Feature:
Class A preamps across the board are wonderful. Worth the extra money it costs above the FirePod just for that. It comes with Cubase LE - which I personally don't like - I use Sonar. But it's a standard, professional-grade DAW, and the fact that it comes with a professional DAW at ALL is great! It comes with TWO control panels. One is installed on your Windows taskbar, another you have to go find and open manually from your hard drive. The first is simplified, the second is more in-depth. Both are easy to use. The plugins it comes with are sub-par, but enough to get an amateur started.

Quality:
The zero-latency software monitoring is AMAZING! The Vista drivers have issues. I mean, BIG issues. Nothing that can't be totally straightened out with some tweaking, but there are issues nonetheless. I know someone who uses this in Windows XP and it works flawlessly under that - but for Pete's sake, don't taunt "Vista compatibility" if I have to tweak the drivers a bunch to get standard stability. I know Vista's a total ****, and so it's not completely PreSonus's fault, but I digress. The saving grace of this is how WELL you are allowed to adjust the drivers. In the simplified taskbar Control Panel, you can choose between FOUR different driver modes, including THREE Safe Modes. I had never tried Safe Mode 3 - and the WDM driver kept crashing. I finally tried Safe Mode 3, and it's been FLAWLESS ever since! You can also switch sampling rate, buffer size, and input routing on the fly.

Value:
One of, if not THE best for the price.

Desirability:
Knowing what I know now from personal experience, I would look into other interfaces - read through FORUM discussions on these products. Try to get a good idea of how this product and its competitors perform under identical conditions. This thing should definitely be in your top three, though.

Sound:
The raw sound of this thing is where it really shines. The preamps aren't the best of the best, but they do sound SURPRISINGLY good. My mid-grade condensers sound GREAT through this thing. Dynamic mics such as the i5 and SM57 sound GOOD off the line, and with a knowledgeable tweaking in your DAW, you'll get 'em sounding pretty darned awesome. The only problem is that this thing is a bit quiet. I have to turn the volume knob halfway up to get a "standard loudness" through my KRK 8's, and to really get my 8's at a "loud stereo" level, I gotta turn the volume knob over 3/4's of the way. These are POWERED monitors that amplify the signal put through them, so they should be screaming loud at halfway - but they're not. Testing volume through my headphones confirms that the FireStudio is the issue, not the monitors. The headphone amp is noticeably louder though. It's strange. 3/4 volume and your ears will be ringing. Wish I could get that through the standard speaker output! This issue extends to the preamps as well. I have to crank them pretty good, unless I'm recording overbearingly loud stuff like drums. I mean, having to turn the knobs way up isn't THAT big of a deal - but I would think that it would stress the hardware a bit more than needed, and affect the overall lifetime of the product. So other than *slightly* weak powered volume, this thing sounds GREAT!

Ease of Use:
READ THE MANUAL, then it's a piece of cake. The most important thing you need to know is NOT to plug active instruments into the first two inputs. Other than that, it's totally plug-n-play.

Support:
We've been sitting on the same exact Vista drivers almost since I bought this thing in January '08. People are having similar driver issues under the Leapord OS, so if you have a MAC, you're not entirely out of the water from some of these issues. PreSonus has a great product here, but they owe it to their customers to make every effort to solidify their drivers for both MAC and Windows.

Overall:
Overall, this thing was way worth the money! It had its issues, and it took me the better part of a year to straighten them all out, but now it's working flawlessly. I don't expect to replace this puppy any time soon.

• User: a customer from hotmail.com
• Submitted: 10/4/2008
• Style of Music: Various
• Location: Roseville, CA, USA

Feature:
I love the Control Console software. It is so nice to be able to give each of my band members their own headphone mix. I only wish that you could chain 2 of them together but then again I may upgrade to the Firestudio2626 for more inputs.

Quality:
Solid and chunky feeling. Thank God for now wall wart!!

Value:
I tried every interface around this pricepoint and this is by far the best for the money. Really, I think it is better than many others that are more expensive. Don't mess around with USB. Get the Firestudio Project!

Desirability:
Super nice meters. The blue lights are definitely sexy. Presonus makes nice looking stuff that sounds great.

