Category Archives: User Stories
#TeamPreSonus Spotlight: Spud Too Tight of The Producer’s Corner!
[We decided it best to give some recognition to our more vocal advocates—and what better way than via a blog series?]
Who are you, where are you, and what do you do?
My name is Spud Too Tight based out of Minneapolis, MN, I’m a producer/keyboardist and host of The Producer’s Corner with Spud Too Tight—A celebrity-driven music production & tech talk show since 2009. It’s the new hot spot where Billboard chart-topping, award-winning, Grammy-award winning & platinum-selling icons sit down and discuss their craft. I’ve interviewed some of the biggest names in the business such as George Duke, Jeff Lorber, Larry Graham, Brian Culbertson, Gerald Albright, Fourplay, Marion Meadows, Gloria Loring, Mindi Abair, Joyce Cooling, DJ BattleCat, The Justice League, Cool & Dre, and a long list of others.
I am also the Inventor of V.S.C. (Virtual Studio Configuration) A new studio wiring configuration that allows musicians to stream audio directly from any DAW (PC or MAC) or analog setup over the Web in stereo without any feedback or audio looping issues. I use WebRTC chat services that provide real-time communication. As musicians, we can run into obstacles preventing us from making rehearsal or recording sessions that may require us to fly out of town. The traditional days of playing music over the Internet would consist of either using your internal microphone on your laptop or desktop, or using a USB microphone. It’s an instant turn-off to collaborate online effectively without good audio clarity. As musicians, we need to be able to hear what’s going on in the song. If we are going to collaborate online, we need to be able to hear the low end of the bass, some nice punch from the midrange and brightness from the high end of the mix. When your studio is configured with V.S.C., you will be able to stream and monitor music online directly through your studio. I also use various screen sharing and remote desktop control programs to give me more of an interactive experience working as a virtual musician.
How were you introduced to PreSonus?
I had the pleasure of chopping it up 1×1 with legendary music producer Teddy Riley. He introduced me to PreSonus and Studio One. Teddy Riley is my biggest influence as a keyboardist, producer and tech expert, so I was all ears when he started sharing with me what PreSonus had to offer! Our conversation got really HEAVY on production and engineering—and at that time, I was using another DAW for all of my work but I wasn’t truly happy or inspired to create. After my conversations with Teddy, I was eager to make a big change including switching from Mac to PC as well, which was a hard sell. So I purchased Studio One Pro and Teddy advised me for starters to first create some generic test tracks, tracking with my hardware and software MIDI instruments. He recommended to quantize them and listen to the timing of tracks on playback and compare it with my other DAW. The difference was night and day and worlds apart. I was immediately sold!
What PreSonus software/hardware do you use and for what purpose?
I use Studio One Professional for all of my tracking, recording, editing, and sound design projects. It is my main platform for all of my musical ideas. Studio One has changed the way I create as a composer. I feel more inspired as a musician than ever before. I have over 100+ plug-ins so the drag-and-drop functionality and the search bar in the browser for my VST’s and samples really helps me narrow the search down. The automatic time stretching feature and Melodyne integrated right in the DAW: priceless! I also use the PreSonus FaderPort to assist with my editing and recording tasks. I love having the layout and the feel of the FaderPort, excellent build quality, quick access to my Mix, Edit, and Browser windows, and adding a motorized fader was the icing on the cake! I also converted A.Rapheal, (film and music producer as well as my beta tester for V.S.C.) from another DAW over to Studio One and he hasn’t looked back since.
What’s so great about PreSonus, anyhow?
I see nothing but passion behind the extraordinary PreSonus products. From interfaces, mic preamps and headphone distribution amplifiers, and now the new Eris & Sceptre studio monitors, finally we have the perfect tools for musicians and recording engineers created and built by some of the most prolific tech experts, musicians, and recording engineers. It’s always exciting to see new product releases and it’s so easy to recommend PreSonus to other musicians… a true one-stop shop. I look forward to their new lines in the future!
Where can our readers learn more about you online?
https://twitter.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/spudtooti
#TeamPreSonus Spotlight: Brian Busch!
[We decided it best to give some recognition to our more vocal advocates—and what better way than via a blog series?]
Who are you, where are you, and what do you do?
