I believe that the Firepod will give you better performance than the
001. Unless you talking about the 002R? I haven't heard that unit. I
have been using the Firepod and have found it to be a versital, nice
sounding box. I wanted the RME Fireface ($1000)
but a freind was selling his Firepod for $250 so there wasn't anything
to lose by buying it and giving it a go. Pres sound pretty good to me.
Oddly, one of the nicest features I enjoy is the direct monitoring and
the hot headphone jack combo. This allows nice adjustments when
tracking to get the levels matched for overdubs. Quiet, and built
well. They could have included a software control panel for routing,
but they didn't. I'm running it with Logic 7 and really like the
combination. Not sure it is a Pro Tools device though? It's not a
Metric Halo or RME, but a bump up from M-Audio or Edirol IMO. There's
also the Motu Traveler that has good reviews. Street price on the
Firepod now seems about $400-$475 and it is certainly worth that.