PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL/44VSL/1818VSL

[FilmNMusicman]

Why did they ditch the Firewire???

Not sure I really like the color scheme...blue and cheap isn't becoming

Tech specs look really good AND as a guy who's owned a Firepod for 7 years now their customer support is TOP and I mean T O P notch.

Hopefully the preamps improved.....and the A/D.

[thefunkystrummer]

I bought a 22VSL yesterday. I A/B'ed it against my Apogee Duet 2 using my 2010 iMac, iTunes, Logic Pro 9, Reason 6 and Studio One. I have to be honest, I'm not hearing $400 worth of difference in sound quality. Also, both devices worked and choked at the same points with large VI processing projects at 24/96k using buffers of 1024, 512, 256, 128.

Discernible differences - there are a few very subtle ones. The following was noticed when listening to fully professionally released pop/jazz tunes.

1) Stereo Image - Duet 2 sounds a bit wider and more detailed. Small pan differences are easier to hear.
2) Low frequency clarity & definition - Duet is clearer and more defined.
3) Points 1 & 2 vary greatly depending on the source material. On some tunes I noticed no difference at all. In fact, after a short while of listening it wasn't always apparent which device I was listening to and I had to check.

With that said the 22VSL sounds very good. I prefer the form factor of the 22VSL. The Duet although cool, is just a bit awkward physically. The 22VSL and Duet occupy roughly the same amount of desk space.

Installation of the 22VSL was smooth, no issues. The 22VSL feels very solid and is quite stable with OS 10.6.8.

Overall, this a very good interface that can absolutely deliver pro results. Yes, the Duet 2 sounds slightly more high-end but when considering the price difference ($199 vs $599), I think the 22VSL is by far the better buy.

AD/DA conversion technology has come a long way in the 10+ years that I've been working with DAWs and the 22VSL is an excellent example of that fact. The quality of this device would have cost much more a short time ago. Throw in the VSL software and on board DSP, this thing is a real winner.

I'm considering returning my Duet 2 and putting the extra cash away for something more useful down the line.


***Follow Up***

Just to clarify, the subtle differences mentioned above between the Duet 2 and 22VSL disappeared for me when listening at 24/96k. AT 44.1k I could hear the subtle differences. BTW, I conducted my tests blind. I had my wife switch between the interfaces so that I would not be influenced by seeing which device was in use. Hope this helps.

[FilmNMusicman]

Thanks for the review...If my new mac mini doesn't work with my 6 year old firepod I might think about the 1818VSL.

[thefunkystrummer]

Originally Posted by FilmNMusicman

Thanks for the review...If my new mac mini doesn't work with my 6 year old firepod I might think about the 1818VSL.

You're welcome!

[YTCrazyTieGuy]

Good to know that the D/A is good. Any opinion on the pres and A/D?

[Gizzmo0815]

The preamps are the same as the ones they have in their Studiolive mixers. Very clean and very detailed. No real "color" to speak of but I think that is a good thing for an interface like this. The Audiobox line is a really excellent example of how well Presonus has matured over the years. Excellent products with excellent software paired with top notch customer support and you have a winning product. Highly recommended. The converters compete (in my opinion) with most other options in anything below the 1k market (I own or have owned a Duet, RME Fireface, Motu Unit and Focusrite Saffire unit and the Presonus converters are just as good or better in some cases) and the price is unbeatable.

[Zander155]

I just recently purchased the 44VSL. Great product, it sounds awesome compared to my old Tascam US-144. Definitely would reccomend!

[YTCrazyTieGuy]

Awesome! just ordered an 1818vsl.

[FilmNMusicman]

My only real issue is now it only has 6 line inputs...I've got 3 compressors as inserts which take up 5 inputs and 3 mic preamps, I don't want to have to plug and unplug constantly...

Oh well Firepod I'm sticking with you...Presonus 1818 is not for me this time around.

[njekin]

Originally Posted by thefunkystrummer

I bought a 22VSL yesterday. I A/B'ed it against my Apogee Duet 2 using my 2010 iMac, iTunes, Logic Pro 9, Reason 6 and Studio One. I have to be honest, I'm not hearing $400 worth of difference in sound quality. Also, both devices worked and choked at the same points with large VI processing projects at 24/96k using buffers of 1024, 512, 256, 128.

