Sound advice

October 8, 2009 3:55 PM

I am looking for recommendations for a recording interface and self-powered monitors.

The Firebox gets rave reviews but I recall reading somewhere that there are now newer/better alternatives. Is this the case?

Living in South Africa doesn't help as the price for the Presonus Firebox is truly insane ($250-00 in the US - $759-00 here!)

Equipment:

- Quad core Q9550 with 4 Gig DDR 3 RAM - Audigy 4 sound card (could this be used for anything later?) - SONAR 7 - Behringer Eurorack MX1604A - Rode NT1-A

Due to the pricing here, it looks as if purchasing in the US via credit card and having the items shipped over here seems to be the way to go - any dealer recommendations or advice? Also, any other advice regarding the equipment/assembly of a home studio would be most welcome.

At this stage, I am uncertain whether I should use the Behringer mixer or how best to wire it in to break the pure digital setup (more advice required!) TIA

posted by Zenabi to media & arts (2 comments total)

What exactly are you wanting to do? How many ins and outs do you need?

There may well be a good alternative to the Firebox. Are you buying from an online store? Which one?

Btw, I would aim to completely remove the Behringer from your signal path. They're well known to mess up the sound in various ways. If you don't care about fidelity, then by all means keep it.
posted by Magnakai at 4:39 PM on October 8

For the price you really can't beat Behringer. Depending on your application Behringer mixers can be completely acceptable. Again depending on your application and budget you can spend anywhere from 50.00 to over 1000.00 on powered monitors. Behringer makes a really cheap USB audio I/O box. If all your looking to do is get 2 channels from the MX1604A in and out of the puter. Give us a little more info on your application and we can probably help more.
posted by jmsta at 9:12 AM on October 9