[mfassett]

Quality: 8
I bought this with the remote - and I have to say the remote makes lots of things handy - mute, dim, and mono switches, additional headphone outputs, monitor switching (if I had more monitors), input switching between main/spdif/aux, talkback, and a volume knob. I haven't used the pres much, since I have some other pres that I use, but they didn't seem much different than the firepod pres, and according to Presonus, they're the same.

Reliability: 6
This is where the Firestudio falls down. I've had problems with it losing connection when switching apps from Reaper to CuBase, and with loud pops when switching sample rates that the volume knob does nothing to alleviate. With the latest drivers, the headphone indicators in the mixer app for phones 2 & 3 are backwards. None of these are really show stoppers, and they don't keep me from using it and making music - but they are annoying as hell. The lowest usable latency I can set it for is 384 samples on a 2.4Ghz quad core with 2gb of ram. It seems to me that it ought to be able to go lower than that - but then maybe I'm asking too much of firewire. I know I could use a lower setting on my Firepod when I had one.

Overall Rating: 7
The features are great and the sound is fine (I don't think any problems I have with the sound of my recordings are related to the unit), but the annoyances annoy the hell out of me, and I wouldn't buy it again. Unless, of course, the next driver release fixes all the annoyances.


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An Update
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During the beta period, they managed to fix the lost connection when switching apps, and the annoying pops (I was on the beta driver list), but they introduced a different annoying bug which I reported and they never fixed where, when switching between sample rates while loading projects recorded at 88.2 in Cubase 4, the remote would shut down and I wouldn't be able to hear any audio. Switching to another project at 44.1 would cause the remote to come back on, and I could then load the original project again and it sometimes would work.

So when they released "final" drivers, I hoped they'd fixed that, but they haven't. The annoying pops when switching sample rates are back, and the usable latency seems to have increased.

It's getting replaced ASAP. What a waste of money.