I’m Brian Busch—Owner and Lead Engineer for Diamond Entertainment.
How were you introduced to PreSonus?
I started reading reviews and keeping an eye on PreSonus after the release of the StudioLive 16.4.2. It was pointed out to me by Roger Blevins, the lead singer for Mingo Fishtrap. He has long been a fan of PreSonus preamps, which he uses in his studio. With his recommendation and after some research of my own, once the StudioLive 24.4.2 was released I snapped one up and have been using it ever since.
I own a StudioLive 24.4.2 mixing console attached to a Mac Mini that has Capture and Studio One. We record our shows. Mingo Fishtrap is about to go on tour, and we will be using Capture to record the tour for a live album later to be produced later in the year. I also use an iPad to remotely mix most of my shows with StudioLive Remote. Even when I am not mixing with the iPad, it is an awesome tool for EQing monitors. The Smaart Measurement Technology is great for finding crazy frequencies that show up in the middle of a show.
In a word – flexibility. In my business, being able to adapt to whatever situation is thrown at you is paramount. I constantly have to set my mixer up on the stage, or side stage, for instance, because the show we are playing is for a wedding, I can remotely mix without ruining any the pictures of the bride’s special day.
When on tour, we will mix the show through the StudioLive 24.4.2 and just send a left/right to the front of house. This helps us out because we never know what situation we are showing up to. It could be a club with an old 16-channel board (we need 22, minimum) or a festival with some unfamiliar digital console. However, using this board and my iPad, I can stand right out in the sweet spot of the audience and mix the show from there. Festival stages love this because we only tie up two channels on their snake.
I also like the solid punchy sound of the preamps. No other mixer I use delivers more. This is true especially for drums. I can make just about any drum kit sound like a million bucks with those preamps.
Where can our readers learn more about you online?
Right here:
https://www.facebook.com/
#TeamPreSonus Spotlight: Steve Savanyu! Hedgehogs, Presidents, and Popes… Oh, my.
[We decided it best to give some recognition to our more vocal advocates—and what better way than via a blog series.]
Who are you, where are you, and what do you do?
Steve Savanyu. Hudson Ohio, I am the educational services director at Audio-Technica and teach at Kent State University. I teach microphone and wireless workshops at universities around the country and have taught at all of the PreSounSphere events… In my spare time I operate Buford T. Hedgehog Productions, a local production company that does live sound, studio recording , live remote recording, video production and lights just for giggles. I also participate in really big events such as Presidential Debates, Papal visits, and Inaugurations….
How were you introduced to PreSonus?
Through a friendship with Rick Naqvi, at a church sound seminar where I was teaching a microphone class. I assisted with a live recording at the event where we used 3 FirePods aggregated together on my Mac laptop. It was a fun experience and we learned a lot. Ask Rick about hot patching into a non-transformer isolated 48-channel stage snake splitter. It made a big noise on a really expensive NEXO line array…. Oops.
What PreSonus software/hardware do you use and for what purpose?
Where shall I begin? I currently own 5 StudioLive 16.4.2’s, one StudioLive 24.4.2, and 1 StudioLive 16.0.2 which I use primarily for live gigs. I also have been known to carry the 16.0.2 out as the front end for remote tracking sessions using Capture. (I have recorded the orchestral score for two Kent State Student films this way). My original location rig is a FireStudio with 2 Digimax Pres to give me 24 inputs. (I multitracked a basketball game with it for an Audio Technica project. We were showing how different mics and positions affected game sound for broadcast.) In the studio I have a Central Station with remote for speaker management, and a FaderPort which I use as a controller for the audio part of my video edit rig. I picked up an AudioBox 44VSL for location video work (tied into a MacBook Pro laptop). I run a legacy Pro Tools rig in the studio with a DIGI-003 interface (back when ProTools required Digi hardware) with DigiMax D8 mic pre. The band I work with uses two of the 16.4.2s and performs about four nights a week on average (in different locations). The ease of operation on the StudioLive console and the ability to save scenes makes it a snap for the band to use.
