New XP, OS X Drivers for the Firestation

Front Panel (Click for a close-up)

Rear Panel (Click for a close-up)

PreSonus announced that their FIREstation interface is now compatible with Mac OS X and has updated drivers for installation in Microsoft Windows XP.

For users of Macintosh OS X.2.5 and higher, the operating system comes equipped with FIREstation drivers already installed in the Audio Midi Setup menu, so there is no need for installation of any kind. Currently, the FIREstation is approved for use on OS X with Cubase SX, Nuendo 2.0, Deck, Peak and Logic software. New approved software will be listed on the PreSonus web site.

The new Windows XP driver improves the installation of the FIREstation and also adds multichannel WDM support to many popular software packages such as Sonor 2.0.

The FIREstation is a FireWire compatible interface, which features eight channels of balanced/unbalanced analog and ADAT I/O, as well as S/PDIF and MIDI I/O. A user can plug in microphones, instruments and external preamps into the analog inputs while monitoring them in real time with zero latency. Also, any mLAN compatible keyboard such as the Yamaha Motif or Korg Triton Studio can be seamlessly patched into the FireWire ports of the FIREstation to send audio and MIDI information to the computer.

The FIREstation can also be used independently in 'Stand Alone Mode,' where all eight channels of analog inputs are directly routed to the FIREstation's ADAT Lightpipe outputs. Similarly, all of the FIREstation's ADAT Lightpipe inputs are routed to the analog outputs and line mixer. In this mode, you can use the unit as an eight channel A/D and D/A converter, letting you add I/O to many of today's popular digital recorders and interfaces such as Digi001, MOTU 2408 and many others.