Re: PreSonus Interface - Good? Bad? Ugly?
The PreSonus Inspire 1394 is not a bad interface, that's for sure. You won't have top class preamps and AD's in it. But you will probably don't benefit from that either.
Will it give you professional recordings? Well, no not just like that. I heard your tracks over at myspace a couple of weeks ago. You got alot to work on, where as the audio interface isn't the most important. I'm not saying that you shouldn't upgrade, you should absolutely do that if you're thinking about it. And going firewire is a good choice.
If you head over to my myspace site and take a listen...
www.myspace.com/ludvignylund
My EP was recorded with a Studio Projects VTB-1 preamp and a ESI Maya44 soundcard. Which both quality and price-wise matches the PreSonus, roughly. Is the EP I made professional quality? No, but it's alot better than the ones I made with the Soundblaster card before but still not near professional.
And when making the EP, apart from that I upgraded my recording setup I read lots and lots of articles on mixing and recording. Tested lots of different micing positions, read just about everything I found about how different EQs and compressors work and how to use them in different situations. How you should use reverb on a mix. Common ways of panning the instruments in the mix etc. And I would say that's what improved my recordings the most, when I started to know how to use the four most important mixing tools... EQ, compressor, panning and reverb.
So my advice would be:
1. Get the presonus (but don't expect miracles on your recordings, they will be better and clearer but not professional quality, due to lack on experience)
2. Start reading about mixing and how to use EQ, compressor, pan and reverb. Lots of articles on the net, and lots of good forums as well. One article that is quite good imo is this one:
http://www.audiomelody.com/1/Articles/How-to-Mix-a-Pop-Song-from-Scratch
3. Learn what the plugins in Logic do and work. But here again, focus on EQ, compressor, pan and reverb. They are simply the MOST important and you will use them on about every song you mix. Where as flanger or something might be used on a single guitar or song track sometimes. You get the point! 
4. Just practise and practise and practise. And use reference tracks, import an track of a song that's similar to yours into your Logic project. Then you can easily compare your song to the commerical recording while you do the mixing. Listen to the track.... NO you gotta really listen. Not just like when you listen to music in the stereo.
You gotta mix-listen, focus on small parts at a time. "How does the guitar tone work so well together with the bass?" "Why does the bassdrum interact like it's glued to the bassline", "How much reverb have they used?"... Then figure out how the did it and try to replicate it. Now adjust your ear and listen to the track as a whole, how does it sound compared to how you had it before... does it work on you track?
I found that learning this way works mighty well!
But don't compare your mix to the commerical track volume-wise, never. The only thing you need to remeber about the final volume of you mix is that.. NEVER EVER let the output meters in Logic peak or shoot up over 0dB, never. Keeping a -3dB marginal is good. When you play you track from the beginning to the end, the meters in Logic shouldn't anywhere go over 0dB, it introduces horrible digital distortion to your tracks. a BIG NO. And don't adjust this by bringing down the Output in Logics mixer. The Output fader should always be a 0dB, then you adjust the individual tracks, drums, guitar, bass accordingly so that it doesn't peak over 0dB.
5. Now you've got your mix the way you like it. Or not, but let's say that you're at least happy with it and want to put it up on myspace. Then you listen to the commercial records you like and then the track you and your band made... it's so quiet and low volume. Yes, correct. You're still missing the mastering part. I'm not gonna get into what mastering includes because someone's gonna come here and say that I'm wrong and then we are gonna start fighting about that in this thread (unnecessary ). But when mastering track it's common to use a limiter/ brickwall limiter on the final mixdownm your aiff or wav file. Easily explained, it crams things together and results in that your track sounds louder.
I went a little deeper and off topic to your original question and you may know alot of this already but I hope some of my advice helped. I started recording more seriously last summer and have had loads of fun with it since. But still I'm a newbie and there's a loong way before I'm at pro level recordings
but it's fun, so the best of luck to you!
