Joe Crabtree, Live Sound Engineer for Wishbone Ash, picked up a StudioLive 24.4.2 for Wishbone Ash’s most recent tour. He’s running front-of-house from his StudioLive, and—like many StudioLive owners before him—was able to offload a rack full of old compressors, reverbs, gates… the usual suspects.

Furthermore, he’s really using the board to its fullest. He records every show to Capture, and his band is taking advantage of the remote in-ear monitor control features available via QMix.

Enough chit-chat, just watch his vid. Joe, thanks so much for this!

It’s here! It’s here!

Rational Acoustics’ highly regarded Smaart Measurement Technology™ is now available in PreSonus’ Virtual StudioLive™ remote-control/editor/librarian software for StudioLive™ mixers.

These astonishing technologies are now available FREE from PreSonus.Com! Get the Smaart Wizards and shoot the room!

To add these free features to your StudioLive mixer, grab the latest version of Universal Control, with all its wizardly goodness. Click here for details on this significant, free upgrade.

Universal Control v1.7 – PC

Universal Control v1.7 – Mac

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’.

Mix recently ran a fascinating piece on exterminating pests. Not nutria or bollweevil, but pesky snakes, who have continued to envenom audio production despite our release of Virtual StudioLive and QMix. We’re trying our best, and appreciate Mix calling attention to the good fight!

Here’s a snippet:

“I work in live sound, and I’m done with audio snakes. No, I don’t mean I’ve switched from copper to Cat 5. I mean that I’m done, totally, forever. And my mixer? I have one, but you won’t see it. It’s behind the stage. And my iPad? No, I’m not playing Angry Birds, I’m mixing the band from the best seat in the house, right next to my wife and kids. I don’t even think about monitors anymore, the band takes care of them on their own. And because there’s no snake, stage racks or separate monitor system, everything takes less than 20 minutes to set up. Just put the mixer near the stage, connect the band and powered speakers, and go. Even crazier, an entire system for a 600-seat venue can fit in a Honda Civic. Oh, did I mention I’m doing all of this with a $1,999 mixer and some free apps? Welcome to the future of portable sound.”

Hop over to Mix for the full article!

Apple fanboy Rick Naqvi should probably be hitting up Tim Cook for a sales commission.  Here, he extolls the virtues of the iPad and Mac Mini… but it doesn’t end there. This isn’t just another “Wireless control of the StudioLive via iPad” video. This is something else. This has bells and whistles.

First, Rick sets up his Mac Mini to auto-launch VSL on boot. So, assuming proper connections and having everything powered up, his Mac Mini will auto-connect to his StudioLive seconds within powering up.

But keep watching… it gets real interesting. Via the iPad, Rick uses VNC Mocha Lite to connect to his Mac Mini desktop: no monitor required! This configuration allows you to run and interface with both VSL Remote and also access Capture or Angry Birds during the show. Rick keeps it simple and thorough at the same time—but you might wanna make sure you know what an IP address is before viewing.

…and here ’tis. Learn about all the advantages of Universal Control 1.6, including Smaart spectra!

[Editor’s note: The kind e-mails just don’t STOP around here. I asked Houston’s Tommy Kib to give us “a paragraph or two” about his experience with the StudioLive and QMix in his worship services, and instead I got the sea of text that follows. Oh, and the video. Read on, it’s all good.]

Hey Ryan:

I volunteer with Adore Ministries (@adoreministries) running the audio: trying to capture, mix, master, and send recordings of our services up to SoundCloud for people that couldn’t attend. This allows us to share the message with all that want to hear it.

Tommy's StudioLive Remote solution

If there were a target audience for Adore, it would definitely be both young adults and the young at heart. Our services focus on staying very contemporary, while also keeping true to even the most traditional of Catholic traditions. A lot more information about Adore’s mission, vision, etc is on their website.

What we have been able to do with the wonderful PreSonus technology is a really tremendous thing. Since our particular venue doesn’t have the most reliable infrastructure, we have been bringing in our own audio gear. Most of the venue’s gear may have been state-of-the-art in the mid 1980’s… but it hasn’t really been refreshed, well… ever.

