PreSonus Blog

Category Archives: Mixing Systems


Get the Studiolive 16.0.2 for a Reduced Price Until Dec. 31

StudioLive1602_300x300_10-19-15_RR01I like to think of The StudioLive 16.0.2 as the scrappy little brother of the StudioLive family. Well into the StudioLive AI era, this Classic model is still one of the best-selling digital mixers we offer.

Why? In short, the 16.0.2 punches with heavyweight power in a bantamweight frame. You get sixteen inputs and four Aux Outs, the same XMAX preamps and Fat Channels found in more expensive StudioLive mixers, and Smaart Measurement Technology via VSL. This all makes it ideal for both project studios and mobile PA/DJ rigs. Pound for pound, it’s arguably the most feature-rich mixer in the line. And don’t forget the 16.0.2’s secret weapon that no other StudioLive mixer in the line has: MIDI control! You can adjust mixer settings live, in-performance, with a standard MIDI controller.

While more wallop for your wallet has always been part of what makes the 16.0.2 what it is, we’ve made that end of the deal even better for a while. Until Dec. 31, we’ve dropped the price on the StudioLive 16.0.2 for customers in the USA down by a hundred bucks to a mere $899.

Take one home. With a little training, your productions will be punching well above your weight class. Just make sure to bring in this new gear before the New Year—this offer ends December 31.

 

MUTEMATH: On Tour With PreSonus and Dante!

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Click to pre-order “Vitals” on iTunes!

MuteMath is a Grammy-nominated American alternative rock band from New Orleans that formed in 2002. Their dynamic sound combines moments of stillness with dance, hip-hop and pop beats. Paul Meany’s vocals make it a point to invade your personal space—his lyrics that continue to resonate with listeners for days after a listen.

Stubbornly refusing boredom or stagnation, MuteMath consistently lives on the cutting-edge of their craft, thanks to a creative work ethic—it’s safe to say that all of their work is their best work. After a short hiatus since their last studio album in 2011, MuteMath is excited to debut their fourth album Vitals, releasing November 13.

PreSonus recently partnered with MuteMath to take two newly Dante-enabled StudioLive RM32AI mixers and a StudioLive CS18AI on the road for their entire US Tour. In true MuteMath tradition—this was something of a rock’n’roll first.

Check out the video below to see what Paul had to say about taking an all-PreSonus mix solution on the road.

Click the image to the right to see how they’ve got everything hooked up. Dante makes it easy—imagine the difference between setting this up with a lightweight CAT5 cable as opposed to traditional, heavy, analog cables!

 

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Hookup Diagram [PDF]

iCanStudioLive Multimedia Studio in Jakarta Chooses PreSonus for Full Solution

[This just in from Lucy Willar, Co-Founder of iCanStudioLive. She took the time to answer a Q&A from Laz Harris, our very own Asia-Pacific Sales Manager, to tell us a bit about what makes iCanStudioLive lead the A/V production industry in Jakarta—and how PreSonus is a part of it!]

  • What is iCanStudioLive? What was the inspiration for the name?

Lucy: iCanStudioLive is the leading audio/video live recording producer in Indonesia. We produce quality content every day, and provide a one-stop solution from creative design to pre- and post-production and digital distribution. Our production team works very closely with quality talent to create unique programs to attract the global netizen. We’re located in Jakarta. Please feel free to visit our fully-equipped studio!

The inspiration for the name came from our ability to do everything at one place—integrated and digital. Once you enter our studio, you will immediately think, “I can do this! I can do that! I can do everything I want!” Also, coincidentally, our other founder, Irsan Wallad’s nickname is “Ican.” So it was a perfect match with his vision on live recording, too. Then we named our studio “iCanStudioLive”—all one word, please!

  • What does your studio specialize in? Who do you cater to?

Lucy: We specialize in live recording, and help with concept and creative design for both audio and video. We are the first, and now leading the industry in live recording. We cater to skillful musicians, younger musicians, and prodigies. Case study: Joey Alexander, who is now becoming very popular in the USA.

  • Who is iCanStudioLive? (your team, their roles)

Lucy: We have full team: A General Manager who takes care of all studio activities, a Program Manager who take care of all programs—existing and future ideas. We’ve also have a Creative Manager who takes care of production, and a Post-Production Manager who takes care of post-production audio/video. Last but not least we have a two-person editor team, five production assistants for audio and video, general affairs, security, etc. All told, we are 16 people.

  • Whose vision was it to start the studio? When did it start?

