Presonus Inspire 1394

[stumboid]

Is this product too good to be true for the price? It is a firewire interface with two XLR inputs, two 1/4" inputs, and an RCA input. Phantom power. The price seems right too.

Does anyone here own one? If so, how is it?

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/PreSonus-INSPIRE-1394-FireWire-Audio-Interface?sku=241483

[buffbiff21]

It is too good to be true. The built in preamp is a piece of trash. I have one and would run something like this in front of it.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/PreSonus-TUBEPre-Microphone-Preamp?sku=184125

[stumboid]

It is too good to be true. The built in preamp is a piece of trash. I have one and would run something like this in front of it.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/PreSonus-TUBEPre-Microphone-Preamp?sku=184125


Cool. Thanks for the advice. I have one of these and it works well with my cheap m-audio jamlab interface.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/ART-Tube-MP-Studio-Mic-Preamp?sku=180581

I may have to get another one to run in front of both inputs. Other than that, how is the thing? Are you using a Mac or PC with it?

[buffbiff21]

It works fine and every recording software I've tried has detected it perfectly (Audacity, Sonar, Waves, Cubase) and there are tons of I/O. It has two XLR and two 1/4 inputs, plus RCA composite inputs. You can run headphone out, and speaker monitor out.

I run XP but operating system has nothing to do with the product; only how lazy the devs are for coding the device drivers. In this manner the whole Mac>PC argument concerning audio production is entirely unfounded.

I would go with (given you have a PCI interface and aren't using a laptop) something like a Delta 1010 LT. The preamp on it isn't stellar, but it's better than the Inspire's.

[hobbes1]

i have this as well. it is good for the money. the only problem i have had with it is running a line out from my fender supersonic amp to the presonus for direct recording. when i tried it, the clean was fine but the distorted/drive channel sounded terrible. i have since read that one should cut the gain way down on the presonus if doing this to avoid having two preamps stacked (one for the amp and one for the presonus). i haven't revisited that yet to see if it works better but if so, then it was operator error on my part originally. overall, for the money, i found it did fine (for amateur recording) and was easily picked up by cubase and reaper.

[alivegy]

It's a good start to get into home recording and is what I use. The preamp does suck and so does the headphone amp. Like I said though, it's a good start and much better than just running a mic into a soundcard. I have yet to have any trouble with software recognizing it and running properly.