Hi folks,

I'm wondering if anyone can help me answer a pretty rudimentary
question: I'm on the verge of buying some type of interface that will
let me do computer recording. I have a 1.8 GHz IBM Thinkpad laptop and
Adobe Audition software. After reading many positive reviews about the
PreSonus Firebox, I was thinking that I would go with that, as it seems
to give pretty good bang for the buck (and comes with Cubase LE, should
I decide to use that).

However, I'd like to be able to record multiple sources at once. Not
necessarily a full band, but at least, say, drums and rhythm guitar
(and maybe even also bass) at the same time. (I really like the live
feel of having the rhythm section recorded live, as opposed to laying
down all the parts separately.) I've recently done this exact thing
using a borrowed Yamaha AW16G (all-in-one workstation), which has 8
mic/line inputs, and it sounded great. To do that, I needed to be able
to record 4 mic sources at once: 1 for the mic'd guitar amp, and three
for the drums (kick, snare, and overheads). I was really happy with the
result so if I can achieve that with the Firebox, I'll be psyched.

So here's the problem: The Firebox has 2 combination Mic/Instrument
inputs, and 2 1/4" balanced line-in inputs (and 2 SPDIF digital inputs,
which I assume will be useless to me). Am I gonna be able to pull off
the above scenario with this equipment? For starters, I'm assuming I'd
probably need to mix the drums through my Behringer mixer and bring
them down to just two tracks going into the Firebox, which kind of
sucks because then I'll lose some ability to adjust drum volumes
individually. But even if I do that, all I have left are the two 1/4"
balanced line inputs.

So here are my main questions:

1. Am I correct in thinking that the balanced line inputs are useless
for me in this situation? Is there a way to convert a mic'd guitar amp
(or any other mic'd source) so that it can go into a balanced line in?
(Would a direct box do this?) Would this diagram work?:

kick drum OH/snare
| |
| |
-------------------------------
| Mic 1 Mic 2 |
| |
| Firebox |----Firewire to PC/Cubase----
| |
| |
| line 1 line 2 |
-------------------------------
| |
| |
-------------------------------
| Main L Main R |
| |
| Behringer mixer |
| |
| Mic 1 Mic 2 |
| (pan L) (pan R) |
-------------------------------
| |
| |
SM57 direct box
on guitar amp to bass

2. If there is in fact a way to do this, does anyone have any
suggestions about pre-mixing drums down to a stereo input? What would
be the best way to mix the drums? Would it be best to mix the snare and
overheads together and keep the kick separate, or is there some other
commonly-used setup that would give good results?

I know that I could solve my problem by getting the 10 input Firepod
instead of the Firebox, but that's way out of my price range. So if
anyone has any suggestions for enabling me to record multiple sources
through this so-called "6-input" Firebox (which really seems to me,
from a practical point of view, like a 2-input Firebox), please let me
know.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in adavance for any suggestions!

John

Have you looked at the Edirol FA101 - it's only $100 more than the
presonus and if you're using the outboard mixer, the quality of the
preamps in the interface is a minor consideration. I use a Mackie
1604VLZ with a Roland VM3100Pro and I turn the preamps on the Roland
all the way down. Does the Behringer have direct outs? If so you can
use a 8x8 TRS to TRS recording snake ($35 or so) to connect them. That
way you could record snare, kick, two overheads, guitar, bass and
scratch vocal and still have 3 channels left.

Thomas
www.yourhomestudio.com

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, the Behringer only has a stereo
out, so I wouldn't be able to use that config. I went ahead and got the
Firebox - I was already pushing my current budget so I decided I
couldn't swing paying more for extra inputs. Not yet anyway.

By the way, for those interested, I'm really impressed with the Firebox
so far. It set up in no time at all and worked flawlessly out of the
box. Also, Cubase LE, which came with it, has worked like a gem so far.
I've read a lot of complaints about Cubase, so I was surprised to find
that it was really intuitive and easy to use. (So far, anyway--all I've
done is record some tracks and import WAV files from tracks I had
recorded on a Yamaha DAW.) I haven't done any hardcore mixing with it
yet, but so far it's much easier to use than I expected.

John

What kind of Yamaha DAW do you have? I've got a AW2816 and I just love
it. The CD-R went out on me but I just replaced it with a SCSI and I
haven't had any problems yet.

Thomas
www.yourhomestudio.com

Well I don't have it anymore; I was just borrowing it. But it was an
AW16G. It's cool in some ways - sounds pretty good and is fairly easy
to actually record. But it's so hard to do any kind of mixing, effects,
EQ, etc. when you only have that one little LCD screen to work with.
I was constantly trying to figure out which screen I was supposed to be
in in order to do some function. I'm sure if I used it more, I would
get more comfortable with it. But now that I've messed around with
going straight to the PC, I don't think I could go back. Seems much
more straightforward just using the sequencing software.

I use my AW2816 to record tracks because it has compression and eq on
each channel. After recording, I port it to Sonar4 using the AWExtract
program and then I can do whatever I want to with them. Also, since it
syncs via MTC and SMTP, I can lock it up with Sonar and record 16
tracks at once if I need to. Anyway, good luck! I started with a 2 in/4
out Edirol UA-100 and I was able to produce a complete CD with it.

Thomas
www.yourhomestudio.com