Lucy: It’s Ican’s vision. He started this dream 15 years ago while doing his own business in multimedia.

  • Can you give us some information about why you have chosen the complete PreSonus solution over all of the available choices?

Lucy: PreSonus offers a single integrated control system for both live performance and recording.

  • Can you give us an explanation as to how it’s all hooked up? Perhaps explain a bit about the wiring between the control room and studio and your basic signal flow?

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    Irsan”Ican” Wallad

Lucy: Capture 2.0 makes for easy multi-tracking and routing channels from the StudioLive to the DAW. For live use, we make heavy use of the Fat Channel in the StudioLive console mixer—it allows us to control Gate, EQ, and Compression when used for front-of-house. Furthermore, we can color the live sound with the StudioLive’s built-in FX. On the other hand, for studio recording—we need everything kept FLAT at the source, and the StudioLive’s clean preamps provide excellent clarity with no audible coloration. It’s great for both applications.

  • Last but not least, perhaps some background on Ichan, how he got into audio, etc.

Lucy: Ican fell in love with music when he was nine years old, and got started with multimedia when he was 13. His parents worked at a multinational company (Mobil Oil) as a joint venture between Japan, Indonesia and US. After getting a degree in architecture, he started doing live recording in 2007, and was eventually invited to record the local Symphony Orchestra in 2011. He built iCanStudioLive in the same year. Now he’s recording almost every day!

Thank you Laz! It’s great to be one big family and we are looking forward to work closer for years to come.

Best regards,
Lucy Willar

 

iCanStudioLive

PreSonus LIVE: Using Plugins Live with Nothing More now Available on YouTube

The guys in Nothing More tour with a StudioLive RM mixer, running their favorite plugins at their live shows. Here’s how they do it.

Learn more about StudioLive RM here
Get the acoustic version of “Jenny” here

Ricki and the Flash Rocks with PreSonus, Part 5

 

Ricki and the Flash poster (1)Rehearsals started on Monday, September 15. Everyone came in with instruments: Joe had already set up his drums, and the film had rented a B3 and Leslie for Bernie. Rick the Bass Player had one of his Laklands, Rick Springfield had his Gibson SG, and Meryl had a Fender Telecaster. We had backup instruments, as well, and Danelectro sent us a couple of guitars (more on those later).

Neil, Mark, and I made several trips to the 14th St. Guitar Center to get pedals for Rick Springfield’s setup, and Line 6 sent us a guitar wireless system for Meryl. The premise is that Ricki (Meryl) is trying for stardom and is currently slugging it out in clubs in the San Fernando Valley, playing every Tuesday night at the Salt Well.

Gary Goetzman is the producer of the film, and he led the rehearsals, with assistance from Neil and Mark.

We started with a basic line check; the kick drum was miked with an ATM 250. All the other drums were triggered. Joe has triggers built into his custom Drum Workshop kit, and we just plugged out of the trigger module into my Radial DI boxes. We needed to make sure we had signal; one great thing about recording with PreSonus® Capture™ is that the send is pre-fader, so the fader position on the StudioLive AI console is irrelevant; the recording software uses the input gain level you set on the head amp actuators (trim knobs). It’s a really nifty design because it allows the house mixer to change the fader levels for the live house mix without affecting the recording.

Along the same lines, once we had the guitar amp levels where we wanted them with the Radial JDX boxes, we also took a “clean” feed, plugging the guitars directly into my Radial ProDI boxes before the amplifier, in case Neil and Mark wanted to “re-amp” the guitars during mixdown.

A quick aside: I’ll bring it up again later but I want to stress that Gary and director Jonathan Demme wanted authenticity, and they got it. Every note you hear is what was played by the musicians; there are no overdubs of instruments in this movie. There were a few extra band takes for vocals because of bleed but all of what you experience in the movie is Ricki and the Flash performing as you watch.

It was a treat to watch these professionals at work. Gary took five people who had never played together in this configuration and turned them into a band. Each song got a workout. Gary kept the band focused; they worked on one song at a time until they felt they had it down. From where I sat, it really paid off; by the end of rehearsals, I felt like I was mixing a band, not a loose knit group of musicians jamming, but a real, tight band.

StudioLive AI and StudioLive RM AVB Stagebox Setup Videos

Ricki and the Flash Rocks with PreSonus, Part 4

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[Continued from part 3…]

When we started rehearsals for Ricki and the Flash, we discovered that some things had to be changed. Part of what we faced was the reality of working with musicians who were used to the big stage in a club environment.

