PreSonus Blog

Check out this killer video from mecprosound over on YouTube! He just uploaded this tutorial on setting up the Akai MPC Renaissance controller to control transport in Studio One like a boss.

[This just in from Bill Edstrom, Pro Audio Author and all-around gem of a man.]

Hey PreSonus!

I’ve done projects in just about every DAW on the market. To use most of these systems you need to be in a very technical frame of mind. About three years ago, I was looking for something simpler—something to get creative songwriting ideas out. That’s when I discovered Studio One. The workflow made sense to me and it helped me write.

As I got more interested in Studio One, I discovered anther great thing—a community of users that were amazingly helpful and enthusiastic. I started contributing to the PreSonus Forum with some free YouTube videos which lead to my work with Groove 3. I went on to create four volumes (24 hours worth!) of video training for Studio One.

When I started talking to Bill Gibson at Hal Leonard about some book concepts, I really wanted to do a Studio One book. I think they see the potential for this DAW because they have already published Larry the O’s book Power Tools for Studio One with a second volume on the way.

My book is designed as concise introduction to the core features of Studio One. I wrote it for the person that already has some experience with another DAW. The book content is really focused on getting up to speed with the software as quickly as possible. There are also 12 new videos included with the book covering some of the key concepts that would be tricky to explain in writing.

Why Studio One? Well, besides being great software, PreSonus has been amazing to work with. I have had the chance to meet Matthias and the PreSonus Software team at PreSonuSphere and NAMM and they have been very welcoming. The rest of the PreSonus team including Rick, Jonathan, Brad, and Jim have been friendly and great hosts in Baton Rouge. I also really enjoyed presenting to a group of Studio One enthusiasts as part of PreSonuSphere 2012 last year.

At first, I was recording with Studio One as a canvas for creativity. But I realized that I could produce music end to end without really needing to use other tools. Back in March 2010 I put together my first rather crude Studio One video called “Fun With PreSonus Studio One.” That video has 42,000+ views. I think the title sums up my experience with Studio One. It’s fun to use!

Regards,
Bill Edstrom

You can (and should) get Bill’s book from the following retailers:

Powell’s
Barnes and Noble
Amazon

From CowProd over on YouTube. Rage Against the Machine playing Zed’s Records in 1992 before they made it huge…

[This just in from Steve E., winner of the 2012 Dream Rig for your Dream Gig Sweepstakes!]

Looks like home to me.

I wanted to send you a picture of me and the gear and I wanted to thank all of the companies involved in hooking me up with all of this awesome equipment!

This is truly a “Dream Rig” and I have only began to scratch the surface of what the combination of the ADL 700 preamp, Blue Microphones Kiwi mic, and KRK monitors have to offer.

So far, I have tracked my dad and I on mandolin and acoustic guitar respectively just using the Kiwi into the ADL 700 with excellent results. Hopefully soon, I will have an heirloom double album of my dad and I playing traditional old time music on one disc and a re-mastered version of my dad and grandfather paying the same exact tunes back in 1967 from a reel to reel tape. This equipment couldn’t have come at a better time! I I also have recorded my daughter Isabella singing into the same combo and I am totally blown away with the details you can bring out with the onboard compressor and EQ settings. By the way, all of the awesome artwork behind me on the walls is hers, too.

The possibilities are endless! When I combine the ADL 700 with the Kiwi and its 9 polar patterns it is just mind boggling! In addition to this, the ability to switch the EQ in before the compressor is a really awesome feature, along with being able to bypass either one or both at the flick of a switch. This truly is a match made in heaven…

I have also ran the new Monoprice guitar into the ADL 700 instrument input and achieved an excellent funky single-coil blues sound along with pumping the gain up a bit and getting some smooth crunch and creamy sustain. I can’t wait to track some bass through it!

My next major project is to record a full-length album with my friend Keith for our band Letchwurth (this is the dream band I selected when I entered the contest.) This equipment will take our recordings to an entirely new level—just as long as I can bring my recording and mixing skills up to the same level, ha! We cannot wait to start tracking with the new equipment. This setup blows away everything we had before! Also with the new Pro SoundCloud account we will be able to post everything up for everyone to hear. Look out for Letchwurth “Ringworm Eraser” in the future…

Before I won the contest, I had a few cheaper dynamic mics and one condenser along with the Focusrite liquid Saffire 56 preamp/firewire interface you see on the bottom of the ADL. In addition to this, I only had headphones to mix and monitor with, so with the KRK VXT4’s and 12S sub have been able to mix and monitor the right way. This speaker combo is absolutely perfect for my small home-office and I am totally amazed at the detailed sound-field that these speakers deliver. I am now able to hear details that I never even knew were there, even with headphones! Of course, I couldn’t have hooked it all up without all of the cables and accessories from Monoprice. My setup is now complete! What else could I need?

Thanks again to everyone involved with putting this equipment into my lap and allowing me to step beyond the next level with my recording capabilities!

I am truly thankful and view it as a sign to capture high quality recordings with my friends and family for many years to come.

[This just in from Sheldon Currington, titanium luthier extraordinaire. Cave and I got to interview these guys at NAMM 2013 and we just got this kind follow-up from them. We’re thankful to to have these guys on our buddy list.]

Hi PreSonus!
This is just a quick email to reconnect after our NAMM 2013 show experience.
We have just landed back here in New Zealand after what can only be described as a whirlwind tour of the USA and so this is the first chance I have had to make contact with you regarding our time talking at NAMM 2013.

They look like good seeds to me.

I want to thank you for taking some time to show us around while we visited Baton Rouge and PreSonus after NAMM. We had a truly amazing time at NAMM for a first year, and learned an awful lot about what we can do for the years to come. And it was a great thing that you did for us to show us around the PreSonus facility on our way across the country. We had a total blast and were really well treated by everyone that we visited, it makes these trips so much more worth it when you can shake hands with the people that you connect with on a regular basis. I am sure my father would agree! Thank you so much for sharing your time with us! Also, please thank the others that spent time with us playing at PreSonus HQ. The amp sounded awesome and I think he is onto a great thing there, with the personalized features he combines into such great sounding units! Very cool!
Please also pass on my thanks to both Cave and Ryan for coming down to see us at the booth and shooting the interview. Those guys were great, funny and easy to get along with… which made my nervous interview just a little easier! Please let them know I am very grateful to them both!
Now that I’m back in New Zealand I will be running Bad Seed full steam ahead to build new and innovative custom guitars, I cant wait to get into it! We had such an amazing response to the guitars that we bought over to NAMM and it’s inspired me to put the creative hat back on and set off on some new projects.
Keep in touch and let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas, or if there is ever anything that I can do for you.
Best Regards

Sheldon Currington
Bad Seed Limited
www.badseed.co.nz

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

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

[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:

[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, Compressor, Pro EQ, OpenAIR 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!