On the software side, I use Capture to record almost every live event we do. The low overhead of capture allows me to use some pretty basic computers to record up to 32 tracks via two linked StudioLive 16.4.2s. In the studio, I have been using Studio One Professional 2.5 as my main edit software. I like it, as it’s intuitive and has low computer processing overhead so it runs great on a laptop. As an experiment, I mixed a seven-song EP of a band I work with on a flight from LA to New York! I was burning out the CD as the flight attendant was saying power down your electronic devices for landing. Of course my Audio-Technica ATH-M50 headphones made accurate monitoring possible in the plane’s less-than-fancy mixdown environment.
I have dabbled with iPad control on my larger rig, but not implemented it completely due to the expense of buying seven iPads, computers and routers. I am looking forward to the StudioLive 32.4.2AI with its built-in networking. I can beta test… 🙂
What’s so great about PreSonus, anyhow?
First and foremost is the people! I have called Justin and Rick on weekends and evenings with questions and they always get back to me promptly. I have participated in both PreSonuSphere events and like the camaraderie of the entire PreSonus Family.
Second, is the products just work and sound good. They are intuitive to learn making it easy for me to train a band’s engineer on using a digital board. We like the fact the processing is built-in to the StudioLive consoles. The presets sound great, and make it easy to get a mix up even if you have never done sound for the band before. True story: Early on we did a gig for a band who was unfamiliar with the power of a digital console. It was an outdoor event so I had the 16.4.2 out front with the snake and a power cable for FOH stuff. Their diva lead singer, who knew everything about sound and told me so, was being a pain in the butt. He walked out to FOH, looked at the “smallish” console and said “dude where is your effects/EQ rack?” I hesitated for a moment and looked him in the eye and said: “Dang, I knew we forgot something…” The look on his face was priceless…
And third of course, is the jambalaya…
Where can our readers learn more about you online?
First and foremost, check out the Audio-Technica.com website. A-T makes great studio and live mics that pair up well with PreSonus hardware. Our new AT5040 with its revolutionary capsule design and “pure, simple signal path” would pair up well with the ADL 700 Channel Strip (hint hint, I have the mic…) Our Artist Series and Artist Elite live sound mics are second to none.
As for me, check out my website www.bufordthedgehog.com and visit me on Facebook. I try to post a FOH picture of every gig I do either on my page or the PreSonus user group page. I am on LinkedIn but don’t do the Twitter thing.
You can see some of my video work on the A-T YouTube channel as well as other audio companies’ YouTube channels. I have several published articles about doing audio for video and I am the audio expert on the FilmSkills online training series produced by Jason Tomuric.
I attend all of the major trade shows: NAMM, INFOCOMM, NAB, etc. and do microphone and sound workshops at universities, church conferences (with my good friend Doug Gould) and trade shows. You can’t miss my distinctive look…. just ask for the blonde guy!
Hermes Music Knocks it out of the Park at Product Training
[This just in from Edgar at Hermes Music, our distributor in Mexico. Their crew just went through a product training session with Mark Williams, and it was a smashing success! Thanks to everyone at Hermes who took part in this session—support for customers in Mexico is getting better by the day!]
Hello PreSonus team! We recently had a visit from Mark Williams, (PreSonus Director of International Sales and
Business Development) who gave us a product overview and discussed PreSonus products and their functions. Hermes Digital planned two different training sessions; one with the stores sales personnel and the other with the Hermes Music Pro Audio team, service department, sales department and digital audio personnel. People were excited about the products and had many questions about software and hardware.
Mark showed and explained every single PreSonus product in detail, showcasing the features and qualities that make PreSonus products unique in their class. Hermes Digital are constantly working for PreSonus, spreading information about the products and working on clinics and training in order to get PreSonus products into the users’ hands—with all important information in Spanish! Clinics and special events like these are critical to our market.
At the end of the training, the Hermes Digital team took some time to tour Mark around our stores. Some of our strongest points of sales are through the main musical stores located in the capital of Mexico. The historic center of Mexico City, AKA the “Centro” or “Centro Histórico,” expands in all directions for a number of blocks. The Zocalo is the largest plaza in Latin America and the second largest in the world! It can hold up to nearly 100,000 people. Bolivar street, placed in the historic center of Mexico City, is the most important location for selling instruments and audio equipment in Mexico City.
Mark was amazed by the branding, marketing and business strategies Hermes Digital has put into action in such a short time. He also saw lots of people in the streets and inside stores buying and constantly asking for digital audio products. It’s been an honor to have Mark visit us in Mexico!
