Presonus Firestudio

Another faithful Presonus companion. At the time I was going through sound cards every few months, buying and selling used gear, looking for the best fit/deal I could find for my rapidly changing needs. I needed a card with lots of preamps, and I needed it cheap. The fact that it had ADAT inputs and inserts on the first two channels put it slightly ahead of the Focusrite I was looking at. I grabbed a used one and never looked back... That is until I couldn't get it work relaibly for long enough to trust it. Turned out the problem was my firewire connection. I searched ye olde interweb and the Presonus forums and found various answers which seemed different for everyone. It was really the user sucess stories that led me to the right card. I had a local computer store order it for me and away we go. I still had to use it in 'safe mode 1' which to me always said that the card was not really working as intended, but it worked well enough and for $500 and for 8 mic pres its hard to complain. I made several multi-track (16 ch.) recordings on this card with the ADAT inputs at 48/24 and never had any real problems. The preamps are ok, they're clean, lots of gain, but nothing to write home about. The user gui 'matrix' was slightly confusing at first, innovative idea though. Nothing will really compare to the RME Total Mix software for me though, which in the end is why I sold it.