Presonus Firebox Reviews?, Anyone actually use this yet? Options

[ArchivalAudio]

wondering if anyone has actually used the new PreSonus FireBox? Its been available in Europe for a month now... and just became available here in the US. I am wondering if any has tried this unit out... I am strongly considering gettting one. I would like to hear any reviews of this new interface.

any opinions?
power consumption in the feild? etc.

thanx
-- Ian

[arvidtp]

Thats a cool idea to power the firebox with a battery. Any special precautions you have to take when choosing/using a battery for something like this?

There are two modes of sleep: Display sleep and full sleep. Display sleep just shuts down your display, and everything else keeps running - theoretically fine for audio recording - except with some gear. Digidesign hardware/Pro Tools for instance will often crap out if display sleep activates. I have not tried display sleep with the Firbox-logic combo while recording - i am so conditioned from my Mbox to be afraid of sleep! but i assume the firebox should keep recording fine.

Full sleep shuts down everything except (to the best of my knowledge) the RAM, which is maintained in a static state. You cant record audio when this sleep goes on, as your Processor and HD are not running You can set the different timings in System Prefs > Energy Saver.

Some more comments about my Firebox experience:

I was wrong, the "firebox control" boost buttons do take effect immediately. Dunno if something was weird first time i tried. It has been giving me trouble lately with CPU usage however - sucking up like 7.5% of my CPU for no apparent reason while running in the background. But the good thing is you dont have to run the control utility all the time. You can just launch it to make the settings work and the quit it. Matter of fact i have it set to do that with an applescript whenever i log in. I hope Presonus can fix this little annoyance sometime in the future.

Also I got a loss of sync today after sleeping my powerbook with logic and Jack still running and connected to the firebox. Upon waking the firebox claimed to be in sync (blue LED) and played back fine, but input was crackly coming through the software. A trip to AudioMIDI setup with a change and change back of sample rate quickly fixed this though.

Other than that the box continues to function very well. Tried out the instrument inputs with my bass - sound great to my ears (the sound qualtiy, not the quality of the bass playing since i was playing it )

peace.