–Edgar García Franco
Hermes Music
Rehearse Silently
Gene Baker over at Music Insider Magazine recently published this great two-part blog series on using the StudioLive mixers for silent rehearsals. The benefits of this are twofold: first is the critical importance of hearing protection; he looks at the steps you and your StudioLive can take to preserve what’s left of your precious hearing. Second benefit of silent rehearsals: no angry neighbors!
A highlight:
“PreSonus have basically blown everyone right out of the park. Their mixer has all your in-ear mixing problems already handled, not to mention, it works seamlessly with multitrack recording and live performances. You really should check into one, plus all the software and apps are free.”
Click through below to read the posts in their entirety.
- Part one: The quest for hearing preservation
- Part two: In-ear monitoring considerations and tips
#TeamPreSonus Spotlight: Johhny ‘TheMuzic’ Geib!
Who are you, where are you, and what do you do?
My name is Johnny Geib and I live in Wheeling IL, 24 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. I work 3rd shift for a company contracted by the IL Tollway to do maintenance and systems support of their Toll Collections systems. 45+ hours a week and never a dull moment. Part time, I run a home-based recording facility for both clients and my own music, and have been doing so for more than 25 years. I started out with a 4-track Tascam, then a Fostex Open Reel 8 track, graduated to a VS2480 in 1998 and Akai DPS24 a year later.
I was a Cubase\Nuendo user from 2003 till I discovered Studio One 1.0 when I bought a Firestudio Mobile. I used the FS Mobile with Cubase and a FaderPort till I upgraded to Cubase 5. The update was a disaster and put me out of business for a month. That’s when I remembered the free copy of Studio One Artist that came with my FS Mobile. Since I had to get something done while I waited for tech support to get back to me, I installed Studio One Artist and was totally blown away. I was recording and mixing within an hour and saved two clients that were ready to walk because of the delay. From that point, I never looked back and purchased Studio One Professional that following Friday. I have been a PreSonus fan boy since. And now, with PreSonus making studio monitors, my studio is about 95% PreSonus!
Well, not sure you’ll have room for this list in the blog but here goes: Studio One 2.5.2, Capture, Monitor Station, FaderPort, Audiobox 22VSL, AudioBox 1818VSL, Studio Channel, FireStudio Tube, FireStudio Mobile, HP-60 headphone amp, Eris E5 monitors, two M7 mics, two SD7 mics, three HD7 headphones, DIGITube and a StudioLive 16.4.2!
#TeamPreSonus Spotlight: Eric Peterson of Rust Magazine!
[We decided it best to give some recognition to our more vocal advocates—and what better way than via a blog series?]
Who are you, where are you, and what do you do?
Hello, I am Eric Petersen, head writer and publisher of RUST Magazine which focuses on writing thorough reviews and doing interviews of emerging artists, mostly in the indie rock space. I’m also DJ Slack, and at my events I play a mix of the new music that comes to me at RUST plus vintage vinyl from thrift stores and garage sales. A typical night with me on the decks mixes punk rock, scratchy old lounge LP’s and fresh new music.
Baton Rouge: Open your hearts and veins for a great cause tomorrow, get a PreSonuSphere T-Shirt!
Baton Rouge residents: PreSonus is partnering with The Blood Center for a blood drive on Tuesday, May 21, from 9 a.m. to 1:20 p.m. There is currently a national shortage of blood, and sadly, deposits made to a blood bank do not accrue interest—so the Red Cross needs all the help they can get! Just a pint of blood can save up to three lives!
Please Click HERE to ensure you are eligible to donate. It is important to eat a good breakfast before donating blood and be sure to bring your photo ID!
The blood mobile will be located behind the Bon Carre buildling, near the PreSonus Audio Electronics entrance.
7257 Florida Blvd.
Baton Rouge, LA 70806
If you are interested, email jobs@presonus.com to confirm a time slot, and here’s some handy tips from the Red Cross for a successful donation.
Generous souls not suffering from trypanophobia will walk away with a bandage on their arm, a song in their heart, and a killer PreSonuSphere T-shirt!
Nick Cooper on why he switched to Studio One
The hits just keep coming! Here’s American Idol’s Nick Cooper on why he switched to Studio One.
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.]
Hey 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:
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: