PreSonus Blog

PreSonus LIVE airs Thursday, chat LIVE with Craig Anderton!

PreSonus LIVE Airs Thursday! 2p.m. CST / 3 p.m. EST / Noon PST / GMT -6
Learn all about digital effects in Studio One. Craig Anderton will be in the chat room to field your questions!

http://www.presonus.com/videos/presonuslive

Craig Anderton

Source Distribution TV’s PreSonus Coverage from NAMM 2013

[This just in from Source Distribution! Thanks for the coverage, guys, and Rodney: good work!]

Victor Wooten, Steve Bailey, and David “Fingers” Haynes from the PreSonus Booth at NAMM 2013!

Leading by Example in the Dog-Eat-Dog World of XLR Cable Management

[This just in from Jan-Arend, StudioLive Wizard at Large and Executive Cable Manager.]

IMG_3330Hey guys,

Want to show you something. I saw Big Joe Daddy’s Big Multi-Pin Panel-Box Thingy post on the PreSonus blog. It looked very professional! I too use the StudioLive 24.4.2 on various occasions and locations.
We all want to get the best mixing position for our bands and the easiest place for the console. But having said this, we all know that having at least 30 cables to the mixer on the other end of the stage isn’t easy. It gets messy. So I wanted a flexible solution for my band(s).
One band is very different from the other. One is almost completely acoustic, with 3 vocals, acoustic/electric bass and guitar, accordion, and drums. We use two auxes for wedge mixes. The other band is completely electric, with 3 vocals, drums, electric piano, guitars, and basses. No amps on stage, and four stereo in-ear mixes for monitoring. My StudioLive is also used in churches and other events.

I wanted to make a flexible and very compact snake-system that I could use in both situations. I wanted to have the possibility to get all 24 channels from the stage to the Studiolive, and to get the main and subgroup-outputs plus all the aux outputs back to the stage. Ordinarily, this would require a single 40-channel snake. Everybody knows that these cables are heavy, and not easy to use at all. And every time, I would have to plug in 40 cables into my mixer.
Now my solution:IMG_3334
I had a 30-meter 16.4 snake for a couple of years, and I thought, ”Why not have two of these 16.4 cables, with multi-pins in the mixer case?” So, I bought another 16.4.2 multi-core cable to make a total of 40 channels.
I keep my StudioLive 24.4.2 in a Thon mixer case, from Germany. This case was made for the SL and it fits perfectly. Nice thing about this case is the “semi” doghouse configuration. This gave me room to mount the multi-pin connectors in the case. It took me a week or two to make all the connections and to change connectors of the second stage box. Stage box one has 16 inputs and four outputs (A, B, C, and D). Stagebox two has eight more inputs, all 10 aux outputs from the mixer (with Neutrik combo sockets) and two more outs, E and F. This all gives us 24 inputs on the StudioLive and 16 outputs from the mixer on stage.
With our acoustic band, I only need one snake, and with the other band I use both snakes. Now we can put the mixer anywhere we like, setup time is much quicker than before and we don’t have to carry very heavy cables.
See the attached photos for the result. Maybe this helps other StudioLive users to get ideas about their set-up.

Greeting from a very happy StudioLive user!

Jan-Arend Blok

Jan’s bands:

“De Duifies” are singing Dutch songs from a very popular tv series “ja zuster nee zuster” back in the sixties in the Netherlands.
“Spoetnik” started in 1980 and plays mostly covers nowdays.
thanks and best to you too!!

Olesya Star’s Unusual Duet

olesya_star_christmas2012[This just in from PreSonus Artist Olesya Star, who recently completed an unusual duet.]

