PreSonus Blog

I know what you're thinking, but the fact is that this Grammy was awarded a Citron.

Hello to all fellow Artists and Producer/Engineers:

My name is Neil Citron and I’m most known for working with Steve Vai for about 14 years. I’m also an Independent Producer and Engineer for my own company, Citron Musical Services. I’ve worked on every DVD that Steve Vai has done, which all either went Gold or Platinum. Other projects have included No Substitutions by Larry Carlton and Steve Lukather, I Mixed Michael Jackson’s Striped Mixes for Universal, and recorded John Waite’s last CD Rough and Tumble, just to name a few.

I’m a guitar player who became an engineer and then became a producer. I’ve worked in film and TV as well, but my first love is making CDs. I taught the actors in Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do to play for the film and did some of the guitar in the film as well. These are just some of the things I’ve been happy to be a part of and I’m always looking for the next exciting thing around every corner.

I recently got a copy of Studio One 2, and I wanted to see what it could do. I was pleased with it and would like to share my thoughts. I usually record a whole song to audition new software so I can get a good idea of its strengths and weaknesses. In this case I started with my friend, and great drummer, Frankie Banali (Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., and many others) and went into the Doghouse Studio in

Woodland Hills. We mic’d up the set and had Frankie record to a click. I didn’t really have a song written, so I asked Frankie to wing it; a fill into something and a fill out etc. You can always work with more than less, but Frankie has such great song sense, I never did have to edit anything.

Next, I brought the tracks home and started trying out the MIDI and soft synths and was very pleased with the sounds. I found a Studio Piano I liked and started there. Next I used Omnisphere because I wanted to see how third party things worked. Painless is the word that comes to mind. MIDI in, MIDI out, and all is well. I then send some MIDI to my Giga Studio, (Yes I’m one of those guys who still uses Giga!) and again: painless!

Now, on to some guitar, my main instrument. I started with a clean sound, just mapping out the song as I go and trying to get things in perspective. Again easy as pie, and sounding good so far. Very happy at this point which brings me to this: the thing about DAWs is that there are a lot of them out there, and almost any of them you can record a track or two and really like the results. The difference between the men and the boys is when you start stacking things up and your sound stays clear and you hear all the nuances of each instrument.

This is where the software for me lives or dies. I’m sure a lot of you have tried stacking a Hammond and a guitar and some strings and a few horns and then held your ears from all the fighting that was going on.Then you have to start making choices of who stays and who goes. I hate that!!!! Well, I was very happy to not have that happen here. Hammond, guitar, strings, french horn and trombone all playing well together. Remember, these are synths, not 10 people sitting in a room playing, so making these work together is a hard thing to do.

I asked a country/bluegrass bass player (Joan Fraley) to come over and play bass on my song because I wanted to add a different feel in the bottom end to go with Frankie. Also she has a crazy bass collection and knew she’d bring something fun. I tried her Uke-bass first, but went with the Fender Jazz-P bass as it worked with Frankie’s drum sound the best. Next, I played some leads, bluesy in nature to fill in the blanks and finally added a few Ahh’s in the background for texture and I was done. I wanted to put enough stuff in so my mixing would tell me more about the software.

I mix from the bottom up. Drums, bass, guitar, keys, lead instruments or vocals, backgrounds and then solos. I was taught that way and it still works for me, even though I know many do it differently with great results.

After this, I started adding reverbs and delays. I use some hardware as well as plug-ins, so I started by comparing a box ‘verb and a plugin ‘verb. On the snare I put a Lexicon PCM 70 and then went to the PreSonus plug-in to compare and see what’s what. I found a nice plate to compare, and I was pleasantly surprised. Reverbs are getting better, but in the early days of plug-ins they were terrible, so I still go there first.

Then, on to compression. I used the PreSonus compressor with very good results and it was so easy to add. Drag the plug-in you want onto the track and go. That’s just brilliant. My workflow was very fast and easy. I work at a rapid pace as a rule, but I could slow down here because the software kept up. I finished the mix and went into the project section and burned a CD from there.

Usually I have to open another software to continue, so this was a very nice option. I played the CD on my home system and heard NO DIFFERENCE! Usually there’s something you want to change because it sounds a little different, i.e. vocal level, snare a little low, etc. Nothing! I was happy, needless to say. I then mastered it and I was done. All in record time, I might add, and in our business time is money.

