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Gear / Technical Help => Battery Boxes, Preamps, Mixers, ADCs, and Processors => Topic started by: Jesse C. on February 03, 2008, 09:35:33 AM
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The topic pretty much says it all - What I'm really looking for is something I can run Reason through, but I would also like to be able to take out the lappy and some gear and get listen-able recordings.
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while not the best preamps, they are fine .
I have noticed that I do need to set the the -10 switch on my mics as the preamp can overload in loud instances.
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Preamps are pretty decent, better than a stock UA5 IMO. I never had problems with overloading but didn't tend to record stuff that was ear-bleedingly loud.
The Firebox was marketed rather misleadingly though, it is not really capable of 96kHz. Instead it simply samples at 48 kHz and repeats each sample twice - end result is probably worse than native 48 kHz. As long as you don't need more than 24/48, it's fine.
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I have heard that they work fine with windoz PC's
but with my Mac iBook, I got all of this digi noise...
while I initially got some good recordings, I have had too many glitches with mine...
It is retired, and would be happy to part with it cheap!
I know many have had great luck with this unit...
over in the MacMusic forums there are many similar stories of glitchiness
that being said
Presonus products were designed for PC's
and work fine for them
when I originally called their tech support, they did not even have a mac to try it out on...
so what they were telling me was useless
I got a MOTU product since they are designed for Mac's!
-- Ian
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Yes I had the same problem with diginoise on Macbook pro. Also could not run on bus power alone. Pre's don't have much gain. too bad because the feature set and build are pretty good.
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Yes I had the same problem with diginoise on Macbook pro. Also could not run on bus power alone. Pre's don't have much gain. too bad because the feature set and build are pretty good.
I have no issues running on bus power alone, have never gotten any diginoise and have never had to run the gain pots past "noon" even with the -10db switch on my mics turned on.
in the control panel, do you have the mic preamps set to +12?
all of this on my Powerbook
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I didn't like the way it sounded with the +12 digital gain. Very dirty. I no longer have the unit and replaced it with an Apogee Duet. The person i sold it to uses a PC and had no problems. Powerbook and Macbook are quite different. However I tried the Firebox on aPowerbook Titanium with the same results. Running battery instead of AC also didn't help.
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nic, if your preamp is overloading but your microphones are OK, do NOT set the -10 switch on the microphones! Instead, use in-line resistive pads (attenuators) at the inputs to the preamp.
The difference is this: Microphones always deliver a certain amount of inherent noise along with their signals. When you switch a microphone's pad on, its signal levels go down by 10 dB but the potentially audible part of its inherent noise remains essentially unchanged. Result: You've just raised the noise floor of your recording by about 10 dB from what it could have been.
If on the other hand you use a resistive pad at the input of the preamp, that pad will reduce both the signal from the microphone AND its inherent noise by the same amount at the same time. Result: You've preserved the full signal-to-noise ratio of your microphone.
The pad switch on a microphone should be used ONLY to prevent overload of the microphone itself by sounds that are too loud for its own internal amplifier to handle. You want the signal in the mike cable to be as hot as it can be, to help ward off noise from interference. Then if you have to knock the signal levels down at the input of the preamp or recorder to avoid clipping, that's when and where to do it--but never at the microphone, unless the microphone itself is in danger of overload.
--best regards
(and apologies for my DIDACTIC USE OF CAPITALS, but the above is important, and I would like people to hear me shouting all the way into the threads on both sides of this one!)
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DSatz
great explaniation of the on mic 10db pad...
I would like to say that with my 6pin firewire, on my iBook I never had any bus power issues, however
I did make a 12v SLA battery set up so I would not be using bus power and then therefore lengthen my iBook's battery power = longer recording time...
peace