Product: PreSonus Inpire 1394
Price Paid: USD 125 USED
Submitted
12/08/2008
at
12:35am
by
matt
General
:
10
The Inspire 1394 is a very portable Firewire 400 interface. EVERYthing is handled in software; there are no knobs at all on the unit. I bought this because it's one of the only "true" 4-input devices available at anywhere near the price. You can hook this up and have 4 physical inputs which translate to 4 software inputs which can be routed to their own individual tracks.
Connectivity
:
3
This is a Firewire device. Presonus says up to 4 units may be daisy-chained, but I have not tried to daisy-chain additional units.
I/O
:
7
Either an XLR or 1/4" (line level or instrument level) input may be used for channels 1 & 2 (only one at a time per channel, not both), but RCA phono jacks only for channels 3 & 4. I use a small external mixer for the RCA channels. They include a phono preamp, so this could be used to digitize vinyl records, but I have not used that functionality. There's a set of unbalanced RCA outs and a 1/8" headphone out with separate software level controls. The XLR preamps seem very clean.
Power
:
10
This unit is bus-powered with 6-wire FW400 cables but not 4-pin to 6-pin. It includes a wall wart for use with the 4-pin connector. I have a Mac, so I power it from the Firewire port. VERY portable as a result. The preamps include true +48V phantom power which I use with my cheap consenser mics.
Technical specs
:
8
This supports 24/96 resolution. It does Core Audio on the Mac and ASIO on the PC. The direct monitoring is very low-latency.
Other
:
4
This included a PowerPC version of Cubase which I've read should not be used on Intel Macs. I use it with Garageband. Some versions include plugin packs for Mac and PC; this one did not. There's no grounding post for use with a turntable, although as noted above, it does have phono preamp. It must be used with a computer, but I don't see that as a negative: that's what it's for.
Overall
:
10
It gets 4 real channels into 4 separate channels in your software; you could digitize old 4-track work this way. I've used it to record live drums, guitar, bass, and vocals and it has worked very well.
I would buy one again; it's very basic and tough.
If it had MIDI, it would be just about perfect. These are going for like $100 used, how can you lose? Recommended because there's nothing else for the price that really has 4 inputs in real time. The USB interfaces only give you 2 tracks on the computer side even if they have more inputs. I would love to upgrade to the 8-channel Presonus unit, but it's very expensive. You can chain more of these to get more inputs and still pay less.
