PreSonus Inspire 1394

Roger Jelbert
October 7, 2008

Rating: 1/10

My experience with the Presonus Inspire was short and traumatic. It was delivered promptly and I got down to trying it right away. It installed ok, although the drivers on the cd were out of date and I decided to download the latest ones straight away. Then onto testing.
The pre-amps didn\'t have a lot of gain and with a dynamic mic (I was testing with an AKG D3700 and a Shure SM58)it was neccessary to turn the gain up full. Still not enough so the \"boost\" button was pressed. A serious amount of noise then appears. A regular motorboating sound, a hum and digital whine. This is recorded and is not just in the momitoring. I spent several hours testing with different software, leads etc to no avail. After 4 days I emailed Dolphin asking to speak to someone from tech support to discuss the problem. Instead of allowing this they choose to refer me to \"the manufacturers\" repair facility which I belive is a separate servicing company. This would be beter I was told. They were helpful but slow - \"very busy here\" They eventually - after hearing a demo recording - agreed it was noisy and should be returned for repair.
At this point I asked Dolphin to send me a replacement as I could envisage the weeks passing by. I offered to send the faulty one back to them or the service dept. I said if the replacement was no better I would return that for a refund. I was then told I was not elligble for a refund anyway as more than 7 days had past! So I pointed out that I had contacted them after 4 days and followed their advice. Fed up I insisted on a refund and this was accepted. It\'s packed up and going back tommorrow.
During testing I found that running the Presonus Control Panel causes the motorboating noise. Mic channel 2 does not respond to the boost button. Noise with no inputs reached 20db below peak on channel 1 and 35 db below peak on channel 2 in Musicmatch12.
I won\'t know now just how faulty this unit was as I couldn\'t get a replacement except on unreasonable terms. If you only use an interface like the one I had on a close mic\'d instrument or close up rock singer maybe you will never notice but if you want speech at spoken word level it\'s no good. My yardstick for comparison throughout was an AudioBuddy preamp into a Soudblaster card, 44.1/16bit and the results were perfectly. acceptable in all respects. I don\'t reccommend the Inspire or Dolphin aftersales.
Platform:Acer 5680 laptop,2Ghz duo,2Gb ram, Belkin PCIMA firewire adaptor.XP Media Centre Edition SP2.

Richard Platt
February 15, 2007

Rating: 9/10

After many years of playing guitar, I decided to get into home recording on the PC and record a few tracks. I bought the Inspire because it allows you to plug your electric guitar straight into the 1/4" jack sockets. This is very easy to do and using Cubase LE which comes bundled you will very quickly be recording your guitar.

However, I have yet to record a guitar sound that I am happy with when plugged in directly to the Inspire. So out comes the credit card again for my next purchase: A shure SM57 mike! Now I'm making some progress. I position the sm57 right in front of the grill on my amp, plug it into one of the XLR inputs on the Inspire and start recording. This is more like it. The recording really captures all the tones of the guitar and amp just as I want.

Now onto vocals. The helpful chaps at Dolphin Music convinced me to buy a Behringer C1 condenser mike for this purpose. Unfortunately my vocal talents are not my strong point, but the C1 and Inspire do a great job of capturing the sound.

If you're new to sequencing progams such as Cubase, it may take you a while (As it did with me) to get up to speed. But if you persist, you will be rewarded. You can make your own drum and bass tracks using the MIDI editor, and the Virtual Instruments supplied, add in your own guitar and vocal audio tracks and before you know it you are making some damn good sounds.

Highly recommended.

Richard Platt
February 15, 2007

Rating: 9/10

After many years of playing guitar, I decided to get into home recording on the PC and record a few tracks. I bought the Inspire because it allows you to plug your electric guitar straight into the 1/4" jack sockets. This is very easy to do and using Cubase LE which comes bundled you will very quickly be recording your guitar.

However, I have yet to record a guitar sound that I am happy with when plugged in directly to the Inspire. So out comes the credit card again for my next purchase: A shure SM57 mike! Now I'm making some progress. I position the sm57 right in front of the grill on my amp, plug it into one of the XLR inputs on the Inspire and start recording. This is more like it. The recording really captures all the tones of the guitar and amp just as I want.