A brief review of our cast:

Drums and backing vocals: Joe Vitale. Joe has drummed for, among others, Joe Walsh (he co-wrote “Rocky Mountain Way” with Joe); Stills-Young Band; The Eagles; Crosby, Stills and Nash; and the re-formed Buffalo Springfield. Joe has written a book about his life as a musician called Backstage Pass.

Bass: Rick Rosas, aka Rick The Bass Player. Rick played most recently with Neil Young in Crazy Horse. He was also part of the Buffalo Springfield reunion. Rick passed away a few weeks after finishing the band scenes, and we miss him very much.

Keys: Bernie Worrell. Bernie was a member of Parliament/Funkadelic and joined Talking Heads for a number of albums. He’s in Jonathan Demme’s concert classic film Stop Making Sense and has played on countless sessions with artists as diverse as Keith Richards, Jack Bruce, Dee Lite, and Bootsy’s Rubber Band.

Lead guitar and backing vocals: Rick Springfield. Rick has been on the big stage since the late 1960s, first with Zoot, and then as a solo artist. For a time, Rick starred in the soap opera General Hospital, and he has many hit records, including “Speak to the Sky,” “Jessie’s Girl,” and “I’ve Done Everything for You.”

Rhythm guitar and lead vocals: Meryl Streep. One of the most well regarded actresses in the world, Meryl learned to play guitar for this movie. Meryl had never played in a band before but she has sung in many films, including Mama Mia and the recent Into the Woods, so she adapted quickly to the role of Ricki.

I have been “pushing faders” as a front-of-house (and sometimes monitor) engineer since 1979. I’ve mixed in wretched bars with “thrift-store” PA systems, and I’ve mixed bands at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. My background is live sound; working on a movie required some adjustment in my approach to mixing.

Music coordinator Mark Wolfson and Neil Citron, the music wrangler, have worked together for many years. Among other projects, they worked on the film That Thing You Do (also with Ricki director Jonathan Demme and producer Gary Goetzman). On this film, I worked with Mark and Neil to create an authentic club band feel.

One thing that we encountered from the get-go was a reluctance to show microphones on camera. This created some interesting challenges, as we had to find a way to capture the sound without showing any microphones beyond the vocal mics. Some solutions were simple: We could take a DI off of the bass, and we used triggers on the drums and then used drum samples that we sampled from Joe’s Drum Workshop kit. We hid the hi-hat and overhead mics as best we could.

Thanks to Audio-Technica, we had excellent condensers: an ATM 450 on the hi-hat and an ATM 4050 on the overheads. We were able to hide the ATM 650 dynamic on the Leslie high side and the ATM 250 dynamic on the Leslie low side.

The guitar amps presented a problem, though. We needed to capture an authentic sound without showing mics. Trying to mic the back of the amps proved unwieldy at best. It also didn’t sound so great.

Neil and I put our heads together and decided to call our friend Peter Janis at Radial Engineering. Peter sent us two JDX active speaker-simulator direct boxes. We were able to plug out of Meryl’s Fender 65 Deluxe reissue and Rick’s Fender Bassman 410. The Bassman reissue proved tricky because the speaker output has an RCA connector; we had to make two ¼”-to-RCA custom connectors. At the time, the JDX required an external supply, as well; now it’s available with the option to run on 48V phantom power.

We also used two of the new Audio-Technica AT 4080 active ribbon mics for room/ambience miking. These mics sound glorious, and they really helped Neil and Mark re-create the room sound when they did the mixing later.

With the system tuned, we were ready to watch five musician/actors become a band.

 

The StudioLive 32.4.2 AI for Studio Recording at PreSonus Headquarters

Eric Welch, House Engineer at PreSonus HQ, discusses some of the projects we’ve recorded here at home. He discusses his use of the Studiolive 32.4.2 AI, QMix, Studio One, and myriad other PreSonus technologies.

For more on the StudioLive 32.4.2AI, click here: http://www.presonus.com/products/StudioLive-AI-Series

For more on Studio One, click here: http://studioone.presonus.com/

Ricki and the Flash Rocks with PreSonus, Part 3

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Photo Credit: Mark Wolfson

Continued from Part 2…

All of the inputs were routed into a StudioLive™ 32.4.2AI console. Besides doing the live mix, the other half of my job was to ensure that every note was “Captured” during both rehearsals and filming.

Here’s how we did it:

Neil Citron, Mark Wolfson, and I wired the stage and then set up two recording systems. The first was set up on my MacBook Pro, running Mac OS X 10.8.5 and connected to the console using FireWire. I was running Universal Control-AI (with Virtual StudioLive-AI control software) and recording with Capture 2.0.

