Checking out the new Plugin Alliance website this morning, and very happy to see some of my favourite Brainworx and SPL plugins are now available in 64-bit versions – and finally without the dreaded iLok!

Those of you into mastering really should check out the Brainworx M/S processing plugins – they are a very different approach to mastering but can achieve some really fine results in Studio One Pro. Highly recommended.

I’m sitting in a big room at PreSonus HQ in Baton Rouge, Louisiana watching the super-smart Jonathan Hillman juggle two StudioLive 24.4.2 desks, three computers and a jungle of cables while we set up rehearsals for what will be easily the biggest live show we’ve ever put on at NAMM. And we’ll be live streaming it too, if we can pull it all off…

The Cajun All-Stars are currently jamming on an old Tears for Fears song while we fine-tune stuff. I just programmed a Roland FC-300 MIDI foot pedal to control Ampire XT in Studio One and Chris LeBlanc is using that system as his entire guitar rig – and it sounds really good. Now I’ve got a KMI SoftStep on my desk and figuring out how we can integrate even more live control stuff with that… This is shaping up to be a killer show.

Did you get any new gear for the new year? The kind folks over at TMRZoo.Com did, in the way of an AudioBox 22VSL, and subsequently smothered us with their particular brand of digital flattery.

Interested in the full review?  Of course you are, click here.

At PreSonus, we believe in finding the right person for the job, which is why we leave it to Rodney Orpheus to blow minds. That’s what he’s paid to do, after all, but “mind-blower” isn’t the most flattering title to have on a business card, so we call him a “Technology Evangelist.” I would prefer to call him a “Cyber-Paladin,” but doing so would place me just to the left of my jurisdiction, and just to the right of Rodney’s favor.

So here he is, evangelizing our technology in the best worms-eye-view, hands-on, golly-it’s-really-that-easy demonstration of StudioLive Remote on the iPad that I’ve ever seen. Rodney gallantly sojourns across The Scala, effortlessly slaying a 330Hz  resonance dragon with one hand, while stoically rescuing the bassist’s monitor mix with the other. Raise a glass of Romulan grog, for the hero has restored order to the kingdom!

Edwin McCain’s isn’t a guy who’s on the road, Edwin McCain is a guy who is from the road. He’s a 100-shows-in-100-days sort, yet he has somehow has managed to write, record, and release a full-length album every couple of years—for the past 20. The guy knows what he’s doing.

It speaks well of us, then, that Edwin chooses to use not-one-but-two PreSonus StudioLive 24.4.2 mixers on the road, for monitor and FOH. At every show. Each show gets a multi-track recording, because hey, why not? I mean, the mics are already plugged in and everything.  Hit REC on Capture.

I’ll let Edwin and his crew explain in their own words. Listen closely for a clever tech tip or two…

Yes, I’m sure some of you are looking at that title and thinking “But isn’t the Winter NAMM show in January?” – and you would be right. But here at PreSonus, we’re already starting to get stuff ready for the show about six weeks ahead of the date. Yep, so much for the holiday season…

There’s an old music biz joke that the acronym NAMM stands for Not Available, Maybe May (or even less kindly, Maybe Movember). We took the decision a while back not to show stuff unless it was actually ready to ship, and we’re trying to stick to that, though sometimes when you have some wonderfully cool piece of technology in development it is really hard to resist the temptation to show it off. This time round we have Studio One 2.0 to show of course, and the new AudioBox VSL range, but we’re currently looking at the other stuff we have in engineering and evaluating how ready it is, and how best to debut it if it is indeed ready for prime time.

I’m pretty happy to say that I think we’ve got a couple of really cool things that we should be able to introduce at the show, so for the next weeks my head will be buried in technical notes and slideshows figuring out just how it all works and preparing to show it off. Cant wait!