I'm never buying anything from Presonus again

[gv.lazcano]

(Read the title as an angry outcry )

I have a 3 year long story with this brand, that has rustled my jimmies endlessly:

Chapter I - My kingdom for a (working) monitor!
Two and a half years ago I bought a pair of nice sounding Presonus Eris E5 monitors; the price was right, and I got a better deal by buying a pair (The published price was for a single unit). A year later, a couple of days after the warranty expired, it blew a fuse and never worked again (yes, I replaced the fuse). After explaining my case to the local distributor, they accepted to repair my unit free of charge, just paying the shipping costs.

Monitor as good as new and everyone's happy... But a year later, it blew again. Same thing, bad fuse, a little burnt odor, so I suspect it's the same goddamn fault. I tried some repairs myself, checking some critical parts in the power path, but couldn't find anything wrong, even after swapping some parts "just in case".

Tired, I just let it be, till today, after trying some new repairs, to no avail, I decided to contact the local distributor, asking for the repair costs. After that, I plan to sell this things.

Chapter II - The Phantom Menace
Short story, had a Audiobox USB that had a weird noise when the Phantom Power was on. Tried some friend's Audiobox, and same problem. We bought the damn thing together, so maybe it was a problem within that batch of interfaces, but as I didn't knew anyone else that owned an Audiobox, I just assumed it was a design problem. A little e-mail exchange with the dealer, and I swapped it by another interface (Tascam US-322, working great till today)

Chapter III - To love and be loved
I was an avid user of Studio One, even upgrading to the now extinct Producer branch. I loved the damn thing, had a nice workflow to sketch things, and it was pretty to look at. With Studio One 3, I was not only angry at the fact that none of my desired features was included (Being fair, I only wanted one thing: 32 and 64 bits bridging VST, a la Reaper), but also I was dissapointed by a non-existent upgrade path for the Producer branch - they offered an upgrade option to the top of the line edition, but it was too much moola for a student - and by the turtle slow performance. Not only they didn't improved on Studio One 2 bugs and performance issues, no, it also seemed that they blatantly worsened those aspects.

And that's my take on why I'm never buying anything from Presonus again.

[ivansc]

Originally Posted by gv.lazcano

Chapter III - To love and be loved
I was an avid user of Studio One, even upgrading to the now extinct Producer branch. I loved the damn thing, had a nice workflow to sketch things, and it was pretty to look at. With Studio One 3, I was not only angry at the fact that none of my desired features was included (Being fair, I only wanted one thing: 32 and 64 bits bridging VST, a la Reaper), but also I was dissapointed by a non-existent upgrade path for the Producer branch - they offered an upgrade option to the top of the line edition, but it was too much moola for a student - and by the turtle slow performance. Not only they didn't improved on Studio One 2 bugs and performance issues, no, it also seemed that they blatantly worsened those aspects.

And that's my take on why I'm never buying anything from Presonus again.

I got caught in that particular little trap too - just as well I didnt really get on with S1 that well. I always think it is a shame the way companies not only push you to keep moving to their latest business model (Sonar and PT subscription models) but at the same time make it pretty much impractical just to stick with what you already bought.

At least that has never been an issue with Reaper.

[nicholas]

Slightly OT, but is it true that in order to be able to render in MP3 in S1 you have to get the very expensive Pro version.

[serstickman]

I have a pair of Eris 5's & they have been wonderful! YMMV

[Win Conway]

Originally Posted by nicholas

Slightly OT, but is it true that in order to be able to render in MP3 in S1 you have to get the very expensive Pro version.

Does anybody actually render from their DAW ?
I have always used a separate audio editor on the master wav file

S1 is missing a hell of a lot of features that a lot of people would think of as basic though

[vanhaze]

Stepped away from S1 along time ago : horrible performance on my mac.
And i do have alot of knowledge about keeping a mac in terrific shape,
so it was not a faulty OSX system or whatsever.

Performance issues always have been part of S1.
Just google around and see for yourself.
i believe they were more serious on mac version than on PC version.

The features and GUI were pretty neat imho, but performance is everything to me.
Thats why i am loving Reaper so much: great in CPU utilisation.

[nicholas]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

Does anybody actually render from their DAW ?

