Presonus Firepod and Ubuntu Studio

87

By rgrwkmn

Compatibility

The Presonus Firepod is a popular and inexpensive firewire audio interface. That's great, but what I really care about is that it works perfectly with Ubuntu Studio.

Drivers are always an issue with PCs because of the wide range of hardware that they need to support. Sometimes they don't support all of them that well. Contrast this with Apple computers that run on proprietary hardware and don't suffer from quite the same fate. Driver issues with Linux and Windows can be extremely frustrating, although Linux is improving quickly.

Luckily, the FreeBoB drivers that come with JACK support the Firepod very well, making it the perfect choice for an affordable home studio or live recording rig running Linux (LRRRL--say that five times fast). I've been using my Firepod in Ubuntu with great results for the past few months. Before that I used it in Windows with Nuendo and its performance was the same. I prefer my Linux setup and if you want to know why, read my article detailing the FOSS DAW.

Hardware

The Firepod has everything you need and nothing else. Actually, I haven't needed the spdfs yet. If I had some digital, "outboard" gear like a cd player or field recorder I'd definitely be using them. 

8 XLR/quarter inch inputs with discrete preamps and phantom power
2 spdf ins
10 quarter inch outputs (2 for monitors)
2 firewire ports (chain multiple pods for more inputs!)
headphones jack
main (monitors) level knob
headphones level knob
inputs and playback mix knob

1/4" ins 1 & 2 are instrument level and 1/4" ins 3-8 are line level. There are two phantom power buttons, each for a group of four inputs. They are grouped ins 1-4 and 5-6, so if you have the 1-4 phantom enabled, the first four ins are all sending 48V out to your microphones. This can be limiting if you anly have a couple condensers and still want to use all 8 ins.

The preamps on this are solid. They don't color the sound and only amplify their own noise to audible levels when they are cranked all the way up. The clip LEDs are helpful when you're setting up recording levels and the inputs/playback blend knob makes it very easy to nestle yourself into the mix while you're tracking.

I hope this article gave you a good reason to try out Ubuntu Studio and presented the capabilities of the Presonus Firepod. It's a simple and functional interface that gives back every cent you pay for it.*

If you are looking for a lower cost or you don't see yourself needing ten inputs any time soon, try out the Firebox which is the same idea in stereo input form. Conversely, if you need more inputs you can chain many Firepods together, although I am not sure if this is supported in Linux.

Please leave some comments with testimonials about your compatability successes and failures between Ubuntu Studio and different audio interfaces so others can purchase wisely! Below is a link to al ist of FreeBoB supported hardware.

* not literally

Comments

Brian 4 years ago

Hey,

So does this unit interface with your computer using a firewire connection? And another question is does each input appear as a different port in JACK?

I figure that's the whole point of such a device - but I'm just checking. I'm really interested in buying a firewire unit but wasn't sure if it would work in Linux. Thanks a lot for the info.

Later,

Brian

rgrwkmn profile image

rgrwkmn Hub Author 4 years ago

Yes, it's a firewire interface and each in and out is a separate JACK audio connection. I recently moved my computer desk and took a look at the back of this FirePod for the first time in a long while. It has a lot more stuff back there than I mentioned in this article. I'll add the extra details and some pictures soon.

jimmy 3 years ago

Hi!

Im about to try US with FP10. :-)

But: "This can be limiting if you anly have a couple condensers and still want to use all 8 ins"

Aint it so, that it doesnt matter if you have 48v phantom power on when you use dynamic mics? I have done that. In what way would it be limiting.

Thanks for the article!

regards

rgrwkmn profile image

rgrwkmn Hub Author 3 years ago

You can only turn on phantom power for either four or eight inputs at a time, so if you have two mics that require phantom power and six that do not, you couldn't use them all at the same time. You can put the two phantom powered mics on, let's say, channels one and two. Turning on phantom power for those two channels also turns it on for channels three and four, so the only channels left for dynamics are five through 8. Plugging dynamics into channels with phantom power enabled could damage the mics!

