Recently I purchased a Presonus Firestudio. Following my own advice, I did a search on Google for “Presonus Firestudio Chipset”. Of course, this keyword phrase is useless because Presonus decided to brag about the chipset within their new Firestudio in the propaganda they use at all major retailers. GREAT! In other words, from a search engine standpoint, it's going to be VERY difficult to get a blog to rank for “Presonus Firestudio Chipset”, but I'm going to give it a shot. (I REALLY wish Presonus wouldn't waste the customers time by bragging about the chipsets within the Firestudio. That's a feature, not a benefit. I don't know or care what components are in an audio interface as long as the audio interface does what I want and sounds good.)

So, I've stolen the following data from Presonus. You can find all of this info on the Presonus Firestudio Hardware Compatibility page but if you are like me you won't find it until you've wasted an entire night diagnosing the problem. In fact, I almost found out that I needed an entirely different motherboard. (I have a GeForce3. The Firestudio will not function properly with a Geforce4.). When I finally found this page, I was scared to death that I needed to build a brand new computer. I was NOT happy!

What hardware is incompatible with my PreSonus Interface?
- ATI RADEON 9000/9001 IGP video chipset. Symptoms are consistent click and pops during audio playback. This video chipset is only found in PC laptops and is entirely integrated as the computer’s only video controller. We strongly recommend that you do not get a system with this chipset, as there is currently no workaround for this incompatibility.

-USB/firewire and s400/s800 combo cards are not compatible. Symptoms are usually no audio recording/playback but device will install and sync, erratic audio performance and rarely will not allow the device to install or sync. We recommend a firewire card that ONLY has s400 firewire connections and preferably with a Texas Instruments or VIA chipset.

-Firewire cards with NEC chipsets are not compatible. Symptoms are similar or the same as combo cards.

-Motherboards with nForce4 chipsets. Symptoms include reduced to very poor performance especially if using the onboard firewire connection. A PCIe (not PCI) FW400 only card with a Texas Instruments chipset is a known workaround, but may not allow full performance.

-SoundBlaster Audigy cards. Symprtoms include pops and clicks and loss of sync. If your PC has one of these cards installed, it is recommended to uninstall it before installing a PreSonus interface