Firebox Studio
About a month back I bought a FireBox from PreSonus for doing some home recording.
I finally got it all set up and had a chance to play around with it. Here is a picture of my luxurious studio, which now includes my new FireBox.
Between the FireBox and my computer is a new air filter for our house. I was using it to block some of the noise from the laptop. I know this is not ideal but I was really just experimenting.
The FireBox has two microphone/instrument preamps, which means that I can record two tracks at once. Since I only own one condenser mic I decided to try an experiment. I plugged my mic into one input and I plugged my guitar, which has its own internal pick-up, into the second input. The result was that I was able to record two tracks simultaneously. Below is a screen shot of Cubase LE, the mixing software that is bundled with the FireBox. You can see the two tracks at the top part of the image.
Due to the fact that they were very different inputs the result was two tracks of entirely unique tonal quality. The track that was created from my pick-up has a much more electric feel and a very full bass sound whereas the mic’ed track sounds acoustic. I mixed the two together to achieve the final result. I am not a recording engineer so I feel I still have quite a learning curve ahead of me with regards to understanding how to mic and mix this stuff.
The tune I recorded for this experiment is called South Wind. I have also seen it called Martinmass Wind. This is my adaptation of John Renbourn’s beautiful version that I ripped off from his lovely Wheel of Fortune album, which through the years has remained as one of my favorites.
I am playing in a DADGAD tuning whereas John plays it in DADGBD.
3 COMMENTS
That is beautiful always a pleasure to hear you play. I bought an H 4 recorder from Zoom recently and it too has the Cubase LE software. I bought a 2 GB chip so there is plenty of space but I had trouble installing the software. (could not get the drivers to install) I’ll try again maybe with some professional help from Geek Squad. The recorder is pretty complicated for an old timer like me!! All the best — Bob G.
I had trouble with my FireBox initially. The FireBox connects to my laptop via firewire. My laptop does not have a firewire port so I had to buy a firewire card. It turns out that the firewire card was the source of much of my troubles. After talking to the tech guys over at PreSonus I found out that the FireBox works best with firewire cards that are made with either the Via chip set or the TI chip set. I am having more luck with the firewire card with the correct chipset. The point is that you may need to look at how the H4 is connected to your computer. Also, you need to look at how the Device is set up in Cubase. Good luck, I hope you’re over your hurdles soon.
I knew a broad in High School who we called “FIREBOX”, but I think it meant something entirely different!?