Focusrite Saffire LE vs. Presonus Firebox

Thinking of picking up one of these two, they have identical specs, and cost the exact same. i was just wondering if anyone around here has had any experience with either of these, or if anyone has heard anything about these two that would push me more towards one or the other.

i've done a search on this forum and found a bit of info, but i'm really looking for a specific "saffire vs. firebox" discussion, so please no "read the rules" comments.

thanks.

fuck those two things, get an Edirol FA101. go for the same money secondhand and has much better specs.

I was in a similar spot but eventually went for another sound card again - Echo Audiofire 4. Bloody brills little thing and the drivers are rock solid (I heard that the Firebox drivers are a little flaky, though I can't remember where I heard that). Sorry to confuse matters further !

i have a firebox that i use on my laptop. It works great for me, for what i need, but it is outdated and the mic pre's are horrible. Though it's nothing a 30 dollar mic pre to use when you need it wont fix. The "soft mixer" that comes with it is a joke and has absolutely no use save for selecting a certain output, but you can do that in your daw so why bother.

I would advise against getting one. The only reason i have one is that i got it in a trade for dj'ing an event for them. I would not pay for one. It works great for me, butit took some tweaking and from what i've read about on the presonus boards, problems with drivers and latency seem to affect about 90 percent of the owners.

I could go on about it, i think it is a great card for what i do, i have a pretty powerful laptop though and have xp tweaked with virtually nothing running but cubase when i'm making music, or deckadance when i play live/dj. Works like a charm, but there are a lot of people that are quite smart, that just can't seem to get them to work on their systems.

Long story short, i highly recommend anything EMU makes. Their drivers are awesome, and they have fast and good customer support, and since they are owned by creative (soundblaster) they will be around for some time. Check out the emu 1616 or if you dont need much, the 0202. The 1616 is discontinued as i am guessing emu is about to release a new line of interfaces, but that means that a 1616 can be attained for around 180-250 bucks on ebay or wherever. Plus emu stuff comes with patchmix dsp (which is their software mixer) that has good quality effects and insanely flexible routing. When i used to gig with my desktop i just used the patchmix dsp mixer instead of cubase.

edit: it seems it's just the laptop pcmia version of the 1616 that's discontinued, the pcie is in stock most places, and is a powerful beast! But a bit more expensive.

I second the EMU. I had a 1616m for my laptop and it was rock solid. It sounded bril.

yeah emu's converters are very nice. very low signal to noise ratio so they sound great even on cheap monitors.

Edirol FA101 ftw

i've never owned any edirol but i've known plenty of good ppl that have, and they are affordable and have good support. So that's certainly another (good) option.

lol, i appreciate the help guys but i specifically asked for a saffire vs. firebox discussion. i've looked at literally every other option and there's nothing out there other than these two that match what i need.

the fa101 is nice, but i have no need for that many inputs, and i'm not willing to pay the $470C retail for them. even second hand on ebay they are going for about $100 more than what the saffire and firebox are going for new.

the echo audiofire 4 is nice, but only has 4 outputs as oppose to 6 on the two i mentioned (i'd like to think about 5.1 possibility in the future.)

emu is out of the question because i want to go Firewire and i definitely do not want to deal with pci cards.

as far as preamps go, I honestly am not really that concerned with preamps. i've gone years without pre's, and the stuff i'm making doesn't really involve much recording at all, more on the sequencing soft synths side of things most of the time. only thing i'm upgrading for is better handling of main mix vs. headphones, as well as the ability to have my synth hardwired into the line input as well as having 2 inputs on front free for use from time to time. i hate reaching around behind my kore controller all the time and plugging/unplugging every time i just want to play my bass for 5 minutes. the preamps are kinda just a nice added feature, but not really the deciding factor.

also, as far as driver issues are concerned, I am on a mac so perhaps most issues aren't really relevant? i know there were some issues with class compliant firewire devices a long time ago, but i assume apple has fixed all those bugs that existed back in 2005.

that being said I was sitting on the fence between these two, and i've yet to hear anything bad about the saffire from you guys so maybe i'll just go with that.

I had a firebox a while back and it worked just dandy for me. Never had a problem. On a PC. I sold it, but only out of desperation. I didn't even have a good computer at the time and latency wasn't much of an issue at all. I'm not telling you to get it, as I had never heard any of these problems that are being brought up, but I never had a problem.

I have a saffire LE, I only use it for traktor but it has been perfect. main reason I bought it was because it has a firewire connection, and the price is reasonable

well i ended up springing for the new Focusrite Saffire Pro 24. fucking ace little box, mic pre's sound great, there's some nice input metering right on the front of the box, and the included mixer software is really handy. i can say goodbye to Soundflower for routing audio between applications because this does it for me in a much more flexible way.

installation was easy, no problems, it was working within 5 minutes. from my initial impressions i'd definitely recommend this to a friend.