Yes. Me

[SoulOne82]

Me too.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by nicholas

Slightly OT, but is it true that in order to be able to render in MP3 in S1 you have to get the very expensive Pro version.

No, that's not true.

[richie43]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

Does anybody actually render from their DAW ?
I have always used a separate audio editor on the master wav file

S1 is missing a hell of a lot of features that a lot of people would think of as basic though

I do, especially for masters. I decrease the final limiter by 1 or more db for rendering the mp3.

[gv.lazcano]

Originally Posted by nicholas

Slightly OT, but is it true that in order to be able to render in MP3 in S1 you have to get the very expensive Pro version.

Nah, that was also in the mid tier (Producer) edition. For the Artist edition you needed to buy a $20 addon (It was $5 in a Cinco de Mayo deal)

Originally Posted by serstickman

I have a pair of Eris 5's & they have been wonderful! YMMV

And I hope they stay that way for you, as they offer a fair feature set and good sound, though I don't really know another reason for the same monitor to fail twice, in the same way, than subpar build quality.

[Doc Brown]

I had an audiobox 22vsl and still do but use a different card now. I never had any issues with it whatsoever. Nice little card for the money. I also had studio one v2 but never really gelled with it. Switched to Reaper and never looked back.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

S1 is missing a hell of a lot of features that a lot of people would think of as basic though

True. It's only at version 3 so... give it some time to catch up.

It's biggest editing hole is probably with advanced midi editing, there's almost nothing there as relates to attacking groups or collections of notes in any kind of random way.

I'm giving it the same kind of logical view as I gave Reaper for it's first 3-4 versions, knowing they couldn't do it all at once... but yeah, if you need deep midi editing like Logic and Cubase and FLStudio, look elsewhere.

[Panic]

I had a VSL44 for a couple weeks, but returned it because it had power issues. I currently have an Audiobox USB for use with my iPad. It seems to work ok, but I don't use it very often and haven't even tried the phantom power. Years ago I had one of their MP20 units; it worked fine, but I always had a tough time getting enough gain out of it. Anyway, I won't say I will never buy from Presonus again, but they aren't on my "A" list of manufacturers.

[babag]

i had two firepods over time. no longer. after the second one blew out i moved on. there are a lot of videos out there of users replacing sub-par capacitors themselves. no thanks. liked them when they worked but that was too short of a period.

BabaG

[nicholas]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

No, that's not true.

Thanks, I can't remember where I heard that, but thought it sounded a bit odd...

[clepsydrae]

I've used the Firebox and then Firestudio Mobiles for ~10 years as my main interface. The firebox was fine, but the channel 2 pots on both the FSM's eventually failed (the lead connection eventually breaks for some reason). This is gentle sitting-on-the-desk type usage, no abuse at all, really. (And channel 2 is used less than 1, so maybe it's a thermal stress thing or something.)

Fortunately I found a source for the replacement pot (thanks to alibaba) which fixes it, but besides the repeated failures, a big part of the frustration is that because i bought both the FSM's used, it's impossible to even send an email to presonus (or even fill out a web form) to ask a question or even just let them know about it, and you get zero access to post on their user forums without a confirmed serial number, so you can't ask the main user base if anyone else knows the value/type of the pot, etc. Craziness, and annoying.

All that said, there's no interface I'm aware of that approaches the FSM for "small and cheap", so I grudgingly stay with it. 10 inputs (counting spdif in) and 8 out, nice-enough pre-amps, reasonable latency, and you can get them on eBay for <$100... if anyone knows an alternative at that price point, let me know.

I suppose they have to cut some serious corners to achieve that price/performance, and I don't want them using actual, literal slaves to make the things, so i guess i can deal with a bad pot (or two... or three...). But yeah, i'd jump ship if given a good alternative.

[clepsydrae]

Maybe Cockos can spin off a hardware division. :-)

[Neenja]

I like my DigimaxLT, but the rest of the stuff I own from them including S1,2,3 is junk.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

Maybe Cockos can spin off a hardware division. :-)

Mackie's new hardware box is expensive. $5k I hear.

I think - generally speaking - that will be well out of the price range of the vast majority of Tracktion users.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

I suppose they have to cut some serious corners to achieve that price/performance, and I don't want them using actual, literal slaves to make the things, so i guess i can deal with a bad pot (or two... or three...). But yeah, i'd jump ship if given a good alternative.

