PreSonus Blog

Monthly Archives: August 2013


PreSonus LIVE—The StudioLive AI Launch!

Rick and Johnny explore the latest features of the new StudioLive 32.4.2AI, and also reveal the big #UnveilPreSonus secret: there are THREE boards in the StudioLive AI family!

For more on the StudioLive AI series, click here.

VIDEO: What’s New in Studio One 2.6

Studio One 2.6 launched today! After you check out this video, you may want to

 

Throwback Thursday: Senior Hardware Engineer Peter Burrows

Here’s Peter Burrows in a much more tranquil time, back before he became the raging wildman we know today.

Peter is now our Senior Hardware Engineer, where he is able to leverage his psychobilly gearhead roots into the mechanations of our top-shelf products. If you ever found a little extra grease leaking out from under the pan knob on your StudioLive, blame Peter.

Nowadays, Peter’s musical focus is with a new top-secret rockabilly band alongside PreSonus cohort Matt Conrad.

 

PreSonus LIVE Airs Today, Aug. 29! | StudioLive 32.4.2AI

ACTIVE INTEGRATION HAS LANDED! Click here to watch today’s show and learn all there is to know about the StudioLive 32.4.2AI.

Note that this show is not to be confused with Thursday’s #UnveilPreSonus webcast, which can be viewed at the following link at 3:00 p.m. CST | 4:00 p.m. EST | 1:00 p.m. PST | 20:00 GMT: http://www.presonus.com/videos/presonuslive

Note that this is not to be confused with our #UnveilPreSonus webcast at 2 p.m. the same day at: http://www.presonus.com/videos/presonuslive

 

Using A Single Mic and Preamp for Recording Guitar and Vocals

Can you really get a great recording of a guitar AND vocal perfomance with just a single mic and a single preamp? Absolutely! That’s how the majority of classic recordings were done back before multitrack recording. The benefits of recording with one really great mic and preamp are twofold:

  • The sound is pure and focused
  • You don’t have to deal with phase issues

With a single-mic setup, you have the ability to make the listener feel like they are literally in the room.   So how do you pull this off? First of all, you need to have a great song and a great performance. If you’ve got one mic or 1000 mics, it won’t matter if the song sucks or the performance isn’t there. Assuming you have your song and performance together, here’s a few tips on how to pull this off using the PreSonus ADL 700 Channel Strip and the Blue Microphones Kiwi. The artist I recorded is the amazing Chris LeBlanc.

 

Mic Positioning:  We’re using Blue Microphones’ Kiwi, a nine-pattern microphone (omni, cardioid, figure of eight, and everything in between) featuring their B6 capsule, to capture as much detail as we can. Most of the time, I set the mic to a cardioid pickup pattern, so it is picking up what’s going on in front of it while rejecting reflections that are coming off of the wall behind the mic. When I’m miking a singer/acoustic guitar player, I try to place the mic far enough away to pick up both the guitar and voice—but not too far, otherwise I will get to much room sound. Once I’ve positioned the mic for the correct distance, the next challenge is to position it vertically to get the correct balance between the singer’s voice and guitar. This is also a bit tricky, as placement is dependent on how loud the artist both sings and plays. On this particular session, Chris’ voice was actually a lot louder than his guitar was. Notice I have the mic actually positioned lower, toward the guitar, to account for this. With the Kiwi, it’s good to experiment by opening up the polar pattern to achieve more omni pickup when trying to capture multiple sources. The flexibility of being able to move in-between cardioid and omni is extremely valuable in these settings!

 

Setting the mic preamp and compressor

The preamp gain was set so that I had plenty of headroom. Chris is a very dynamic singer, and puts out quite a bit of volume, so it was important to make sure I didn’t let him clip the input of the mic preamp. The ADL 700 features variable microphone impedance settings, so I set it to the highest impedance available to get a bright, dynamic sound. The High Pass Filter was disabled, and the compressor was set to a light ratio of about 3:1.  I was getting around 5 or 6dB of compression on the meter. This smoothed out the response, and helped control the inevitable peaks that occur when Chris really belts it out.

Setting the EQ Since the mic was pulled back from Chris by about 1.5 feet, I found I needed to boost some lows around 60k just to bring out the body in his acoustic guitar. Since the guitar was tuned down, the low-mids sounded a little muted, so I boosted a few dB at around 400Hz. Lastly, I added just a tad of highs at around 6kHz to bring out the high-end definition.

 

Point and Shoot That’s it! As you can see from the video, sometimes Chris wasn’t looking directly at the mic, but because I had some distance between him and the Kiwi, it didn’t matter. What you hear is what the performance actually sounded like if you were in the room. The trick with this type of technique is to experiment. It also doesn’t hurt to have a world-class mic and preamp, but nonetheless, it all starts with the source. Experiment—happy tracking!

 

Limited time offer from Blue and PreSonus!

 

Something Unseen This Way Comes: #UnveilPreSonus

Sure, we’ve been talking a lot about the StudioLive 32.4.2AI, and how elegantly it integrates with the StudioLive AI PA systems. And of course you MUST know about PreSonuSphere, coming up in October.  And the RC 500 solid-state preamp? Come on. That jazz is so last-week.

On Thursday, August 29 2013, at 3:00 p.m. CST, (4:00 p.m. EST | 1:00 p.m. PST | 20:00 GMT) head over to www.presonus.com/videos/presonuslive, where we’ll dagger the cloak, tip our hand, and reveal the other players in our triumvirate. But what is it?

Exactly. We encourage you to speculate about precisely what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks we have going on over here using the hashtag #UnveilPreSonus. You are also welcome to direct questions to us on the matter, but are decidedly less welcome to expect useful answers.

At least until the 29th.

 

 

Rock Duo BREAKERBOX release “SUMMERTIME” Official Music Video

This latest single from this East Coast Rock/Pop/Electronica Duo,SUMMERTIME is the first of many musical collaborations between BREAKERBOX singer/songwriter Christina DeNee’, Drummer/Producer Scott Calandra and co-producer Chris Baseford(Tommy Lee/Avril Lavign/Rob Zombie). Recorded in Los Angeles atTommy Lee of Motley Crue’s exclusive Atrium Studios,“SUMMERTIME” is now available on iTunes and all digital retailers.

Read the full press release on the BREAKERBOX website!

MusicRadar Reviews the PreSonus Eris E8 Studio Monitors

This just in from the Trevor Curwen at MusicRadar! They took the time to listen (closely) and review (favorably) our new Eris E8 monitors.

Thanks very much for this, guys. Here’s a snippet:

“This is a speaker that could easily take care of all recording and mixing possibilities in a small studio.”

Click through to MusicRadar to read the full review!

 

Infernal’s Thomas Holmen on Mixing Drums in Studio One

[This just in from Thomas Holmen, drummer for Infernal.]

Hi PreSonus!

How are you? I have made this little video showing one of my drum solos from Infernal, live in Denmark. 14 tracks from FOH were mixed in Studio One.  I like the sound of the drums, and I really do hope that you will find this homemade video interesting.
Turn up the volume and listen to my mix, and please let me know what you think!
All the best
Thomas Holmen

[Blogger’s note: I think it sounds great, Thomas. Thanks! Dear readers: what do you think about Thomas’ drum mix? Comment!]

 

Pics from The 2013 Thunder Roadshow

Mark and Justin are lugging the new StudioLive 32.4.2AI and the StudioLive AI PA speakers all over the country in the Thunder Roadshow tour. To check out the Thunder Roadshow in person, visit our Events page and learn when we’re coming to your town!