If you want to use either eight phantom powered mics at the same time, eight dynamics at the same time, or four dynamics and four phantom powered mics at the same time, you could use all eight XLR inputs.

13ONE5 3 years ago

As long as all mics are plugged in before turning phantom power on, you shouldn't have any trouble or cause any damage to the mics. You also want to be sure phantom power is turned off and given a minute before unplugging the mics. This is assuming you only have dynamic and condenser mics... Never use phantom power with a ribbon mic!

Scott 3 years ago

You can use dynamic mics with phantom power. It wont damage them. But as 13ONE5 said, never use phantom power with a ribbon mic.

rmk 2 years ago

I have sucessfully ported "Presonus Digital

Studio Firepod" to linux PC(AMD64 Athelon 9550) running real time linux kernel-2.6.29.4-rt16-9 using opensuse 11.1

At the moment I can record multiple channels on Audacity-1.3.8 with jackd sound server running on background with no glitches. I have used freebob driver for the firewire port to feed jack. Though there are lots of claims on firepod running with linux in opensource community, there is no such

demonstration avalible though. I have also seen few ubuntustudio port but my 64bit machine just don't boot with ubuntustudio 8.04/9.04.

I plan to post a live demo very soon.

Cheers ! I choose open source not just it is free, its my way of living.

pw1 23 months ago

"Plugging dynamics into channels with phantom power enabled could damage the mics!"

As was mentioned, this is not correct information. It's called 'phantom' power because dynamic mics are not supposed to "see" it. I've done recording and live sound engineering... and I wouldn't tell you to do something that I wouldn't do. And I've plugged dynamic mics into phantom powered preamps before.

Now, if the FirePod is damaging dynamic microphones with its phantom power, then the unit was VERY POORLY designed.

Kiat Huang 11 months ago

Hi, great article. On the basis of it and being an optimistic sort I went out and bought the Firestudio Mobile! That's the good news. The bad is that - I can't get it to work and Ffado says its unsupported. Am thinking there must be a way ;-) Any ideas?

-Kiat

--

Ubuntu Studio 11.04 on Acer Revo R3610 (4GB/500GB, no fw)

Ubtuntu Lucid 10.04 on Lenovo Thinkpad T410 (4GB/160GB SS, fw)

h/w: Pandoara Korg PX5D (usb) ; Presonus FireStudio Mobile (fw) ; Alesis SR-16

Dave Powell profile image

Dave Powell Level 2 Commenter 10 months ago

Amazing... I gotta check into these kinds of applications for my "new" Ubuntu notebook! I just wrote my first Ubuntu article here on HubPages (about bringing a dead notebook back to life using Ubuntu to save on project costs) and have linked your Hub into it. Thanks so much for reminding new Ubuntu users like me that it can do so much more than word processing and email!

Sincerely,

Dave Powell

trecords0 profile image

trecords0 Level 3 Commenter 7 months ago

I am still not convinced linux is the way to go for recording. I hate microsoft, but I don't want to give up my Sonar X1 Producer and other goodies. Please convince me on Linux.

rgrwkmn profile image

rgrwkmn Hub Author 7 months ago

@trecords - These days I find it hard to recommend this stuff to people who aren't already Linux enthusiasts. If you're not, but want to try out some Linux audio apps, install it on a spare computer and experiment. Don't try to completely replace your existing setup because you will probably be very disappointed--not by the quality of the apps, but by the difficulty of getting certain things that you may expect. If you haven't bought expensive VST or AU plugins, you may be pretty happy simply using Ardour and the LADSPA and LV2 plugins. If you make experimental electronic music, you will have a lot of fun playing with the endless sound apps and stringing them together.

I also find it hard to recommend this to a Linux enthusiast, because someone who is already into it will just spend all their time tweaking their system.

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