PreSonus Blog

The StudioLive Debuts in Fiji at this Year’s “Tunes in the Tropics Tour!”

[This just in from Peter Scott, Production Manager of the “Tunes in the Tropics Tour” coming up in Fiji!]

Hey PreSonus! I wanted to let you know that we’ll be taking a StudioLive mixer with us on the “Tunes in the Tropics Tour” in Fiji!  This will be our third trip to this venue. The Hideaway Resort is near Sigatoka on the Coral Coast of Vita Levu the main island of the Fiji Island group.
The Tunes in the Tropics Tours were initiated by Chris Watson, a young entrepreneur who lives in Tamworth, which is Australia’s country music capitol. Chris has been a keen traveler, and has developed his own travel firm, Chris Watson Travel Partners, with his wife Gemma. They both love country music, and are well known in International Travel Line Dancing circles.
Chris’ idea was to take Australian country music to other parts of the world, and so five years ago the first Tour of Australian Country Artists headed to Fiji. There are usually six or seven A-list artists and a backing band who each perform their own music on one night of the tour. The last night of the tour features a showcase of every Artist. Chris invited 100 country music lovers to join him on the first tour, and this year he has completely sold out the Resort with 220 fans and nine acts for a week of great music and fun!
The Fijian people are very friendly, and local live production is usually undertaken by companies such as Sharma Music who have a network of music stores around the Fiji islands. The Fiji dollar is fairly weak in international terms, so purchase of equipment is an expensive exercise so much of the local equipment we hire from them is older analogue gear.
As I started gear shopping for this third tour, it became obvious we needed to run at least four sends of in-ear monitors plus up to four powered wedges. This prompted us to look at the available consoles. The best we could find locally was an analogue board with digital effects. It required a lot of outboard processing to make this work, adding pressure to our budget.

As I have been a PreSonus user for over two years, I knew PreSonus embraced good ideas. I sent off an email to Baton Rouge HQ to see if they could help. At the time, PreSonus didn’t have a local distributor in Fiji, so I approached Amit Sharma, the owner of Sharma Music, to see will he may be interested in the idea of becoming a new distributor. He was very keen to see PreSonus’ offering, and we explained the StudioLive advantage—it would streamline his production workflow while adding the ability to record performances. For me this a no-brainer, as the end user experience for me has been far better than all the other audio manufacturers I have dealt with to date.
With assistance from Nigel at Oceania Audio Sales, the PreSonus Distributer in New Zealand, we will have a Presonus Studiolive in the Fiji Islands for the very first time! As a sweetener we are going to do some training sessions for the local production people to show them the extensive features of the StudioLive range, including QMix, and record some live performances with Capture and Studio One.
There will be a Q and A session at the end of each session. Should anyone
want to join us, they can contact me via Facebook.
Bula Vanaka to all at team PreSonus!
Peter Scott
Production Manager
“Tunes in the Tropics Tour” to Fiji 2014
Australia