So, I bring in some good stuff to allow us to get in and set up a quality live sound and recording rig by ourselves. This allows us to barely touch, or have to trust (The faith pun is intended) the venue’s admittedly aging gear and leave without a trace. Typically the venue’s employees coming in for the service after us could easily be overwhelmed if we didn’t put everything back exactly like we found it. They also have a lot of folks re-routing signals, so input #40 on the snake near the altar might run to input #12 on the mixer. We learned early on that deciphering the existing setup this was a terrible waste of time.

On a typical Adore night at the Catholic Charismatic Center, I’ll haul over:

• Mics, stands, cables, DI’s etc.. anything feeding the mixer
• PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2
• The wireless StudioLive Remote set up:
  • Laptop, Wireless Router, iPad, and 5 iPod Touches mounted in IK Klips.
• In-ear monitor setup consisting of some Shure wireless (PSM 400) and some hard-wired Shure packs, and of course the $50 mini-mixer for the drummer.
• I leave the big box with the 24 x 8 snake at home.

Most of the time, we send the main outs of the StudioLive to the venue’s front of house mixer, a very temperamental Allen & Heath GL4 that eats power supply fuses like I eat crawfish! Once in a while we’ll send a couple of signals allowing us to balance in some front fills or actually have a subgroup dedicated to front fills.

Using QMix means we don’t require a monitor engineer. I’ve noticed after 2 events that I can get a way better EQ and starting mix from being able to roam around the entire venue during sound check. We absolutely cannot be in there before about 3 p.m., and most of the band simply can’t arrive until 5 p.m., and the event has to start at 7 p.m.! And if we’re not out by 10 p.m., (service ends at 9 p.m.) we really make the janitor unhappy! 🙂

Tommy Kib at the helm.

The musicians (other than 2 that plug their ears right into the iPods) have really preferred using QMix over anything used before, even the Aviom system that this venue has. When we did rely on the Aviom, it was patched differently each and every time so there was 30 minutes of prep going in to re-patching and labeling the monitor mixes. With QMix, I think there’s only one “wish list” item I’d ask for… and that’s to save the channel labels or board tape part when recalled.

To say QMix is a game changer is a severe understatement. I’d credit it with at least 10 minutes savings during sound check, which is spent getting a much nicer sound. I thought the same when SL Remote for iPad came out, and now I don’t lose an hour spent running and connecting through a snake. Having the Store, Recall, and FAT Channel on the StudioLive takes anything we do anywhere to the next level, but being able to start with a recalled scene as a start point is PRICELESS! Probably another 10 minutes saved per night there…

What’s that add up to..? 2 hours saved per service? At least 80 gray hairs saved! When we only have 2 hours to set up and sound check, every minute counts!

Enjoy the little video! That should be enough for a “paragraph or two,” right?

Thomas Kibodeaux
Adore Ministries
@TKib

Las Vegas, NV, May 2012… Join PreSonus for a very special live webcast, direct from the InfoComm Show in Las Vegas.

Tune in for Connecting Your Customers with StudioLive™, a 30-minute presentation that will cover the broad range of advanced control and connectivity between PreSonus StudioLive consoles and laptop computers, iPads®, iPhones®, and iPod touches®.

From iPad-based wireless mixer control with StudioLive-Remote and iPhone/iPod touch monitor control via QMix™, to multitrack recording and production with CaptureTM and Studio OneTM Artist, PreSonus is the only compact digital mixer that offers such a wide range of software integration – for free!

The presentation will also take a look into the ever-expanding integration between PreSonus products and Rational Acoustics’ acclaimed Smaart™ audio-analysis technologies. Optimizing system EQ has never been this fast and easy.

Four 30-minute presentations will be broadcast live from the PreSonus Demo Room (N105) at InfoComm on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, June 13, 14, and 15 at 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 3:00 PM. (All times are Pacific Daylight Time) A live Q&A from attendees will follow each session.

A special bonus for those attending the show in person: PreSonus will give away a free seven-port USB hub and free 2GB USB drive to attendees at the end of each presentation.

So join us online at http://livestream.com/presonuslive to catch all the action as it happens, or to view it later.

To schedule an email reminder, visit us at http://presonus.com/community/presonuslive/

How do you avoid getting a call in the middle of a gig when you are using your iPhone to control QMix? Good question. I’ll show you this trick, as well as a neat way to handle your break music on the same iPhone or iPod Touch you that are using to control your monitor mix.