I own a couple of theirs and also some MOTU hardware and it seems to me the biggest delineation in price is mostly in the interfaces. MOTU's boxes have LED front panel controls and can be fully controlled from the interface, PreSonus's devices can't be, only via software, so that makes the MOTU boxes a bit more expensive (and flexible, for stand alone use).

Here I have.... in no particular order...

MOTU 2408 MKII
MOTU Traveler
Presonus Studio 192
Presonus 44VSL

I also have a Digimax LT dedicated to drum mics, and a Behringer ADA8000 for general stuff, a Lavry Blue AD, a Lavry Black DA, a good cross section of higher end and lower end hardware stuff, from $500+ single channel tube comps to less expensive Prosumer level hardware comps.

Haven't really had any trouble with any of them except that the Traveler borked out on me some time ago and I never sent it in for repair. The 192 sounds really good, the preamps and conversion.

I also bought an expensive master clock for the studio that borked out on me. Never sent that in for repair either since it was out of warranty. I now use the Lavry Blue AD as my master clock.

[Jae.Thomas]

my presonus firepod:

12 years old.

used every day!

FOR TWELVE YEARS.

BOUGHT USED.

[lolilol1975]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

Mackie's new hardware box is expensive. $5k I hear.

I think - generally speaking - that will be well out of the price range of the vast majority of Tracktion users.

Tracktion no longer belongs to Mackie, although Tracktion t5 (the software) still comes with Mackie and Behringer hardware, AFAIK. Probably a much better deal than the Lite versions of Ableton or Studio One that comes with some other entry level hardwares, and are so crippled as to be useless. I got Ableton Live Lite with my Novation Impulse, played with it for an hour and then deleted it, knowing I would never be able to do any kind of serious work with it given its limitations.

BTW, Tracktion is also making a $5K audio interface.

[Lawrence]

Oh yeah, that was a psychological typo. I meant "The Tracktion Guys", not Mackie.

I still (obviously) sometimes call it "Mackie Tracktion" by habit.

Thanks for correcting that.

[eviluess]

Originally Posted by gv.lazcano

(Read the title as an angry outcry )

I have a 3 year long story with this brand, that has rustled my jimmies endlessly:

Chapter I - My kingdom for a (working) monitor!
Two and a half years ago I bought a pair of nice sounding Presonus Eris E5 monitors; the price was right, and I got a better deal by buying a pair (The published price was for a single unit). A year later, a couple of days after the warranty expired, it blew a fuse and never worked again (yes, I replaced the fuse). After explaining my case to the local distributor, they accepted to repair my unit free of charge, just paying the shipping costs.

Monitor as good as new and everyone's happy... But a year later, it blew again. Same thing, bad fuse, a little burnt odor, so I suspect it's the same goddamn fault. I tried some repairs myself, checking some critical parts in the power path, but couldn't find anything wrong, even after swapping some parts "just in case".

Tired, I just let it be, till today, after trying some new repairs, to no avail, I decided to contact the local distributor, asking for the repair costs. After that, I plan to sell this things.

Chapter II - The Phantom Menace
Short story, had a Audiobox USB that had a weird noise when the Phantom Power was on. Tried some friend's Audiobox, and same problem. We bought the damn thing together, so maybe it was a problem within that batch of interfaces, but as I didn't knew anyone else that owned an Audiobox, I just assumed it was a design problem. A little e-mail exchange with the dealer, and I swapped it by another interface (Tascam US-322, working great till today)

Chapter III - To love and be loved
I was an avid user of Studio One, even upgrading to the now extinct Producer branch. I loved the damn thing, had a nice workflow to sketch things, and it was pretty to look at. With Studio One 3, I was not only angry at the fact that none of my desired features was included (Being fair, I only wanted one thing: 32 and 64 bits bridging VST, a la Reaper), but also I was dissapointed by a non-existent upgrade path for the Producer branch - they offered an upgrade option to the top of the line edition, but it was too much moola for a student - and by the turtle slow performance. Not only they didn't improved on Studio One 2 bugs and performance issues, no, it also seemed that they blatantly worsened those aspects.

And that's my take on why I'm never buying anything from Presonus again.

So do I.

I think Eris E5 should not be produced any more.

