PreSonus FIREstation

I purchased this thing on Ebay for a killer price. The previous owner was unable to get it to work. I almost threw it in the trash. I could never get it to work with the drivers it came with or the updated one from the website. I ended up going to Yamaha's site and getting thier latest drivers and all the problems disappeared. The new drivers come with a graphical interface that is a breeze to set up an work with. I never have had a problem with static or any of the other problems like dropping out that some have reported. I did notice that the divers for this have to be set up as a background service and they do slow my machine way down but not to the point of screwing up the recording. My only real issue isn't with this item but the selection of software that will use the ASIO drivers so that you can do multi track recording. I ended up with Cubase to record with but then trasport it over to Adobe audition. I with Adobe would incorporate ASIO support into the next edition of Audition.

The sound quality is excellent once it is properly set up.

Once it was set up it has been totally reliable but I use it in the studio only. Haven't tried recording a live show with it yet.

I haven't used them so don't know.

If you can get one of these used for a really good price and are firmiliar with setting up computers and drivers, then this would be a good edition to a home studio. If you are looking for a plug and play kind of an item with few glitches to get it up and running, I would suggest you pass on it.

Bought it used on ebay from USA for some $450 a while ago. Got my friend to set it up for Norwegian voltage standards. This had the old firmware meaning I could use the Presonus drivers, but I thought upgrading would be a good idea. Not! The mLan drivers are sh,.t and didn't work with my old computer. Did try it on my HP notebook, but same result. Didn't get connection at old! Some 2 months ago I build a new PC and now it works perfect. Fortunate I saved the 1.5.3 drivers since the 1.5.4 drivers didn't work. When it finally works I think it's a good piece of studio equipment. So quite easy to use when driver problem are solved, though that did take a while!

I find the sound quality overall good. Especially the vocals. I got a ADK Vienna edt. and I think that combination is spot on for my project, which is pop. I've struggled a bit with guitar sound though, but I haven't tried external amps yet. Only software sollution. I have used the Guitar combos from NI, and it tend to sound a bit bright and thin. But I guess a external sollution is the answer here.
(Would have given it a 9 just for the vocal sound!)

Since hooking up with my computer, I've had just minor problems with the unit. And I tend to think it has to do with the drivers and not the unit. (Still mad about upgrading the firmware:) The drivers are very commanding in terms of CPU usage. And it have caused some dropouts, but only for some seconds loosing sync with the computer. But I guess that maybe enough on a live gig trying to capture som magical moments. I think I would have tried it in a full setup (all channels used) before taking it to a gig. As I only use 1 channel at a time.

Well a bit unsure on this one. Very helpful at the beginning but I think they got a bit fed up with all my questions in the end. Note that the support in USA was much better than in Norway!

Well if you need a soundcard for a homebased studio project, I can give it my recommandation. You can get it real cheap on ebay these days and I think it's tremendous value for the money. Have been enjoying working with it when I finally got the setup right. Would recommend to search for a unit with the old firmware as I think the Presonus drivers are better and less CPU demanding. I can' say it for shure though. It can't be worse than the mLan drivers though!

Plus:
* Good value for money these days
* The micpreamps are really good
* Overall sound quality

Minus:
* CPU demanding drivers (mLan)
* guitar sound with software
* Some work with the setup

Tip: Search on this forum www.mlancentral.com before buying. You find many people with tips on the Firestation.

Final: Will give it 8 with the price you have to pay now. With the old price (Which was a bit expensive considering the problems) a 6, and thus the 7.

Hardware:

The unit is a little annoying. It has a bizarre system of double knobs that are inconsistent (the first two have the post do amplitude, and the sleeve do panning, the other 3 do left and right channel amplitude). I've been using the unit for a little over a year now, and I'm still not used to it.

Software:

Horrible. When I first got it, they shipped drivers for OS 9, which worked just fine. When I switched to OS X (10.2), they insisted that OS X handled mLan internally, and that you didn't need any installed drivers. This worked (albeit poorly - see below) until 10.3.3, when suddenly you have to download drivers from http://mlancentral.com. Now, the unit isn't auto-detected by the operating system, you have to manually connect it (via the ironically named "mLan Auto Connector" program). This required further upgrades when OS 10.3.7 came around. Right now, the thing only works in 48 kHz (see below) and has a tendency to crash your system (yes, it crashes OS X!) if you do something silly like let your machine go to sleep while it is connected.

Sound quality is pretty fine, as long as you stick to 48kHz. It has switchable tube pre's on the 1 and 2, which are kind of nice. I use it mostly with dynamic microphones (SM57/SM58), guitars, and the occasional drum machine or computer feed. Does alright by me.

Early on, I ran into an issue where it would have lots of clicks and dropouts and it generally didn't work properly at all. A little trip to the factory and back seemed to fix that problem (apparently my unit was one of the earlier ones off the assembly line, and they apparently didn't do enough quality testing).

Right now, the S/PDIF seems to not work at all in my unit, so the sound quality for that is, well, no sound quality. And 44.1kHz is a dream - if you switch the unit to 44, it experiences massive latency (~500ms), and about an equally sized jitter spread. Recording audio into logic, I had to continuously move tracks around to resync them, until I figured out that it could be fixed by switching to 48 kHz. Unpredictable bad, bad jitter, basically unusable at 44.1kHz.

The rating for this category would probably be a 10 if not for the issues with S/PDIF and 44kHz.

Terrible reliability. This unit was responsible for me having an extremely poor sound setup at a gig (a live performance of guitar/interactive electronics). I spent most of my soundcheck trying to get the damn thing to work. It wouldn't. I ended up borrowing a MOTU 828, which worked immediately and perfectly, but by then I had no more time to sound check. Damn.

As I said before, S/PDIF doesn't work for me now. Neither does 44.1 kHz. I don't have any ADAT to test that, but at this point I don't trust that any part of the unit will work as it is supposed to at any point in time.

I would say reliability, if not the lack of ease of use, the poor quality of the drivers and bugginess in general, would be enough to make me advize anyone to steer clear of this thing. Just buy a MOTU or an RME or an M-Audio or anything - this thing just plain sucks.

When I sent the unit back early on to fix the audio dropout issue, they were generally helpful. At this point it is probably beyond warranty, but I am also burnt out on the machine and don't want to put more effort into trying to get it to work, so I haven't tried contacting them lately.

The turn around time for the repair was reasonable (2-3 weeks).

This unit is useless as an interface to a Mac (it might be better on a windows box, I don't know, never tried it). As a standalone mixer, the fact that it has (albeit unintuitive) knobs for each channel, unlike the MOTU or other models, make it a bit more useful.

I have hated my experience with this thing. I want to get rid of it, but ebay prices for it only get up to 200 or 300 dollars. Noone likes them. Everyone I've met who has one finds it to be broken or compromised in some major way.