Discernible differences - there are a few very subtle ones. The following was noticed when listening to fully professionally released pop/jazz tunes.

1) Stereo Image - Duet 2 sounds a bit wider and more detailed. Small pan differences are easier to hear.
2) Low frequency clarity & definition - Duet is clearer and more defined.
3) Points 1 & 2 vary greatly depending on the source material. On some tunes I noticed no difference at all. In fact, after a short while of listening it wasn't always apparent which device I was listening to and I had to check.

With that said the 22VSL sounds very good. I prefer the form factor of the 22VSL. The Duet although cool, is just a bit awkward physically. The 22VSL and Duet occupy roughly the same amount of desk space.

Installation of the 22VSL was smooth, no issues. The 22VSL feels very solid and is quite stable with OS 10.6.8.

Overall, this a very good interface that can absolutely deliver pro results. Yes, the Duet 2 sounds slightly more high-end but when considering the price difference ($199 vs $599), I think the 22VSL is by far the better buy.

AD/DA conversion technology has come a long way in the 10+ years that I've been working with DAWs and the 22VSL is an excellent example of that fact. The quality of this device would have cost much more a short time ago. Throw in the VSL software and on board DSP, this thing is a real winner.

I'm considering returning my Duet 2 and putting the extra cash away for something more useful down the line.


***Follow Up***

Just to clarify, the subtle differences mentioned above between the Duet 2 and 22VSL disappeared for me when listening at 24/96k. AT 44.1k I could hear the subtle differences. BTW, I conducted my tests blind. I had my wife switch between the interfaces so that I would not be influenced by seeing which device was in use. Hope this helps.

Hi, when you compare the sound quality of duet 2 and audiobox, were you using the headphoen output or just the lineout?
I am curious about how good the headpone output of audiobox is. I mostly use headphone listening to music, so headphone sound quality matters to me.

[thefunkystrummer]

Originally Posted by njekin

Hi, when you compare the sound quality of duet 2 and audiobox, were you using the headphoen output or just the lineout?
I am curious about how good the headpone output of audiobox is. I mostly use headphone listening to music, so headphone sound quality matters to me.

Headphone output - all tests were conducted using Sony MDR7506 headphones.

[skiltrip]

I assume the headphone out is much improved over the original Audiobox. I briefly had an Audiobox I bought from Sweetwater, and I returned it mostly because the sound quality of the headphone jack was absolutely terrible. Tinny, weird. It just wasn't right.

[skiltrip]

I'm definitely toying with the idea of ditching my ProFire 610 for a PreSonus 44VSL. Anyone else got any kind/unkind words to say about the 44VSL or the VSL series in general?

[FreD_BeaR]

Originally Posted by skiltrip

I'm definitely toying with the idea of ditching my ProFire 610 for a PreSonus 44VSL. Anyone else got any kind/unkind words to say about the 44VSL or the VSL series in general?

Im looking at the 1818vsl vs the roland UA 1010. The 1818 has the same internals just more. Im having a hard time deciding as well....

[FilmNMusicman]

I don't think the VSL series is selling very well.

[MikeRivers]

Originally Posted by skiltrip

I assume the headphone out is much improved over the original Audiobox. I briefly had an Audiobox I bought from Sweetwater, and I returned it mostly because the sound quality of the headphone jack was absolutely terrible.

The 44VSL's headphone output sounds fine when it's clean, but with a hot mix, it's possible to drive the output stage into clipping before the volume control gets all the way up.

See my review for the full scoop.

[MikeRivers]

Originally Posted by FreD_BeaR

Im looking at the 1818vsl vs the roland UA 1010. The 1818 has the same internals just more. Im having a hard time deciding as well....

What the AudioBox series offers is a monitor mixing application with a pretty full out channel strip (3-band EQ, high pass filter, compressor, limiter, and gate) for every input, and every output as well, plus two reverb or delay effect processors. It's a step above most monitor mixing applications which just offer level and panning. But I suspect that other manufacturers will catch on to this pretty soon. People with more tolerance for using a computer instead of knobs are mixing live shows with these boxes and their backs thank them for not having to carry a console.

At the moment, it's pretty special for the price. The trick is that the DSP code runs on the connected computer, not on a hardware chip in the device, and they still manage a trip through the converters and application and back out again in less than 4 milliseconds. Not as good as NO latency (the 44 and 22 offer that for inputs, but without the channel processing - the 1818 doesn't) but not bad.

Computer hot rodders often claim lower latency than that going through the DAW, but I never could achieve it.

[skiltrip]

Deleted.

[The Pride]

Hi guys, this is my first ever post.
I took delivery of the 1818Vsl last week. Until now I've been using a Yamaha MG166 USB but this only has a stereo bus and I wanted to take my first steps into multi-channel computer recording to record drums (all my experience in the past was using analogue tape machines).
If I'm honest my first port of call was the Focusrite Saffire Pro40 but I found that the firewire port on my HP laptop wasn't up to it. So, I took this straight back and ordered the Presonus.

At the weekend I began to put it through it's paces and all I can say is 'so-far-so-good'.

Firstly just to say that the VSL software is really intuitive and easy to use. The drivers and software all installed first time without any problem and Cubase recognised them too and from Cubase it was very easy to set up all the buses for a multi-channel recording.

I know what some guys are saying about the look of this unit being 'cheap' but in the flesh it has a real feeling of quality about it. Particularly the control pots which are indexed (in my opinion essential when using stereo inputs for getting the input levels balanced) and feel really positive.

After realising that I had to send DAW outputs to output channels 7 and 8 to hear them through the headphone jack, I set up a standard monitor mix for me working on my own and have now set up a second and third mix for me to use with a drummer and bassplayer. The monitor mix doesn't sound quite as 'imediate' as it did from my analogue mixer but what latency there is is practically indiscernable.

First I recorded a sample stereo electric guitar track at the same time as a vocal track and these tracked perfectly with no clicks droputs etc.

Then a friend came round and I used the multiple outs using an ART headphone amp to set him up a headphone mix in another room whilst I had a control room mix and monitored through speakers. This all worked great. In fact it was extremely cool for me to have such control over the monitor mixes in a home set up. If I have one gripe it's that I would have liked the ability to listen into his mix so that I could help him with the levels. He was playing banjo and Irish button accordian using my SE 2200A large diaphragm condenser and the audio quality was really good.

Sorry, I can't really comment on the mic preamps of the Audiobox as I am not an expert, except to say that there was plenty of gain and the sound quality was 'transparent' with no colouring of the sound, which I am led to believ you might get from cheaper preamps.

Since then I have recorded several tracks of acoustic guitar and my own vocals, again in near perfect quality.

The big question for me is can I get true multi-track recording. I have read a few threads elsewhere saying that this is where the 'fun' begins. What I am pretty sure of is that the 1818 can handle it. What remains to be seen is can my pc handle this whilst running the VSL software and Cubase simultaneously.

Tonight I am going on the road to our church where I will be recording 7 tracks of drums and 1 of bass along side my existing tracks. I am going for broke in that to begin with I am going to run my backing tracks with all plug-ins within cubase switched on and hope that I have enough processing power left over but if this doesn't work I have a few tricks up my sleeve, including:

1. Mixing down my backing tracks and re-inputting the stems to new projects within Cubase;
2. Doing the same but using the less system-hungry Studio One software which came bundled with the 1818VSL;
3. Switching off the VSL software and recording everything directly to the DAW whilst reverting to an analogue monitor mix.

Hopefully none of these contingency plans is necessary. By the way my PC is an HP Paviliion laptop with 4Gb of ram, a Core I3 processor and a 320Gb SATA HD running Windows 7 64bit and Cubase is version 6.5 using all native plug-ins.

I hope this helps others deliberations. I will let you know how I get on!

By the way my band uses in-ear monitoring on stage and I my hope is that the 1818VSL will be able to be used to provide us with separate mixes. I had hoped that the Virtual Studio Life software would work with QMIX so we could all control this from iPhones but I contacted Presonus support and they said that they haven't introduced this functionality yet. If they did it would make this an amazingly powerful yet compact digital mixer for small gigs!

[skiltrip]

Considering a 44vsl as a near future replacement for my ProFire 610.

The VSL part of things seem interesting, but I've never felt a need for this type of feature, so I'm wondering if I'll actually end up using it or not.

The one thing I can see it useful for is tracking some vocals after your session is already pretty big, where keeping your latency below 128 becomes problematic. VSL could let you put some reverb on it while simultaneously hearing the mic pre directly instead of the DAW return. Does it work this way? Is that possible?