Now onto vocals. The helpful chaps at Dolphin Music convinced me to buy a Behringer C1 condenser mike for this purpose. Unfortunately my vocal talents are not my strong point, but the C1 and Inspire do a great job of capturing the sound.

If you're new to sequencing progams such as Cubase, it may take you a while (As it did with me) to get up to speed. But if you persist, you will be rewarded. You can make your own drum and bass tracks using the MIDI editor, and the Virtual Instruments supplied, add in your own guitar and vocal audio tracks and before you know it you are making some damn good sounds.

Highly recommended.

James White
August 8, 2006

Rating: 9/10

I've seen this described as "a little bigger than a pack of cards"- well, this must have been a big pack of cards but at 4.5 x 14 x 14 cm it's still tiny.
It's small enough to carry around with a laptop, and because its bus-powered you can run it off the computers battery, though if your computers anything like mine, not for very long (especially with phantom power).
It does come with a transformer, and for best performance you should probably plug your laptop in anyway :)
The lack of buttons and pots makes it look really sleek, tho’ the phonos sticking out the back somewhat spoil the aesthetic.
The sound quality is pretty good. Probably not as good as most more expensive pro-audio interfaces, or the most expensive mixers but detailed enough. I’ve used it to record voice, birdsong (don’t ask why) and the piano, and it is just about to be put up against choir and organ – we shall see.
If your looking to make very top quality recordings, or need to use more than two mic’s then this probably isn’t for you. But f you want a two channel, basic and very portable bus-powered interface, at a great price, then this one is definitely worth considering!

Kevin Bodman
July 28, 2006

Rating: 9/10

Being a newcomer to the world of audio recording, this was a difficult choice to make. There are quite a few, what I would call entry-level units, on the market from the major manufacturers. I needed a unit that would be able to record a microphone, guitar and maybe a drum machine at the same time. There are a number of reasons why in the end I chose this unit.

2 Main Channel inputs which can be either Mic (phantom if required) or Instrument. Some other units only provide 1 input capable of handling a guitar Hi Z

2 line inputs (or one stereo)

Capability of recording all 4 channels simultaneously, Some other units have loads of inputs but only capable of recording 2 at a time.

I’m not paying for loads of inputs that (at the moment) I don’t need, like spdif, adat etc.

It has expandability; up to 4 of these can be linked to provide 16 channels of simultaneous recording.

It has loads of bundled software with it.

Everything sets up easily, just like their handbook and website says. Within one hour, I had set up the software and hardware and tested it by recording into Cubase LE 2 simultaneous tracks of me singing and playing the guitar.

So I’m extremely happy with my purchase its an excellent entry level unit that can be expanded, its robust, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive.

I only have a few minor complaints, The firewire lead supplied is 6pin to 6pin which is ok if your PC has a 6pin on it. But I think a lot of people, like me, will be using a laptop and inbuilt firewire connectors on laptops are often 4 pin, so you may have to get another lead or a pcmcia adapter. Luckily I had a lead.

The other thing is that the speaker output is unbalanced which I am lead to believe is more prone to interference than balanced.

So overall I’m inspired.

matt avery
April 29, 2006

Rating: 8/10

this a great little box! its built to last too! when i pulled it out of the box i was stunned by how heavy and sturdy it was, i was expecting something flimsy due to its price tag. anyways, this little box solved a lot of my problems. i was having troubles getting usb audio to work on my imac correctly so i just gave up and gave in to get one of these. the pre amps are O.K. i dont use them very often though as i mostly use outboard pre amps. but they are definatly usable. the software control panel is amazing. i never thought about controlling phantom power and gain from inside the computer like this before. it also keeps the unit clean from knobs and switches that can be broken. i also like to believe that this keeps the unit temperature down (i owned an m-audio quattro, now those things get HOT!) the limiter actually is good too, nice to just keep inputs from clipping. ive yet to daisy-chain the inspire but i plan on it when i need to expand to 8, then 12, then 16 inputs. i really like the idea of daisy-chaining and expanability on such a budget unit. the packaged plugins are very usable and ive actually been making use of them lately in recording projects. im not using the cubase le included, just because im used to logic express. all in all, this box is an amazing deal and great for learners or even pros for a nice at-home interface! definatly another pro-sumer release from presonus.