As an independent artist, people always tell me that to survive you have to take 2 steps left whilst walking forward or you’ll go in circles, so I always keep an open mind to new ventures, avenues and pathways through this minefield called the music biz. One such diversion presented itself to me recently in the form of a country duet, originally meant for Dolly Parton, but sung by Tim Rose. Tim was an original American troubadour who was a founding Greenwich Village folk musician in the 1960s, and former band member with the likes of Mama Cass (Mamas and Papas), and later in life Andy Summers (The Police) and Mick Jones (Foreigner). Sadly, I never met Tim Rose before he died in 2002, but by pure chance I was asked by an old friend of Tim’s  if I would supply “Dolly Parton-like vocals” and work the track, originally recorded in 1988.

The tracks were originally recorded on 2″ tape, so the tape needed to be baked and digitized prior to landing on my studio desk. I had 24 tracks to play with that had been encoded at 24bit/96khz, which I brought immediately into PreSonus Studio One Professional v2.  The job of identifying the microphones that were used in the original recording was completely irrelevant with Studio One, as it was far simpler just to make the recording sound how it should by using the simplest included Studio One features: Channel Strip, CompressorPro EQOpenAIR reverb and, my favorite by far, the Mulitiband Dynamics effect on the Master channel which glues the track together—sometimes much better than using summing mixers that cost in the thousands.

I recorded my vocals through the PreSonus AudioBox 1818VSL, dropped the majority of unnecessary channels/recordings, and sculpted a rough mix before handing the final session over to my producer/mastering guru, Adam Mills. Adam  added some heart-poundingly heavy kick drum and a sprinkle of the missing magic by adding just 2-3% OpenAir in the Mastering/Project section of Studio One, as an insert, with a tight room preset— and no more pre-delay than 15-20ms. There you go, now I’m even handing out secrets!

The result is “You Can Hurry Darling (And I’ll Walk Slow)” which now sounds like I was in the room with Tim Rose at the same time, All thanks to Studio One and PreSonus. Here’s a sample, the full single drops Feb. 14!

PreSonus Pays Tribute to Recording Royalty at 2013 Grammys

PreSonus Pays Tribute to Recording Royalty at 2013 Grammys

by Carl Jacobson, Director of Strategic Marketing & Business Development

None other than Quincy Jones himself!

None other than Quincy Jones himself!

The Grammys are the Grammys… pomp, circumstance, bravado and flash. If you’re a fan of music celebrities or one of the stars that make it, there’s no other night like it.
But if you’re like us at PreSonus, you get more excited about the unsung heroes who actually record and produce the music.  We find the contributions to pop culture by Quincy Jones to be as significant as those he worked with like Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, or Frank Sinatra. And the listening enjoyment you get when you hear Steely Dan or Ray Charles is as much due to Al Schmitt’s engineering genius as it was to the performances by the artists themselves. They go hand in hand.
So that’s why, when the Producers and Engineers Wing of NARAS, (the people who bring you the Grammys) asked us to join them during Grammy Week for a Night of Jazz honoring our friends Quincy and Al, we felt honored too. These are our people and we want to celebrate what they do.
The unofficial tagline of the P&E Wing is “All Geek, All the Time.” Imagine being invited to a party full of people who can get as excited about the speakers playing the music, as the music coming out of them!  Imagine if the party you’re invited to is being held in the same recording studio where Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, and Nine Inch Nails recorded their best work.
The night was held at The Village in West LA, and when we learned that the State of Louisiana was a sponsor, and gumbo & beignets were on the menu… we felt right at home. And, for once, we didn’t have to cook. That’s our kind of party!
It was suggested to us that we could bring some toys, so for us that meant our new Sceptre monitors and the ADL 700 channel strip, we even invited our brothers at Nimbit for good measure. A nice thing about the Grammy Week P&E Wing party, is that it’s cool to talk tech. Most of the producers and engineers who fly in for the Grammys are too busy working to attend NAMM, so they appreciate the chance to talk about the latest and greatest gear in a casual and intimate environment with the people who make it.
I can’t tell you how many times we heard love expressed for a Central Station or PreSonus preamp. Or the respect people had for what we’ve done with Studio One in such a short amount of time. Honestly, the jokes about letting people leave with the Sceptre monitors got a little old by the end of the night, but hey, it’s hard not to get gear lust when you hear them.  There was genuine excitement that we collaborated with Dave Gunness on the designs, and relief that someone had finally perfected a coaxial speaker design that was not only loud (loud is easy,) but that it sounded good, too… I overheard one engineer say “It’s a good loud.”
Aside from getting some quality time with the honorees we also got a chance to see some dear friends. Brad Zell, our Director of Marketing Communications reconnected with Rob Chiarelli, mix engineer for Madonna and Christina Aguilera, among many others who he worked with at Avalon. Brad also spent some quality time with Dave Hampton, engineer and system tech for Prince and Herbie Hancock. And I’m always happy to run into my guitar instructor from high school, Shawn Clement, who later went on to score countless films, video games and TV shows.
Some other notable people we saw with that night included will.i.am, George Benson, Ed Cherney, Carmen Rizzo, and Jimmy Jam.
All in all an amazing evening and we can’t wait till next year.