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Gearslutz App

[The Pride]

Originally Posted by skiltrip

Considering a 44vsl as a near future replacement for my ProFire 610.

The VSL part of things seem interesting, but I've never felt a need for this type of feature, so I'm wondering if I'll actually end up using it or not.

The one thing I can see it useful for is tracking some vocals after your session is already pretty big, where keeping your latency below 128 becomes problematic. VSL could let you put some reverb on it while simultaneously hearing the mic pre directly instead of the DAW return. Does it work this way? Is that possible?

Sent from my LG-VM670 using Gearslutz App

Hi, if I have understood you correctly, what you describe is the main purpose of the VSL software and it does it really well. See my full review of the product in the 'Reviews' pages. I had a big Cubase project running the other night with lots of plug-ins activated and was recording 5 channels of drums, plus bass, when monitoring through the DAW just wasn't an option because of the drain on the system and massive latency.

Whether recording multiple channels or just one, when tracking the vsl software allows the audiobox 1818vsl to function as an analogue input mixer would (monitoring the live inputs before the DAW), except that the monitoring is in stereo rather than just mono as you'd get from an Aux send.

The direct monitoring of the VSL software also allows you to add some reverb and delay, plus dynamics processing too if you want - all with very low latency. I used this the other day when recording some vox and it was really helpful to have a 'wet' vocal to feed off while singing (Monitoring through the DAW on my pc usually only gives the effect of a slap back delay because of the latency - not always that helpful).

[SquashPile]

Wow.. most excellent in depth review Sir. Good stuff...

Originally Posted by MikeRivers

The 44VSL's headphone output sounds fine when it's clean, but with a hot mix, it's possible to drive the output stage into clipping before the volume control gets all the way up.

See my review for the full scoop.

[Targetdrew]

I just bought the AudioBox1818VSL. I use it with Studio One and was used to using a MOTU828MKII and this was my choice I went with. Instead of going back to MOTU, I thought I would give something new a try and after researching PreSonus and hearing about their quality amps I thought I would give it a shot. I was really interested in the StudioLive at first with all it's capabilities with FX, Compression. I really like how you can print your compression, EQ and mix into your sequencer during recordings with Audiobox 1818VSL. I use an EMU 6400 Ultra lined into the inputs VIA 1/4 to XLR and find that the sound I get from from the recordings of the EMU into the sequencer sounds very close to the sound I listen to when I have my headphones plugged into the EMU which is very rich, warm and lively. The compressor's built into the FAT Channel of the VSL software works really well at getting the sound I need without touching the gain's and even if I use the gains it's very subtle as they are strong and it's easy to clip. So very happy with the Analog to Digital converting. The volume headroom they leave you to work with out of the headphones it's rediculously loud compared to even the MOTU which I found loud. I can only get my headphones to 12 O'Clock and not any more and that is quite loud as I work with Electronic music that is very processed. Overall, the inputs and gains are great, VSL technology gives you your digital mixer to work with which you can save your track preferences and pull them back up which is helpful. Gives me the digital mixer feel, the volume and sound is great. I will be happy working with the AudioBox1818VSL.

[sebastianthecrab]

I have been strongly considering buying an AudioBox 44vsl for a few months. Can anyone tell me about their experience using an AudioBox with Pro Tools 10 for Mac? It seems that most of the positive reviews I've read have been by people using an AudioBox with the included Studio One software.

[skiltrip]

Originally Posted by skiltrip

Considering a 44vsl as a near future replacement for my ProFire 610.

I felt it worth mentioning, that 7 months later I did indeed replace my ProFire 610, but I went with the 22VSL instead. Bus-powered became a desired feature for me. I was also considering the Focusrite 2i4, but the VSL really intrigued me.

I'm amazed at the quality of this unit, both build quality and sound. And I instantly got comfortable with the VSL software, and I can see myself using this constantly while recording. No reason not to. It's absolutely fantastic!

For the first time I have an interface with everything I want/need and nothing I don't.

If my I/O needs ever increase again in the future, I'd not hesitate to just buy the 1818VSL, and keep the 22VSL for when I was away from my desk.

[skiltrip]

I love my 22VSL so much that I also bought the 44VSL. 4 inputs will fit my workflow better. Much less need for swapping what's in the inputs, and more keeping things plugged in. I'll be keeping the 22VSL for now, just in case I need a power outlet free setup.


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