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anonymous 18 January 2013

PreSonus New Product Introduction Extravaganza

4:00 pm / 16:00 January 23, 2013 Marriott Hotel @ the Convention Center Platinum 6 Ballroom

Reserve Your Seat http://nammpremier… 4:00 PREMIER[/]="http://nammpremier… 4:00 PREMIER[/]

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audiokid Thu, 01/24/2013 - 00:42

wow, this is awesome. PreSonus is seriously kicking ass.

So many features and thinking ahead too.

A built-in 48x34 FireWire S800 interface is standard equipment but Thunderbolt and Ethernet (Dante) cards are expected by the end of 2013. A dedicated USB 2 port and included Wi-Fi LAN adapter lets you control the mixer wirelessly—even without a Mac® or Windows® PC.

audiokid Thu, 01/24/2013 - 18:46

Moto Fader's, they need to me awesome to work and last. And fader latency is awful. I'm glad this doesn't have them, it would also through the cost way up to be good.

I need to read more on it again tonight but what was the recall all about? It sounded like it will recall more than just the Fat channel now? I have a feeling they are developing a wireless controller that will do it all internally, bypassing faders altogether. Screen controllers are where its all going.

Maybe the fader will be able to learn the spot but not move there on there own as a stand alone. I gathered you've read it all thoroughly?

audiokid Thu, 01/24/2013 - 19:34

I Like this:

wireless control of the mixer without requiring an external computer.

PreSonus Active Integration products employ cutting-edge OMAP™ 5 multi-core ARM 2GHz Cortex-A processors — a whole computer on a chip. These 32-bit, 96 kHz multi-stream CPUs include an operating system, wireless and 100 Mb Ethernet communications, USB 2.0 and 1.1, and lavish amounts of 532 MHz LPDDR2 SD RAM. StudioLive 32.4.2AI is the first mixer to employ Active Integration but the technology also is at the heart of the new StudioLive AI-series PA speakers and will be an essential technology in an entire ecosystem of PreSonus products in the future.

I'm thinking we are going to start seeing more dedicated products with their own OS like it was in the 80's. Apple and PC are getting too mobile market driven and could very well start becoming an issue for the more advanced requirements in A/V. So, maybe we are going to start seeing more of this again. The entire console is a dedicated OS, no need for outside computing. Right on.

I like this idea a lot. The more I do the hybrid thing, the more I love modular and stand alone gear. Less ITB the better.

dvdhawk Fri, 01/25/2013 - 00:43

Not needing a computer for the wireless network is really going to be a bonus. Although, I'd probably have the laptop connected to record anyway - it would save some computing resources (although Capture seems to use very little of the computer's horsepower).

I've always avoided using the built-in graphic EQs on the SL24, because you had to scroll left/right to access all the freqs. because there were only 24 knobs. I knew if they ever got around to the 32-channel version that would cure that minor inconvenience. With a 4-band fully parametrics on every input and every output, I've never had a need for the graphics. But graphics will come in handy on some of the 14 aux sends.

Quick and easily accessible Mute Groups are a nice addition too. Much more convenient in live use for me than recalling a scene of muted channels.

There's been lots of favorable response so far on PreSonus social media pages, naturally a few whiners complaining about the absence of A) motorized faders, B) recallable gain, and C) digital snake capability. I'm sure they're comparing it to some of the features on the Baredinger X- 32. Bias against Bearfinger aside, having watched the videos that compare workflow - I would MUCH rather have the PreSonus. The x3 2 has 16 faders for 32 channels, I wouldn't like that live at all. The Barringer reminds me more of the Yamaha 01v I used to have. It was more menu-driven and the faders were multi-functional, so you had to page through your choices of which channels, or fx sends, or aux mixes, the faders were controlling at any given time.

A) I would think high quality flying faders would add considerably to the cost and weight. The flying faders on the 01v were more than fast enough for me, and you could set the transition rate. Not a big deal to me personally, but it would be nice for my church and auditorium clients to recall fader position along with their scenes. As it is now on the StudioLive mixers, you have to manually "Locate" the fader to their saved position using the meters.

B) I would much rather have the high-quality pre's on the StudioLive than digitized / recallable gain settings. I like the sound of the SL pre's and am perfectly happy dialing in the gain as needed. I think part of the reason they sound so beefy is due to their more analog nature.

C) As far as those upset that it doesn't have digital snake capability, apparently they failed to read about the upcoming DANTE expansion card sometime later this year. If that materializes, that puts PreSonus onto a nice stable digital snake protocol already widely used by other mixer companies, making the StudioLive cross-compatible with a lot of other existing hardware.

When April rolls around, somebody is going to get a really good deal on an SL24.

anonymous Fri, 01/25/2013 - 01:51

A) I would think high quality flying faders would add considerably to the cost and weight. The flying faders on the 01v were more than fast enough for me, and you could set the transition rate. Not a big deal to me personally, but it would be nice for my church and auditorium clients to recall fader position along with their scenes. As it is now on the StudioLive mixers, you have to manually "Locate" the fader to their saved position using the meters.