Sound:
Preamps have plenty of gain and I love the control console software. I use it for everything from recording drums to vocals and haven't found anything that it sounds bad on yet.

Ease of Use:
Installed perfectly on my MacBook Pro using Cubase.

Support:
Haven't had to call so I guess that's good!But I have heard their support is really good.

Overall:
I'm not one for usually giving rave reviews but I have to say that this computer interface has made recording really easy and fun again. I was so sick of driver problems and crappy sounding preamps. This thing sounds huge. I'm getting sounds out of this that really make my home studio sound like it was recorded at a big facility.

• User: a customer from hotmail.com
• Submitted: 6/24/2008
• Style of Music: Rock
• Location: South

Feature:
Id give this more than 10 !!!!! it comes with Cubase LE wich is pretty much perfect, Drumagog wich is awsome, ive not used the rest :P, but im sure there great.

Quality:
Excellent Quality.

Value:
You cant find anything better for the price and with all the shizz included you might aswell just buy it now !!

Desirability:
It loooks great in a rack :P, the only thing i dont like is the lack of colourful LED's hahaha :P but hey... its all goood :P

Sound:
The sound is truly awsome, the preamps are super quiet. I was blown away with the sound when i got it, i was expecting pops, cracks, hisses and all that other stuff, but NOTHING !! its crystal clear and sounds awsome. I can record anything on it, ive got awsome sounding acoustic guiar, great sounding drums, clean guitar all the way through to death metal, it all sounds amazing.

Ease of Use:
It was SO easy !!!, the only thing is i had to get my mate round to fit the firewire card cause i didnt have one. But ones i plugged it in i just followed the instructions ( very easy steps ) and there i was recording straight away :) Obviously youve got to get used to cubase and drumagog etc... but its not hard at all and its all great fun.

Support:
Havent neeeded it :)

Overall:
I am EXTREMELY satisfied with the firestudio, i honestly couldnt of spent my money on anything better !! Its perfect. id recommend it to anyone :)

• User: a customer from hotmail.co.uk
• Submitted: 3/1/2008
• Style of Music: Heavy Metal, Death Metal, Rock, Acoustic, Spanish, Country and Dance

Feature:
I had a very bad experience, but I'll try to at least review the features I could try as they were when they were working fine (can't say I'm not trying here PreSonus People) ++Extra points for being able to use it as pres without a computer. Great quality pres truly reveal the sound of any mics, but can sound sterile (I DO like it better that way, but some people expect a "warmer" sound when recording, I enjoy having more headroom for effects and such). Good headphone amp & volume control. I like the tiny but noticable-just-by-feeling 1 db increments on the trim knobs also to be fair instead of the usual loose knobs. More juice in there than any vocalist or guitar player ever needs. - - I wish the software mixer was better designed, it's clumsy and unfriendly. Some features in it like the "safe modes" are unexplained if you do not read the manual like most people do. And for those that do read it like me, the features you wish were explained with a whole page are usually explained in one sentence... In the manual : "..this is where you select normal, safe1, safe2 or safe3 mode for increased latency buffer..." Huh increased by how much? What kind of buffer? A hardware buffer in the FSP or the driver one? Nobody had a clue over there on the forums either it seems...

Quality:
Something that is not mentionned on Presonus website or anywhere stating their requirements for the FSP is that it cannot function right with the iMacs or MacBooks without something else. They blame it on a change Apple made to the firewire chipset used in those (true enough the Agere chipset is worse than the TI). However a similar item made by Presonus for just (of course)200$ more works fine with those (the FireStudio, without "Project" in it. Yes my friends, they make two entirely different products using the same name and added a suffix to the newer, cheaper knockoff to confuse us more into buying it.) Nevermind that this same product is OLDER than the FSP which if any of their theories were true would probably have more problems with the cheaper firewire chipsets, not the opposite... My theory? Great pres but bad sync hardware or drivers. Anyways, guess what, our Mac was a newer iMac and it started hiccuping every time we went higher than 44k. So we returned it. Then the pc one started acting funny. One day the mixer (FireControl)wasn't installed anymore.I went and reinstalled it. Ever since that it started giving me blue screens at reboot! And that was only when the FSP wasn't hooked to my pc on boot. I could wonder if this had something to do with driver, hardware & software quality because I tried other firewire audio interfaces and they work fine on my PC... Bottom line, that went back with his other friend at the shop. Now I'm looking for something new. I guess it deserves a 5 because it was awesome on the pc for the 2 weeks it worked. ROFL