 

Joe Solo’s Music Success Weekend Workshop

Joe-Solo-2

New PreSonus HQ is Coming Along…

So, we’re growing. Like, bursting-at-the-seams-growing, and have become a little too big for our britches. Sure, all the jambalaya and Mountain Dew consumption around the Baton Rouge office is clearly a factor, but the real issue is that we’ve simply hired a lot of people to do a lot of work, and now there’s too many people to fit into our current facility. It’s like a pro-audio clown car up in here. We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

In my role as the Social Media Manager for PreSonus, I work from my home in the passive-aggressive capitol of the world, Seattle. Fact is, the only reason I haven’t moved to Baton Rouge yet is because Ron says “We’d love to have you here, but there simply isn’t anywhere for you to sit.” So, I’m glad to see they’re workin’ on it, because I’m overdue for some Crawdad and Three-Cheese Baked Macaroni and kindness from strangers.

While this might appear to look like some concrete in a muddy field, this is a big step toward arriving in our new home. Look at it as the architectural equivalent of having gotten our drums tracks committed to tape, and we just called our first-call bassist to come do his job.

We’re hiring for more positions to come, by the way.

MultiTracks.Com Interviews Rick at NAMM 2013 About the StudioLive 32.4.2AI!

Big thanks to MultiTracks.Com for their NAMM 2013 coverage of the StudioLive 32.4.2AI!

PreSonus NAMM 2013 Awards Haul

Not pictured: Michelle’s “Hostess with the Mostess” trophy.

Not to brag or anything. But this is newsworthy, right? Fact is it’s nice to be noticed, and it would seem that we turned a couple heads at NAMM. We got so many trophies and atta-boys that we couldn’t even fit them in our suitcases to go back to Baton Rouge, and they had to be shipped separately.

Here’s what we’ve won recently:

On the table, from left to right:
Visual Grand Prix Audio Excellence Award 2013, DAW category: Studio One 2
Electronic Musician, 2013 Editors Choice Award, category “Feature Creep Can Actually Be Good”: AudioBox 1818VSL
Music & Sound Retailer, 2013 Music & Sound Award, category Best New Mixer: StudioLive 16.0.2
Pro Audio Review, 2012 PAR Excellence Award: StudioLive 16.0.2

On the wall:
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: StudioLive 24.4.2
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: Studio One Professional 2
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: Virtual StudioLive
ProSoundWeb & Live Sound International, Readers’ Choice Awards 2013: ADL 700
Music & Sound Retailer, 2012 “Show Us Your Tubes” award: Zombie attack video

Not in the photo but awarded at or immediately after NAMM:
AudioMedia Gear of the Year: Studio One Professional 2
Music Inc., Best in Show, Companies to Watch: PreSonus
SonicScoop Pick for NAMM: Sceptre CoActual monitor speakers  and the StudioLive 32.4.2AI.
Church Production’s NAMM Top Five for Live: StudioLive AI PA speakers

Not a bad haul! We also were nominated for four TEC Awards but we didn’t win any. Again.