Yeah, flying faders are nice, but they DO certainly add to the cost - and the weight.

I loved having them on the O2R, but I never felt a heavier mixer, especially for its scaled down size.

Man, that Presonus sure looks sweet. And here I am saying "okay, no more gear..." uhh, yeah.

audiokid Fri, 02/01/2013 - 10:09

I've found an official price on the 32.4.2 here [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.fullcomp…"]PreSonus StudioLive 32 4 2AI 32-Channel Digital Mixer with Active Integration Technology | Full Compass[/]="http://www.fullcomp…"]PreSonus StudioLive 32 4 2AI 32-Channel Digital Mixer with Active Integration Technology | Full Compass[/]
I talked to headquarters and it should be available early summer. Timing is right for me.

I sold my 24.4.2 to a lucky guy here in town. I'm in on the 32 now.

BobRogers Fri, 02/01/2013 - 17:51

Well, I think I have posted several times that starting out with a decent quality multichannel mixer is a really good first step. That was true in the old analog days (what, five-ten years ago) but it is even more true (truer, thruthier?) now when even the lowest price 16.0.2 Presonus board gives you twelve pretty good preamps, reasonable converson, fair effects, and a lot of routing for $1,300 new. Other competitors can offer the same thing. The biggest thing here is that you never HAVE to upgrade unless you are buying high quality gear. All of the consumer level gear is a lateral move and should be avoided. Oh. It's almost an afterthought, but you can use them for live sound, etc., etc.

dvdhawk Sat, 02/02/2013 - 09:56

Last I heard they wouldn't be shipping until April. It seems a little soon for Sweetwater to be taking pre-orders if that's the case. Maybe they've pushed it ahead.

I wouldn't be too concerned about getting one early, the hardware has pretty thoroughly proven itself and virtually all software bugs can be dealt with via a firmware update.

I demoed a system last night that used an SL24.4.2 and mixed the whole show from an iPad for the first time. The first act even had an iPad with them and asked if they could control their own monitors. They own an SL16, but did not have the QMix app on their iPad. He downloaded and in 2 minutes he was master of the 4 monitor mixes offered. For the other acts it was nice to be able to be stand right beside them on stage while they told me what they wanted in their monitors. Nobody got an official sound-check so all 3 acts were line-checked and quick monitor adjustments. Everything worked great but...

Lessons learned:

Lesson #1) Organize your channels - think in blocks of 12 and put the channels that will need the most attention/adjustments on the same screen 1-12 or 13-24
This was a last minute job that popped up and it had to be done completely on the fly. I had virtually no info about the bands or their instrumentation, so I could only guess at the best channel assignments. From what I gathered none of the bands would exceed 12 channels total (thank you edrums), but then a couple guys asked if they could use their perfectly good Sennheiser wireless vocal mics. It is cold & flu season, so I'm 100% in favor of letting anyone use their own vocal mic. But now their vocals are on 13 & 14 and it left me doing a lot of scrolling between mixer pages 1-12 then up to 13-24 to adjust the vocals. Obviously not the end of the world, but not as quick for me to respond as I might have liked.

Lesson #2) Don't trust the in-house Wi-Fi network - signal was strong and everything was beautiful... until the place filled up and apparently other devices were bogging down the router.
I brought my own router, but was lulled into a false sense of security at set-up. I quickly changed it over after losing signal a couple times during the first act. The laptop showed maximum signal strength even while the iPad was barely clinging to the wifi signal. After I made the switch to my own router both were rock solid the rest of the night.

Lesson #3) Pay attention. Without the tactile feel of a button it's extremely easy to bump something you did not mean to adjust. You may be focusing on what your index finger is doing, meanwhile be aware that Mr. Pinkyfinger might be adjusting something you did not intend to control. The SL Remote software doesn't limit the number of controls you can manipulate and without the physical sensation of pressing a button, turning knob, or pushing fader it's easy to hit something accidentally. Hopefully you'll just make a minor volume change and not a Mute, as I had happen once last night. Also, the buttons that select what page of controls you're looking at ( Mixer Overview, Aux Mix Levels, Graphic EQs, Scenes, Settings ) are across the bottom of the iPad screen and also easily bumped by a rouge thumb.

In Review) I would not recommend going solely wireless for a band you aren't familiar with to some extent. This event was a very casual church-based coffee house thing with a very loose atmosphere, but that doesn't mean I'm not trying to be the best soundman I can be. I probably would not have tried this job completely wireless except for two things, #1: it's part of what they wanted to demo and #2: they pretty much have to forgive me if I screw something up.

Footnotes: Two big clumsy thumbs up to the Otterbox. Not only does it provide excellent protection for your iPad, it's stand gives you a couple really nice angles to control the iPad for this kind of work.

And also in case anybody is wondering the fully charged iPad ran almost continuously from 6pm to just shy of midnight and still showed 58% charge. It would go to sleep if left unattended while the bands were setting up or changing over, which was a minimal amount of time. I'd estimate it was powered up at least 5 1/2 of those 6 hours, plus 30-45 minutes prior to the arrival of the first band while I tested everything and EQ'ed the fronts and monitors.

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