Some Serious GAS: Presonus Firestudio Lightpipe!

[wishtheend]

http://www.presonus.com/pdf/firestudio_lightpipeweb.pdf

32-Channels of ADAT .... This is suppose to come out around September or October. I'm seriously thinking of getting one of these. It would be so nice to just have this and a central station up on the desk, and then have all the io's of the preamps down below, nice and clean

But 32 channels? Given I can find a studio with multiple rooms, I could track everything I'd ever need in one shot, and would only need to overdub for correction. I think it would be the perfect solution for live recording too, and still have room to spare on channels.

 

[egan.]

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/ProFireLightbridge-main.html
This has been out for a while and does the same thing.

 

[wishtheend]

Yeah, but I really like the setup of the Presonus unit more. You have peak LEDs for all 32 channels, and the rackmount setup looks a lot nicer. I'm sure the Presonus will be more expensive, but I am willing to bet it will perform nicer. Now to get me a couple DigiMax 96's

 

[R-Stuur]

Yeah the Profire seems like the best options out there

What converters are you thinking of using, are there any in the under 400 zone that do the job right?

 

[CJWall]

But remember, the Profire Lightbridge also allows you to use ProTools, along with any other DAW of your choice.

I agree the Presonus unit looks nices and the LEDs are cool, but you're essentially stuck using anything BUT PT's. I'd rather at least keep my options open, you never know

One day you'll succumb to the Dark Side (rather, the right side

 

[Metaltastic]

That's why my dream setup is a Profire Lightbridge with a Presonus Digimax LT

 

[JeffTD]

I wish the FirePro had 2 firewire ports, tho .

 

[Wolfeman]

Anyone know if the Firestudio Lightpipe is going to be standard firewire or the newer, faster version?

 

[JeffTD]

Anyone know if the Firestudio Lightpipe is going to be standard firewire or the newer, faster version?

You mean Firewire 400 vs Firewire 800... 800 really isn't 'new,' and while it is faster, 400 is insanely robust - I don't think anybody's had a problem doing multitrack recording via fw400, unless they were doing a metric fuckton of tracks.

 

[wishtheend]

I'm pretty sure this will be FW400 since it has the same limitation of only 16 tracks at 88/96kHz. But as for the ProFire, it's only supported by ProTools M-Powered which only supports a max of 18 tracks, so I don't see the real advantage. To use all 32, you'd have to go with a different DAW anyhow. But I guess being able to use ProTools for smaller projects is fine, I just wish it were at least supported by PT LE and I'd probably go for it.

 

[Metaltastic]

Wait wait wait...I've never used it, but I cannot believe that M-Powered only supports 18 simultaneous tracks. Do you mean 18 tracks recording simultaneously (cuz who would need more than that, honestly?), or 18 active tracks in a session? If it's the latter, that makes it the most pathetic thing I've ever heard of.

 

[wishtheend]

My bad. ProTools M-Powered does support up to 32 tracks total (with the Music Production upgrade), but this statement came from M-Audio's Website. LINK
* Pro Tools M-Powered currently supports a maximum of 18 simultaneous inputs and outputs.

Just for fun I asked the guys' at Presonus what to expect compared to the ProFire: JetPLL, better clock, lower jitter spec, flexible routing
Honestly, both aren't going to cost much, I'd be tempted to get the ProFire only to use ProTools if I needed to. I'm sure the FSLightPipe would be my main.

 

[The spark]

I really wish the Profire Lightbridge was built rack mountable like the Presonus one... that would be handy.