PreSonus Firepod Replacement (Audio Interface or USB Mixer)

It may be overkill for you but these beasts seem very interesting :

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ZenTour 4mic pre, 4 instrument in, Adat in, reamp out...

or this one : https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Quartet

Or https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FirefaceUCX



On a tight budget :

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ZEDi10FX

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/AudioBox44

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Scarlet18i8G2

The last two interfaces that pc mentioned (AudioBox44 and Scarlett 18i8G2) would be my recommendations, and they are both supported on Sierra.

mactreouser, post: 448592, member: 47968 wrote: Appreciate, dudes!

Do you think, as long as devices equipped with USB will last longer and worth to grab instead?

I know some says FireWire is going to die but even if usb exist until the end of time. Some maker will stop putting up new drivers for OS to come. It's a fact with many companies and I was the victim of it too with m-audio a few times.



That's why I love RME, they are very active at keeping up drivers compatibility. They continu to work on drivers for many years and it's very surprising they still even get things better from time to time.

The last driver made for my Fireface 800 was release in dec 2016. Not bad for a unit introduced in 2004 !



We could make some searches but I can't remember if I read complains about Focurite and Presonus drivers.



So dude.. It all depends on the seriousness of the makers.

mactreouser, post: 448607, member: 47968 wrote: Great point! Agree.



Sigh... it seems no RME distributor in my place...SAD!

You sure can order them online, no ? Assuming you really want one of their product ;)

The Scarlett is an honest unit. The preamps are ok and you get line inputs and digital ins for adding external (better) preamps.



The Soundcraft mixer, I don't know. If it let's you use the mixer as a summing mixer (the outs of the DAWs to the faders) it could be nice

Some Allen & Heath zed mixers does it and I had good comments on those...



But most mixers don't have direct to converter inputs. If you want to put external preamps one day, that will be a problem.

I would not look at the ZEDi-10FX for multitrack recording as it only has 2-track (stereo) record/replay via USB.

Boswell, post: 448618, member: 29034 wrote: I would not look at the ZEDi-10FX for multitrack recording as it only has 2-track (stereo) record/replay via USB.

Hey Bos, which on of the zed could be used to mix/ sum ? There was one right ??

Sonic quality apart, any stereo mixer with sufficient input channels could be used to mix or sum a given set of source tracks or stems. I was simply reminding the OP that not many low-cost mixers allow multi-track (>2) recording, if that was a feature in his equipment choice.



When I'm doing 2-box mixdowns, I usually use a passive mixer/summer that I built myself, but there are times when that unit does not have all the facilities and I/O that the mix requires. When that's the case, I turn to my A+H Zed-R16, using it in pure analogue mode with most tracks going in through the channel insert returns. It says a lot for the audio path quality of the Zed-R16 that I'm hard pressed to hear the difference between the passive-mixed tracks and the ones done on the active mixer.



A shortcoming of the Zed-R16 is that the ADAT I/O does not operate S/MUX protocols, so I can't feed it directly with the 96KHz digital tracks from my HD24XRs. The XRs have excellent D-A conversion, so it's not a big problem, but special leads are needed, as the insert I/O is unbalanced.

Thank you Boswell.

I had the impression the Zed-R16 could receive the track signals via FireWire and then let us mix the tracks (with eq and faders) and use the main out to send the signal to a second recording unit or computer..

Sorry for my missunderstanding..

pcrecord, post: 448623, member: 46460 wrote: Thank you Boswell.

I had the impression the Zed-R16 could receive the track signals via FireWire and then let us mix the tracks (with eq and faders) and use the main out to send the signal to a second recording unit or computer..

Sorry for my missunderstanding..

There's no misunderstanding; it can do exactly that when set for FW input rather than ADAT, but it's not the way I use it for 2-box mixdowns.

Boswell, post: 448624, member: 29034 wrote: There's no misunderstanding; it can do exactly that when set for FW input rather than ADAT, but it's not the way I use it for 2-box mixdowns.

Ah !! I get it... I should have known you have more intricate ways to sum than just the zed ;)



If I could make a bit more money with the studio, I'd like to experiment with summing and 2 Daw setups...