PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface 

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

The Firestudio 2626 (as it's now called), coupled with a Digimax FS, form the foundation of my project studio and teaching studio. I am a professional musician and private music teacher, and my recording system gets used every day for several hours. I've had my Firestudio 2626 since, I believe, 2007. It has served me well, but on two occasions, I had to send it back for repairs (at my expense) because it stopped syncing with my Windows 7 system. Both times were after power surges caused by a short power outage. I leave my computer and my interfaces on 24/7, so maybe it's time to re-think this. Both times, the unit came back and worked perfectly and synced instantly, the second I plugged it in.

I also have a Firestudio Mobile that I've used as backup while the FS 2626 was out for repairs, so fortunately, my only down time was re-assigning inputs and outputs in my DAW (Cubase 6.5) to reflect the differences between the 2626 and Mobile.

These units are easy to use and sound great. I would have given this unit 5 stars except for the two times it stopped working. The other Presonus units in my signal chain have weathered power outages/surges with no issues.

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

Have owned this device for three + years. As with the FP-10, they tell me that it was the wrong firewire device (4 differing devices and 3 computers later IT STILL DOES NOT WORK). It worked with XP. When I upgraded to Vista it took them a year to get the drivers right. It never has worked with windows 7.

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

I spent $700 on this Firestudio at my local Guitar Center about 3 years ago. Since that time I have used this thing about 10 times. I would use it much more but the drivers don't work consistently enough to rely on this for studio projects.

After things got busy at work, I had to stop using it for about 6 months. I came back to use it with the same computer and exact same set up and the software didn't work. I have called their tech support and waited for an hour and a half with no answer. If you email them it takes about a week for a response asking for more information from you.

Recently I upgraded my computer and the Firestudio won't work with Windows 7. I expect when I spend this much money on a product, it will work with a brand new computer without problems. Presonus is glorified trash.

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

The Presonus FireStudio hardware seems rock solid, very nice sounding preamps, low latency built in mixer, 8 full XLR/phono inputs, lots of output options.I added a Digimax FS to expand to 8 more channels, worked like a charm. The base firewire driver works well with Logic Express, all the channels show up in the I/O configuration, and you can do many flexible things. I recorded band practice one night, 16 full channels 16 bit 44 khz into my Macbook Pro for about 3 hours steady, no dropouts, no problem.The Quality issue I have is not with the hardware, or the core driver, it's with the "Control Panel" software to set up the unit. You are supposed to be able to label all your inputs and mixes and save them away for later recall. The input naming only works while it is powered up and connected. The input names don't stay around, and are not restored with the save/restore feature. The mix names get partially lost if you power it down, (some come back, some reset to factory - randomly) but at least the restore mix from file feature works. This buggy mixer control software means I would not trust it to use in a live situation as a digital mixer. For recording, the software does the job. Hopefully Presonus clean up the Mac control software and give this great hardware the software quality to match.

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

Tons of IO, rack mountable, drivers work great.Never an issue with this product...have used it on countless systems over the last year dragged all over the place and never a problem other than a faulty firewire port on a mobo. I have a TI approved card I threw in and worked flawlessly.I think most issues are system and mainly hardware related....the 1 pc in question was built with VERY good products, it all boiled down to the faulty firewire on the mother board.

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

I've ran into a lot of problems with the firestudio in the past. Most of it was driver issues and going through 5 firewire cards before I caved in and bought an Avid approved TI chipset card. Once it got over it's random driver communication issues it worked great, and sounded amazing. But only at 44.1 or 48 khz sample rates. When I step up to double rates I get the same problem as others have stated, constant pops/clicks and dropouts. The weird thing is that this is only in the D/A converters because the clicks arent in the monitor sends, just the mains out. But it is serious enough that it also causes dropping out constantly in a DAW. If you are only planning on recording at base sample rates then the firestudio is awesome, just make sure to use new drivers and a TI firewire card. But if you ever plan on doing HD recording it's the luck of the draw.

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

At present (5/23/10) the current drivers will NOT work for 96khz in a 32bit or 64bit windows OS unless you love constant clicking/stuttering under even 1 track and no VST's loaded.If you roll back to software version 1.1, firmware version 216, it will support 96khz audio without any skipping/clicking in 32bit windows system

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

At present (5/23/10) the current drivers will NOT work for 96khz in a 32bit or 64bit windows OS unless you love constant clicking/stuttering under even 1 track and no VST's loaded.If you roll back to presonus software version 1.1, firmware version 216, it will support 96khz audio without any skipping/clicking in 32bit windows system

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

My last interface was a Digi002. The Firestudio sounds ten times better and is actually more expandable. I'm using the Firestudio on a Quad Core running Windows 7. Make sure you check Presonus site for compatible chipsets. I see others have had problems but it works perfectly for me. I also love the fact you can daisy chain two of them. (not that I need to but it's nice to see that you can)

Comments about PreSonus FireStudio FireWire Recording Interface:

I purchased the Firestudio about a year ago. To this day I have not been able to get it to work properly. I've built two custom computers, one with a quad-core processor and 8 GB of RAM, and tested it on two additional computers. I've spent a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to fix the problems I've encountered with this product. I've had it sent in to PreSonus 3 times for repairs. The "repairs" took 2 months, and when I received it back they had LITERALLY done nothing to fix it. They said that they tested it on three systems and that it worked fine. Recently, they admitted that proper testing may have been overlooked due to a busy time of the year. After nearly a year of protest, frustration, and anger, they've finally CONSIDERED acknowledging that they may have "failed to notice" a problem with their drivers. Indeed they! Take a look at these threads on their forums:http://forums.presonus.com/showthread.php?t=8229&highlight=clicks+popshttp://forums.presonus.com/showthread.php?t=12996http://forums.presonus.com/showthread.php?t=1263There are countless others.You, the customer, are probably thinking that this is specific to my system? Let me be the first to warn you that it is not. My systems have far exceeded the requirements provided by PreSonus, and the problems that I have encountered are not isolated cases (although they would like to claim that they are). The hardware on the PreSonus Firestduio is outstanding for the price; unfortunately their drivers are exceptionally poor in quality. They are quite simply not compatible with all systems. Do yourself a favor and quickly browse through some more of the threads in the PreSonus techsupport forums BEFORE you even consider buying this. An excellent piece of hardware such as this is completely useless without working drivers.Please save yourself the time and wasted energy, and purchase a product from another company. You will regret any purchase from PreSonus, and I would like to personally tell you that I will never purchase a product from them again.