PreSonus FirePOD

Presonus FirePOD –A New Level Of Quality At A Great Price

Presonus has been making some waves lately with their new interfaces and other equipment such as the Eureka channel strip. One of their latest offerings is the Firepod, the first piece of Presonus gear I have had a chance to check out and I’m glad I did. The Firepod is an 8 in/8 out A-D converter with 8 mic pre’s, 2 High-Z instrument ins, and MIDI/Digital I/O. At under $600 it is competing with quite a few other Firewire interfaces –so lets see what makes this one different.

Construction

The Firepod has an interesting construction in that the front faceplate extends out further than most rack gear. This makes it very easy to access the front inputs that utilize the Neutrik combo jacks, accepting either XLR or Mic inputs. The first two inputs can be used as instrument inputs and there is switchable phantom power for the mic pre’s in groups of four. One nice thing about the Firepod is that it feels very sturdy, and the gain, phones, main level, and monitoring knobs feel great –allthough they may be a bit small for those with larger fingers.

As great as the front panel is, I was hoping that all the Inputs/Outputs would be available on the back as well. All 8 outputs and a main stereo out are there, but only 2 inputs are made available. At first I thought this would be a problem since I rack most of my gear and take advantage of patchbay’s for routing signals. It actually turned out to be just fine since I rack mounted the Firepod below my patchbay leaving the inputs easily accessible to plug into directly or from the patchbay itself. In fact, after awhile I came to prefer this setup as I didn’t have the extra signal routing a patchbay demands. It would still be nice if all 8 inputs were available on the rear, but if it keeps the cost down I personally prefer the choice Presonus made.

The rear panel includes a dedicated stereo output to connect to your amp or powered monitors –something that I wish the RME Fireface 800 I just reviewed had. One other note about the rear panel is that the Firewire ports are not flush; this makes it easier to plug your cables in, but seems to be more prone to getting bent or damaged.

Power comes from a line-lump, I personally prefer not having these bricks lying around to trip over, but in the end it is not a big deal to me. One interesting omission is that there is no power switch on the front faceplate, agian, not a big deal to me personally but worth noting.

The Sound

Let’s talk about installation. It went like this: connect Firewire cable, power unit on, bring up Audio/MIDI Setup in OS 10.3, and choose the Presonus Firepod for I/O -DONE! This is brilliant, no drivers to install, just a class compliant device that is truly plug-and-play in OS X (I believe you need OS 10.3 or higher for this functionality).

The first thing I usually do is listen to a few familiar mixes to get an idea for the sound quality of the converters. I was impressed with the Firepod and how accurate the sound was for the price of this unit. I could hear more stereo width and detail than any other converter I have tested at this price point. The quality made it easier to hear balances and problems in my mix that went unnoticed before. In short –I really like the sound of the Firepod.

This is true for the A-D conversion as well. The best description would be “accurate”. The signal I fed into the Firepod is what I heard coming back out. The mic pre’s were also very good –especially for the price of this unit. While I know that the converter chipset is the same that you would find in other A-D/D-A units in this range, it is the quality and design of the analogue components around the chipset that puts the Presonus Firepod above the bar in my book.

The Need For Speed

Another shiny star of approval goes to the Firepod for its low latency operation. Working with a stereo signal, monitoring thru software plug-ins in both Live and Logic the Firepod is the only unit I have reviewed that comes close to the Fireface from RME for latency. That is not to say I haven’t gotten other units in this price range down to an acceptable latency for tracking and overdubbing–but the Firepod definitely is the best out of the bunch, and only on the extreme low latency settings did I get some digital gremlins. For example, in Ableton Live I had the Firepod down to 23 Samples with only the occasional little glitch. 32 Samples was not a problem at all giving an overall latency of 2ms!

Conclusion

The Firepod stands above it’s competitors in the under $600 price range. While there are a couple little things here and there I would prefer –a power switch on the front, no line-lump, all inputs on the back as well as the front- these are minor in my book compared to the overall quality of this unit. The 24bit/96kHz operation is more than enough for me (I’m still in 44.1 land), and I really like the accurate sound of these converters. If you are looking for a new Firewire interface and don’t have the funds for something like the RME Fireface, you should really take a look at the Firepod. At it’s price point, it is a great deal and definitely competes with units more expensive –like the MOTU 828 at $750. Personally, between the two I would put the extra $150 towards better monitors or some other gear for your studio.

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