Value:
After that day, which will forever be known in my life as "The Day I Made PreSonus Cry (cause I insulted it somehow)" I decided that I should go re-read that thread and see, maybe I had been hard on that guy. I'm banned but hey a lil hop on a proxy to cut & paste the thread which was now locked... Nope, nowhere in there I could find an insult... Now that lil forum twerp had given me enough motivation to write a nice little letter to send to the people at PreSonus. Explaining why I had returned two FSP I realized I should at least make it a thousand words letter since that's just how much they'll be losing in sales with me. I could be using it just for the pres, but not for iMac&MacBooks or PCs, really as soon as I uninstalled FireControl from my pc the second time the blue screens stopped, my firewire chipset in there is TI and works fine with many other audio interfaces. . . I just won't lose anymore time with it it's gone...

Desirability:
I want it..far away from me lol... ...its sex appeal reminds me of an herpes-infested ex-girlfriend... Seriously ... *shivers*

Sound:
That's what's a shame here, it sounds truly amazing, if you're willing to gamble 500$ and see if you'll have any problems ...... *diabolical laughter* We bought 2 FSP, 1 for an iMac (newer version) and a PC (with TI firewire chipset for those that are interested)... It sure sounded awesome on the PC...at the beginning. And the iMac well it never got higher than 44 without starting to start poppin and clickin constantly...

Ease of Use:
And the problems start... Pluging it and playing at 44 is simple and goes fine usually on the iMac. We got pops, clicks etc on the iMac or MacBook right when we switched to anything but 44. See below for explanation. For the PC it worked fine until ome day the FireControl wasn't anywhere to be found on the computer. I reinstalled it and my PC would not boot anymore, just give me a blue screen whenever the FSP wasn't hooked to it. Not funny.

Support:
Now that was the icing on the cake. I started reading the forums at Presonus pretty much everyday for 2 weeks looking for iMac hope before losing faith and returning one of the two we bought. I started losing hope when I noticed the first post complaining about it was over 6 months ago (at FSP lauch) and there was still no solution advanced by PreSonus other than "complain to Apple". Some people reported that hooking a HD acting as a firewire "routed" the traffic better and solved their problem. Now that seemed like a starting point. While discussing that as a viable solution with other users on the forums an admin kept insisting that the Agere firewire chipset was crappy etc... Basically I agreed but also tried to logically prove a point to him and he banned me. Number one for unconstructive posting (to my defense he answered every one of my posts with two of his own, that thread was made of 10 posts he was the author of 6 no less that's being loud and overbearing, not constructive), number two my posts were negative (I guess stating the truth and wondering why nobody is scared for their jobs selling 500$ bricks is seen as negative lol. Of course I never said it in those words but really). But in a twist outta the Twilight Zone I was accused of Number Three! : insulting the company. Let me repeat this so everybody understands : these guys expect you to pay 500$ and not say a word if you hear popcorn baking over your recordings, cause that would be insulting to them. These guys are lucky they can't imagine how insulting paying for a 500$ doorstop is.Really. And I mean I never insulted PreSonus in any way. That lil power hungry weasel on the forums IS NOT PreSonus, and i did not even insult him. i just proved him wrong. That's what insulted him, the realization that they WERE in fact selling something that SHOULD work, DOESN'T work and WON'T work. And what that implied for him.

Overall:
This product made it clear that not only it is bad, but that any purchase made from PreSonus (on my personal behalf, you'll see if you try, and it might go fine, here's to your luck:) would be insanity. They do not care about stating correct requirements hoping to make more sales and they don't even try to fix the problems to keep their sales. You cannot have it both ways : say you only need OSX 10.5 but once I buy it and am stuck with it tell me to go complain to Apple cause it's not your fault... Apple didn't tell me your product would work, you did... Then it stops working right on Windows?? Then I get banned for looking for solutions?? Test it if you get it. And I mean test the heck out of it and make sure you like it. Because if you keep it I wish you luck and I hope your experience with them doesn't go as sour. And if it does and you read this protect your investment and more importantly dohn't waste your time, life is too short to be squandered running after thieves that sold you 500$ bricks heheh. Maybe I wasted my time so you will not waste it too, but hey at least I got my money back so it's alright... And I still have that letter I wrote to them in my sent folder to make me laugh every now and then...

