Simon Scardanelli of Dr. Scardo has been a DAW enthusiast since the clunky days of the Commodore 64. He recently changed horses mid-stream, dumping his Logic session and bringing all the tracks into Studio One Professional 2, which he has taken on as his main DAW. Here he discusses the resultant improvements to his workflow and productivity.

Flattering that a man of such long-running DAW experience would settle on PreSonus Studio One Professional 2. Give him a listen!

 [this just in from Scott Szeryk!]

Hey PreSonus!

Check this out: We are in the process of a live DVD, “Scott Szeryk Live at Aeolian Hall,” from his Manifesto Tour from summer or 2012. This was recorded on the one and only StudioLive 24.4.2! Note the iPad on the mic stand, which was used for i- ear monitor mixing via SL-Remote. Totally awesome!

PreSonus Universal Control 1.7, which will be released soon, will add three Smaart® System Analysis Wizards to Virtual StudioLive—for free! These System Analysis Wizards include a Smaart Room Analysis Wizard, Smaart Output Check Wizard, and Smaart System Delay Wizard for StudioLive™ 24.4.2 and 16.4.2 consoles.

Of course, you still get the Smaart Spectragraph and Smaart Real Time Analyzer (RTA) that were added to VSL earlier this year, and they work with all three StudioLive models.

These Smaart tools enable you to vastly improve the quality of your sound system—and your effectiveness as a live-sound engineer! You can even interface with them via StudioLive Remote on your iPad.

With these tools in your arsenal, you should probably start charging more for gigs. Just sayin’.

Just… wow.

This just in from Sudhin, our partner at ProMusicals, our distributor in India!

“Just back from Broadcast India show! (Oct 10th-12th, 2012) It was a decent show, and featured some serious cameras and lights. Hereare a few pics of the mixers on demo at the show. We demoed the new Smaart features, capture for broadcast studios, etc.  All visitors without exception were impressed with the simplicity and user-friendliness of this mixer!”

Follow ProMusicals on Twitter

There’s no two ways around it: for the novice, audio is tricky business. Sometimes you just gotta get your file converted to MP3, or activate your DAW to even get rolling in the first place. I mean, you gotta crawl before you can deliberately manipulate phase cancellation to achieve psychoacoustically pseudo-surround sound on a 2.1 setup, after all.

With that in mind, we present the first set of  bite-sized, barely-a-minute, just-the-facts-ma’am set of seven videos in a growing series: PreSonus 101. Learn how to activate Studio One offline, route your headphone mix from the AudioBox 1818VSL, or export a stereo mixdown of your proto-hit from Studio One Artist.

Halocene has been using PreSonus since their first purchase of a FireStudio years ago. Of late they’ve picked up a StudioLive console, a Eureka, and Studio One Professional 2… and in-between they’ve opened for Jimmy Eat World and Blink-182.

Lesson learned: You don’t need to be signed to a major with world-class studio access to open for a band who is. Just get some PreSonus.

Oh, also be sure to write good songs and be young and enthusiastic. That helps, too.

No keyboard player? No problem! Use Melodyne in Studio One Professional 2 to create MIDI keyboard tracks from your audio tracks! What a great time to be a producer/engineer/recordist/whatever. See you in the chat room!

Tune in Tuesday, Nov. 6: 2 p.m. CST / 3 p.m. EST / Noon PST / GMT -6

Quote of the year comes from Halocene’s  Brad Amick. “I can confidently say that 100% of every Halocene song that we’ve ever recorded has been through a PreSonus interface, be it the FireStudio or, lately, the StudioLive.”

That’s awesome. More awesomer, however, is the fact that Halocene has ownership of their entire operation. They write, produce, and record their own recordings on PreSonus gear. No big studios, no big labels, all DIY to the core… but they’re nice about it. Like, really nice.

And the result? The combo of good songs, PreSonus gear, and positive attitudes has gotten Halocene some big, big shows. They’ve opened for Blink-182, Jimmy Eat World, and had some killer Warped Tour slots… and they did it their way. See video below for more.

What other bands do you know that get to play shows like this that own their entire operation? NOFX and Manowar are the first that come to mind for me…

Who else?

AC/DC: Beyond the Thunder, a documentary film by Kurt Squiers of SQUiERS, LLC and Gregg Ferguson of Current Motion, is about the tremendous influence rock band AC/DC has had on our culture around the globe. The two producer/directors dropped their careers in order to make this film, which pays homage to one of the greatest bands of all time in such a way that has less to do with the band members themselves, and more to do with the common bond that ties fans together around the globe.

Killer! In this clip, the filmmakers take a look at the thought processes behind music licencing for advertising, and how AC/DC’s music always seems to work… almost.