[kero]

Originally Posted by gv.lazcano

(Read the title as an angry outcry )

I have a 3 year long story with this brand, that has rustled my jimmies endlessly:

Chapter I - My kingdom for a (working) monitor!
Two and a half years ago I bought a pair of nice sounding Presonus Eris E5 monitors; the price was right, and I got a better deal by buying a pair (The published price was for a single unit). A year later, a couple of days after the warranty expired, it blew a fuse and never worked again (yes, I replaced the fuse). After explaining my case to the local distributor, they accepted to repair my unit free of charge, just paying the shipping costs.

Monitor as good as new and everyone's happy... But a year later, it blew again. Same thing, bad fuse, a little burnt odor, so I suspect it's the same goddamn fault. I tried some repairs myself, checking some critical parts in the power path, but couldn't find anything wrong, even after swapping some parts "just in case".

Tired, I just let it be, till today, after trying some new repairs, to no avail, I decided to contact the local distributor, asking for the repair costs. After that, I plan to sell this things.

Chapter II - The Phantom Menace
Short story, had a Audiobox USB that had a weird noise when the Phantom Power was on. Tried some friend's Audiobox, and same problem. We bought the damn thing together, so maybe it was a problem within that batch of interfaces, but as I didn't knew anyone else that owned an Audiobox, I just assumed it was a design problem. A little e-mail exchange with the dealer, and I swapped it by another interface (Tascam US-322, working great till today)

Chapter III - To love and be loved
I was an avid user of Studio One, even upgrading to the now extinct Producer branch. I loved the damn thing, had a nice workflow to sketch things, and it was pretty to look at. With Studio One 3, I was not only angry at the fact that none of my desired features was included (Being fair, I only wanted one thing: 32 and 64 bits bridging VST, a la Reaper), but also I was dissapointed by a non-existent upgrade path for the Producer branch - they offered an upgrade option to the top of the line edition, but it was too much moola for a student - and by the turtle slow performance. Not only they didn't improved on Studio One 2 bugs and performance issues, no, it also seemed that they blatantly worsened those aspects.

And that's my take on why I'm never buying anything from Presonus again.

I bought a brand new pair of Eris 8s, after 2 weeks one of the speakers went off, had to send them both back to Thomann, what a hassle, no speakers for 6 weeks! Thomann were great though, they had something replaced in the speaker. lets hope it doesn't go off again.
Mean time I contacted Presonus about it, they sent one reply email of acknowledgement, then no further emails to my reply.
I am very disappointed in Presonus, I won't buy again.

[Jae.Thomas]

Originally Posted by richie43

I do, especially for masters. I decrease the final limiter by 1 or more db for rendering the mp3.

I wonder about this - why would you "master" the mp3 at a lower level?

[karbomusic]

Originally Posted by Jason Brian Merrill

I wonder about this - why would you "master" the mp3 at a lower level?

As far as rendering the mastered MP3... To protect from inter-sample peaks?

[Lawrence]

angry at the fact that none of my desired features was included (Being fair, I only wanted one thing: 32 and 64 bits bridging VST, a la Reaper)

They told users many years ago that Studio One will not get a bit bridge so making FR's for something they already said they won't do is pointless. This comment below is from well over 4 years ago...

We have no plans to put in a bridging system.

[Jae.Thomas]

Originally Posted by karbomusic

As far as rendering the mastered MP3... To protect from inter-sample peaks?

interesting!

[noise_construct]

The limiter should prevent ISPs.

[sostenuto]

Originally Posted by kero

I bought a brand new pair of Eris 8s, after 2 weeks one of the speakers went off, had to send them both back to Thomann, what a hassle, no speakers for 6 weeks! Thomann were great though, they had something replaced in the speaker. lets hope it doesn't go off again.
Mean time I contacted Presonus about it, they sent one reply email of acknowledgement, then no further emails to my reply.
I am very disappointed in Presonus, I won't buy again.

Yeah, no excuse for a poor Customer Support System ... NONE !!

OTH, have pair Eris 8s over one year _ on 24/7 _ very pleased. Go figure.

[kero]

Originally Posted by sostenuto

Yeah, no excuse for a poor Customer Support System ... NONE !!

OTH, have pair Eris 8s over one year _ on 24/7 _ very pleased. Go figure.