• User: a customer from gmail.com
• Submitted: 2/4/2008
• Style of Music: That one yep...
• Location: Canada

Feature:
Yeah, PreSonus really built this guy well, mixer is great the firewire connection is a blast and the XLR produce the cleanest sound I've heard so far in all my outboard equipments. Only fallback is, no ADAT!!! oh well, lets hope it comes out with an update that will support daisy chaining it. But until then, Im havin a blast using it.

Quality:
PreSonus was right when they said the XMAX's are the most high quality preamps you'll ever get at the price becuase even with a twenty dollar mic at radioshack, the sound that came from it was spectacular but sounds even 150% better with my M-Audio Solaris.

Value:
Worth ever penny.

Sound:
Clean exhuberant sound. No let downs with PreSonus on this lil guy.

Ease of Use:
It is quite easy to use and set up, but know what u are doing first before you begin your procedure. READ THE MANUAL FROM PAGE TO PAGE. and then begin you journey with the little guy.

Support:
None needed, except the support of the manual to set it up.

Overall:
It is practically the best firewire mixer and preamp you will find on the market.

• Submitted: 2/1/2008
• Style of Music: Hip Hop, Soul, Classic, R&B, etc

Feature:
The knobs and meters all look great, but the problem is you have to be a computer genius to operate this thing.

Quality:
I'd probably have more fun throwing it down a flight of stairs to see how well the plastic parts hold up. My only hope now is to unload this piece of garbage on some sucker who has a lot of time and patience on his hands, or is a computer genius.

Value:
I wouldn't pay 1/10 of what this thing sells for. Currently it's just taking up space in my studio.

Desirability:
I don't care what the thing looks like. I was really hoping it would live up to all the hype. I just wanted something with which I could record audio and midi without having to make 700 trips to the computer store.

Sound:
If I could get this thing to work, I could give a more accurate assessment of the sound.

Ease of Use:
As I said, be prepared to spend a lot of time and aggravation on this product. What they fail to tell you is that you have to have a specific Firewire card for it to interface with your computer. I've tried three different cards now. The first one worked, but it didn't agree with the Firestudio, and there were latency issues. I was told to get a Firewire card with a TI chipset. I've done that twice now, and my computer won't even see the Firestudio when I plug it in. I've had this for two months now, and have gotten no support or help from Presonus.

Support:
They have not been helpful at all. The more reviews I read on this thing, the more I realize that a lot of people have gotten ripped of by this unit. They advertise it to be simple to set up and use, but they fail to disclose a lot of useful information that would have been good to have known ahead of time.

Overall:
Don't buy this thing unless you have a lot of patience and free time, and aren't in a hurry to record your music.

• Submitted: 1/15/2008

Feature:
Love the meters. They really help you to see whats happening. The built in software mixer is also a huge help. I did a session with a four piece band and was able to send every musician a separate headphone mix. Kind of wish it had ADAT inputs but then again that's what the other Firestudio is for.

Quality:
The knobs feel sturdy and I love how they are detented as well. The other nice touch is no wall wart. This unit looks amazing in my rack.

Value:
It's simply the best interface that you can buy below an RME that costs twice as much (TRUST ME I'VE TRIED THEM ALL).

Desirability:
Great metering and it looks sexy in my rack.

Sound:
Very beefy sounding preamps. Not noisy like my old M Audio. I'm very happy with the sound I'm getting.

Ease of Use:
Installation took about 15 minutes. I have a PC (Pentium 4/3gHz) and it sync'd up in a few seconds and I was recording within 20 minutes.

Support:
I called Presonus because I was missing a serial number in my software bundle. They were very cool about it. I haven't had any other reasons to call but they seemed to be easy to reach.

Overall:
I think my search for interfaces is done. This one is great.

• User: a customer from hotmail.com
• Submitted: 12/11/2007
• Style of Music: Rock
• Location: Nashville