PreSonus FIREpod With Digi002 and pro tools???????

[DrummerGuy09]

Will the PreSonus FIREpod work along with the Digi002 in pro tools??? Has anyone herd the FirePod in action??? SHould i go with that to gain more inputs? or would i be better off going with the M-Audio octane? or the DigiMax LT? connecting with lightpipe instead of firewire???

[bigbone]

Originally Posted by DrummerGuy09

Will the PreSonus FIREpod work along with the Digi002 in pro tools??? Has anyone herd the FirePod in action??? SHould i go with that to gain more inputs? or would i be better off going with the M-Audio octane? or the DigiMax LT? connecting with lightpipe instead of firewire???

i did a A/B test with the octane and the firepod in my home studio(i do record drums), and the firepod win big time, the pre's on the firepod are a lot better than the m-audio , and the digi 002......and the firepod is rock solid

Firepod will not work with 002 - Digimax LT does very nicely with ADAT input on 002.

Protools only sees its own hardware, and the Digimax makes a very nice way to clock the 002 via lightpipe. I have one and it is great for the money!

<L>

[mds]

I also found the firepod's pre's and A/D to be better than other similarly priced produtcs(M-Audio, MOTU, Digi, etc.).

Just to elaborate on what Lou said: To use non-Digidesign hardware with the 002 into PT LE you'll need to use Lightpipe to get in. Since the Firepod doesn't have lightpipe, it won't work. The Octane or Octopre w/ADC card would also fine to add inputs to the 002 as well.

[Eagertone]

i use a digimax (not LT) with my 002R and LOVE it. the limiters are a life saver in live situations too. i can ADAT at 48K, or if i want to record at 96K, i just use the digimax pres into the 002 to get it into protools (as ADAT can't send clock at 96K, and the 002r has no word clock... LAME!!!)

ANYWAY, digimax +1, but i'd upgrade from the LT

Eagertone, have you tried sending the wordclock from the Digimax into the SPDIF input on the 002? I have heard that it will read the clock even without audio, if you just use the right adaptors to go from BNC to RCA. I'd love to know if this will work, and I imagine the clock will help the 002 sound better even at 96k!

Thanks,

Lou

[mds]

Do you need to run the SPDIF to Wordclock, or do you just run SPDIF to SPDIF and use the SPDIF clock? Running an RCA SPDIF to BNC wordclock seems like an unusual setup. Whatever works, though!

No, other way round - send wordclock to SPDIF, just to get the clock into the 002. I don't know if it will work which is why I ask. You send the audio to the line ins while clocking the 002 from the 96k wordclock out. If I had a 96k clock I'd try it myself.

Someone try it and let me know!

Thanks.

[Eagertone]

hey guys. i don't have an external clock, but you can't send 96K clock over lightpipe so i'm told. the only ins on the 002 are for optical and spdif. the ins are used to send the 8 channels of audio, and clock if you're going at 44 or 48.

there's an out on the digimax for spdif aes/ebu and word clock. it would be nice if the 002 also had word clock, as you could then just get a decent external clock and drive both from there. but alas... we'll have to wait for the 003.

the 002r has clocking problems when i track to anything but the internal clock. it can't lock in, and i end up losing my connection to the digimax, or at best getting clock clicks in my waveform.

thus, i always use the internal clock on the 002, and slave the digmiax.

i haven't tried it with a dedicated clock source though, slaving both. i've only tried using the presonus clock or 002 clock. of those two, only the 002 works well.

i seldom track more than 8 channels simultaneous anyway, so i mostly just use the pres/limiters in the digimax straight into the lines of the 002 running at 96K.

Eagertone, humor me and try an experiment: Try connecting the wordclock out of the Digimax to the SPDIF in of the 002, set the clock on the 002 to SPDIF, and connect the line out of the Digimax to the line in on the 002, and see if it will work!

I have heard on good authority that this will work, but have not been able to try it myself and I only have the digimax LT. The 002R will clock to the lightpipe just fine, but the lightpipe does not do 96k.

If I had one available I'd try this and find out in five minutes if it works. If it does, it would allow you to do 96k with the digimax/002 combination! The SPDIF input should be able to read the wordclock even if there is no audio coming thru it. All you'd need is a BNC to RCA adaptor, which is cheap and easily available, like this:

http://www.web-tronics.com/bncmafecoad9.html
only $1.59 - you can get them at the shack even:
<http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid= 278-254> but there it costs three times as much...

Worth a try I'd say! It would be nice to know if you can hear a difference clocking the 002 from the Digimax this way. People say it should be better.

Lou

[vicprobey]

If your willing to spend that much money, have you considered an octepre from focusrite?