Good to hear you have had no problems sostenuto! long may it continue!
I had mine 12 days, playing back at a really quiet volume, and just went POP! then off!
the light was still on, but no sound.

First thing I done was email Presonus, they replied quite quickly asking me for full information, so I mailed them straight back, told them the situation, and asked what I should do, no reply whatsoever!

[serr]

Looks like a lot of hit & miss or luck of the draw with Presonus...

That Firebox interface seemed like a really good deal for a budget interface. One of the huge selling points was 6 balanced outputs so you could do 5.1 surround. Nearly every other interface choice out there goes from 4 outputs to 8 or more and nothing in between.

And... I know 3 people personally that had the thing die on them. The firewire controller chip blows up I believe. They aren't servicing them any more and their new "budget" model only has 4 outputs. Google it and it looks like a pattern with the Firebox blowing up.

Then they really fell flat on their face with S1 didn't they!
"The app Studio One has unexpectedly quit." seems to be it's favorite feature. Admittedly, they were very new on the scene when I tried S1. Their tech support literally gave up and just said "sorry". (I was trying to push it at low latency though. It might be fine for just tracking and general mixing.)

That iPad app they made for S1 sure looks slick though! (Midas has the other slick iPad app right out of the box for their x32 interface/board.)

These guys seemed to have solid budget offerings in the past. Maybe not so much anymore? Behringer (and more recently M-audio) always held up the low ratty end of 'truly not worth it for any price'. Did Presonus fall into that hole?

[clepsydrae]

Originally Posted by noise_construct

The limiter should prevent ISPs.

Not all limiters block ISPs... and it's still kind of new for it to be 'standard' in a limiter, AFAIK. E.g. the limiter in iZotope Alloy 2 does not.

And even if the limiter does trigger off ISPs, conversion to MP3 will happen post-limiter, and the conversion to MP3 can cause ISPs. Whether they really matter is another subject, but it can happen. I believe the effect is akin to how turning down a track can in some cases cause a just-under-0 dBFS signal to peak (by removing what was destructive interference between signals).

[clepsydrae]

Originally Posted by serr

And... I know 3 people personally that had the thing die on them. The firewire controller chip blows up I believe.

Funny, my old Firebox was a tank, but i've lost full function on two Firestudio Mobiles because the gain pots break (see above in this thread, IIRC) and other issues.

Behringer (and more recently M-audio) always held up the low ratty end of 'truly not worth it for any price'.

Is that fair for Behringer? My limited experience is that they still have some pretty great deals... i just did a week of live sound with a rackmount X32 that seemed pretty sweet. Of course, maybe it breaks in 6 months.

[karbomusic]

and the conversion to MP3 can cause ISPs.

That's the scenario I'm speaking of. Take most anything, push it as close to 0 as you can without clipping, now render it as MP3, it will clip in unexpected places during render every time (well every time in my setup that is) regardless of what is on the master track limiting wise.

[serr]

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

Funny, my old Firebox was a tank, but i've lost full function on two Firestudio Mobiles because the gain pots break (see above in this thread, IIRC) and other issues.

Yep. I also know 2 people personally that have been using one for the last 7 or 8 years and it just keeps working. Truly luck of the draw?

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

Is that fair for Behringer?

Yes. From what I've seen.
Even their headphone amp (probably one of their more well liked offerings), which actually functioned reasonably circuit-wise, had cheap jacks that were intermittent starting on about day 7 and just fell apart.

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

My limited experience is that they still have some pretty great deals... i just did a week of live sound with a rackmount X32 that seemed pretty sweet. Of course, maybe it breaks in 6 months.

I think you have Midas to thank for the x32 more than Behringer.
I've honestly heard nothing but good reviews of that product.

[clepsydrae]

Originally Posted by serr

Yes. From what I've seen.
Even their headphone amp (probably one of their more well liked offerings), which actually functioned reasonably circuit-wise, had cheap jacks that were intermittent starting on about day 7 and just fell apart.

Oh well. I think the brand that i most actively avoid is Peavey. I don't even know if it's fair, and i'm generally glad there are budget options in the world, but i have nothing but bad associations with them.

[vanhaze]

Not buying anything from Presonus either:

Studio One v3 sucks heavily on Mac, performance wise.