things at the same time instead of having to record one person/instruments take and then start over and record something else. We could just run right through our projects and assignments pretty quick. The sound quality (as long as you are using good mics) will be great and will give you nothing to complain about. I have tried a lot of other models of PreSonus interfaces and all of them seem to be great.

The Presonus Firestudio Project has excellent quality XMAX mic pres. these pres have neutrik combo jacks which accept traditional 3 pin XLR or 1/4" phono plugs. Although i put a preamp in front of the firestudio, these mic pres are certainly good enough to use without any outboard gear.

UTILIZATION

Presonus includes Cubase LE4 recording software and a decent tutorial dvd to get you started. The 48 track software is more than adequate for recording your entire band at once or doing track by track recording for solo musicians who play all the parts themselves. There are plenty of plug ins included to help add spice and partiality to your recordings as well as produce broadcast quality masters.


GETTING STARTED

Presonus includes all necessary hookup wires so there is nothing else needed to get started as long as you have a pair of headphones or some other means of monitoring (which by the way presonus made making great monitor mixes a breeze).
All in all, the Presonus Firestudio Project is a great, easy to use firewire interface that can be used as a mobile recording setup, a front end for your home studio or as a mixer for your live performances. When quality counts (as it always does), this is a very inexpensive (and expandable) solution to your digital I/O needs. Purchase with confidence.



OVERALL OPINION

Overall, I was able to track the entire band and send each musician a separate headphone mix using the built in mixer and several hp4's. Everybody was happy with the Firestudio Project. The drum sounds we got were really shockingly good. The drummer kept asking me what preamp and eq we were using. I tracked all the drums flat with no eq or compression - just the preamps from the Firestudio Project. Cubase LE4 is a HUGE step up from LE as well. Although I'm probably going to upgrade to Cubase4 soon.

I chose this card to:
Prampli-use as in repeated (full routing ultra, used without computer)
Repeated on-record 8 tracks
Of live-register
Dmo-register with the possibility to easily get 16 tracks (adat)

And this good reputable brand because for mac.
2 main config:
1.ibook 12 "1.33 Ghz 1GB ram
2. PowerMac G5 4 GB ram 2x2.3Ghz

Used of cubase and logic in congif Describes above.

On paper: that of the ball: pramp good, very practical possibility to routing, excellent brief.

Transformer power supply in not very practical.

UTILIZATION

Installation without problem, but rotten driver for mac: consumes a max of resources. Basically, the iBook, even to record two tracks simultaneously in Cubase (SX or c4) is hell, a crack across ... D'APRS presonus, the iBook is not powerful enough. I call a rotten drivers of ... Playing four tracks with three plugs, and click around.

Huge dception this level l!

With coarse (PowerMac G5), was the fact, however! Indeed, good sound, great opportunity, nothing to say!

Et ... I just spent on logic, and strangely, it works much better with the card: I recorded a concert for an hour (8 tracks simultaneously on external usb2 dd), not a dcrochage , say anything, and everything on my iBook!

is this a problem with cubase the coup? Strange ...

GETTING STARTED

-Stable drivers in the genre: on the ibook with Cubase, it's always rotten
Updates-little frquentes

APRS, with a powerful machine has the fact (but agaant to have a card with DSP in the end it uses a lot of computer resources), and can work (like 30 tracks, plug everywhere, etc ... with imperceptible latency)

OVERALL OPINION

was still a great thing .... so basically:

-For a small machine: 0 / 10
-For a big machine: 9 / 10

even if once you are on a good performance Systm, was running fine, sound is good and trs many opportunities, has me a little cold on the brand.

go, I put 7 .. adpend really the computer on which you plug in a. ...

The solution is attractive by providing eight simultaneous inputs with high quality preamp and 48V for mics. I turned to this type of solution in order to be able to record a live band with minimal equipment. in addition to the routing can be inserted into the Firestudio chain and thus its registration under any conditions.
I also added a Digimax FS for a total of 16 audio inputs.
So I can save the entire group during rehearsals and making models.
I use a Dell Inspiron 9300, 2.3GHz, 1GB Ram, 60 GB 7200 RPM / m.
I am equipped with microphones for sound with a drum kit with Prodipe DM8 (well except the microphone kit bass drum-sounding board) for sennheiser bass and guitars for a total of 12 tracks used.
I use Cubase SX3 for recording.
I hesitated with the new M-Audio ProFire 2626 has some more as the opportunity to work with higher sampling frequencies but in my case are not necessary: ​​96K is already very good. I chose the Firestudio telling me that the model was older and that drivers should be more mature and stable than the proFire2626 ...

UTILIZATION

The installation went well, the utility is made to control the internal routing between the inputs and outputs. on the other hand I encountered big problems of stability, crash cubase, recording that stops me what a little tense for a few repetitions. So I searched the forums a way to optimize the system, to see what activities are incompatible with my Firewire card which is a OHCI compliant. I subscribed to the program presonus beta drivers for testing was for me the only way I had before my despair.
I now have a stable system with the latest beta drivers and have disabled the network card in windows and Firewire networks that use the same IRQ.
I do not understand why Presonus does not come out the beta version because the current official really worries. So the beta program subscription is a must.
Level documentation, the version is a little more light and should give an example. New features included in the betas are currently not documented which is a bit frustrating.

GETTING STARTED

So plan to enroll in the beta test program as a presonus has not released a new official version. now I have the beta version 3.2.0.108.
I record 12 tracks simultaneously without dropping it works well with a buffer of 512. No problem to run the Digimax in Adat with the FireStudio.

OVERALL OPINION

After galar for a stable and efficient to use it becomes quick and easy to store. The quality is there with good microphones can be a model of very good quality. preamps are effective should not hesitate to increase the level of preamps.