We connected the DB25 outputs of the 32.4.2AI to a Tascam X48 recorder because we needed to track SMPTE time code. This way, we also had two copies of each recording; as anyone who has ever lost a file knows, you need to back up, back up, back up.

The great thing about recording with Capture™ is it is literally effortless. Once my FireWire connection was secure and I knew the computer and console were talking to each other, all I had to do was open Capture and make one mouse click, and we were rolling! Of course, it helps to have the drive path set and the files named. I find that, given the option, it helps to set this up in advance, although the only really crucial setting is the file path.

We noticed that, according to the X48’s meters, the DB25 analog output was 6 dB lower than the digital signal coming into Capture. I’m not sure why the levels were different but comparing the WAV files in Studio One confirmed the difference.

Jeff Pullman, C.A.S, was the Production Sound mixer for the film and was a pleasure to work with. He also was very helpful in getting some sound isolation products so we could have a cleaner recording.

We did some test tracks with Neil playing so we could make sure the rig was running; then we started rehearsals.

Ricki and the Flash Rocks with PreSonus, Part 2

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The five musicians that make up the band Ricki and the Flash are all top shelf players. Their credits are the stuff of legends; you hear them on the radio every day. Of the five, only bass player Rick Rosas and drummer Joe Vitale had played together before, as the rhythm section of the reunion tour for the legendary Buffalo Springfield (no relation to Rick Springfield).

Bernie Worrell is a visionary funk keyboardist and a member of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. His credits include Parliament/Funkadelic and Talking Heads. Rick Springfield is a fantastic guitarist who also played Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital.

Meryl Streep, of course, is one of the most renowned actresses in the world.

To get them to be Ricki and the Flash, we set up in the World Famous Rodeo Bar in the Murray Hill district of Manhattan. The Rodeo Bar is a long, narrow room with a brick wall behind the band. We were in a small space, and they were very LOUD.

We set up the band in an authentic club configuration and laid out the monitors for them. We used three StudioLive™ 312AI cabinets for the vocalists and keyboard position and a StudioLive 315AI for the drum wedge.

When we first set up the wedges, we decided to just use them in the standard DSP configuration. The speakers use Dave Gunness’ TQ™ (Temporal Equalization) settings to correct for the acoustical issues that arise in a coaxial design. In addition, each box has DSP settings designed to assist the user in different acoustic situations. There are four settings on the back of the speaker, accessed by a small button. The settings are: Normal (full range for front-of-house), LBR Source (for low-bit-rate digital audio, such as MP3 playback), Floor Monitor (for stage wedge), and a custom User preset.

Neil Citron is a long-time studio engineer, guitarist, and all around great guy. He ran the Mothership for Steve Vai for 15 years and is a member of the Sapphire Group, a bunch of audiophiles in Los Angeles. Neil has incredible ears and was brought in to teach Meryl guitar, be the music director, and record the performances.

Neil and I set up the wedges, supervised by Mark Wolfson, and we ran some program material through them. We really liked the sound of the default Normal setting, so we left it. As soon as the band showed up, we quickly realized that the stage mix just wasn’t “there.” A quick button-push, and the boxes were in Stage Monitor mode; they sat perfectly in the mix, with no additional EQ required.

We used one StudioLive 312AI plus one StudioLive 18sAI subwoofer per side of the “house” PA. We put the top boxes on using the SP1BK subwoofer pole; this also allowed us to steer the top box to reduce reflections off of the brick walls.

Thanks to Brad Graham, Rapco generously provided us with microphone cable and snakes to wire the stage. We wired the guitars using Radial JDX DIs to get the sound of the amplifier, not the guitar. We used Radial JDIs on the bass and keys. Thanks to Roxanne Ricks of Audio-Technica, we had A-T mics on the Leslie and hi-hat. We also used the fantastic A-T ribbons for ambient room miking. We had triggers on the drum kit; more about that later.

Here were the basic challenges:

  • Make sure the musicians can hear each other and the singers can hear their voices.
  • Make sure the levels into the recordings were right.
  • Get a good balanced mix for the audience.
  • Make it feel like a real show, which it was.

I’ll get into the recording aspect in the next part.

I need to give major props to Gary Goetzman, the producer, who took five musicians who had not played together before (with the exception of the rhythm section) and turned them into a real band in two weeks. Everyone was at the top of their game, and the professionalism of the band and producer really shone through.