All in all I can say that Studio One 2 works well without crashing and has no hang ups. I even tried keeping the buffer low while mixing and had no troubles—and I used a lot of plugins and hardware at the same time! I only had one issue which was answered quickly from support, and that was the Pipeline Plugin for hardware effects to stop latency. It worked well, and I never looked back.

Happy recording to all and I hope your experience with PreSonus Studio One is as good as mine!

All the best,

Neil Citron

Citron Musical Services

neilcitron.com
neilcitron88@gmail.com

Yes, I know it’s been a long time since my last update, but in my defence we were broadcasting live from NAMM in California so you got to see lots of me instead of just reading my thoughts during that. And since then I’ve been sort of busy moving to Ireland to help found the new PreSonus Europe Limited, so I didn’t even have Internet for a while there 🙁

But now I’m back online, in a new office, and life is grand, as they say here in Ireland. So on to this week’s Freebie Friday!

I know I mentioned Plugin Alliance before, but I am going to mention them again, because they have some great free plugins: Elysia Filter, SPL Free Ranger, Bx Cleansweep and Bx Solo. These are highly simplified versions of some of the most outstanding plugins available at any price, but even though they are simple, they sound great. so everyone should have them. And they have 64-bit versions now too, which as far as I concerned is a 100% necessity these days. I strongly recommend that you grab them from the PA website now. Would love to hear what other people think about them…

Thanks to Music Connection Magazine for giving QMix a little time in the sun at NAMM!

Check out this killer song and music video done by Hitherside. Studio One and the StudioLive mixer are featured, almost like bandmates.

You may not have heard of Studio One Orange Edition until now. Why? Well, it’s exclusive. And it’s hidden inside an amp.

Wait, what? Sure, you can put an amp in software through modeling, but you can’t put software an amp. Right?

Wrong. True enough, Studio One Orange Edition can only be found in the Orange OPC from—duh—Legendary UK amp sages Orange. But what’s software like Studio One doing in a hardware amp combo?  Orange have released a bang-up, bad-ass little combo amp. Unlike the typical “combo” consisting of an amplifier section and speakers housed in a single enclosure, the OPC houses an amplifier section, drivers, and, oh, a WHOLE KICK-ASS 3.1 GHZ 64-BIT PC RECORDING WORKSTATION WITH USB THREE POINT OHH AND AYECH DEE EHMM EYE. All in a lightweight, 2×6.5″ combo that will blow minds, melt faces and yes, it has a PCI-e slot so you can add-on a fancy video card, and then it will run “Crysis 2.”

We’re flattered and honored that PreSonus Studio One was chosen to occupy a little bit of space on the included 500GB Seagate hard drive. Studio One Orange Edition is an upgrade from our more commonly-known Artist Edition, adding Amplitube support for all your tube-modeling needs (and beyond.) Of course, all those Amplitube-modeled amp tones can be routed to the main speakers on the OPC… you aren’t limited to using them in  Studio One Orange Edition, they are suitable for performance as well!

Check out this review from the kind folks over at Expert Reviews for more info.

NAMM was called the “Just Put an iPad in it Show” by a friend of mine. True enough, many audio companies have iPad-related stuff on the way. Fact is, we have iWhatever functionality NOW, and it’s running with tried-and-true StudioLive Mixers, not Johnny-come-lately weird FrankenMixers that require an iPad to process audio.

Sooooooooo, if you’d like to know how to get QMix and StudioLive Remote all working, look no further than to our forum ace, JoeBigDaddy, and the rad video he made.  Not that it’s hard. It’s just that it ain’t two cans and a string.

StudioLive Remote and QMix are revolutionary for their ease-of-use and the flexibility and mobility that they offer engineers and musicians. The best way to maintain that ease-of-use? Stay current. Our wireless family plays best together when everyone is up-to-date and well fed. This requires the occasional firmware or software update.

PreSonus forum regular BigJoeDaddy (jhinkens on YouTube) has gone to the trouble to produce a video illustrating the process for updating all your firmware and software, and getting your iWhatevers communicating clearly with your StudioLive system. He also offers some additional insights regarding permissions, so you can make sure no one pranks the bass player by sending nothing but his ex-girlfriend’s vocals into his monitor. Worth a watch, high props to BigJoeDaddy!

Our good friends over at Obedia recently completed ANOTHER in their tremendous Studio One series, this time focusing on EXCHANGE, Studio One’s robust new resource sharing functionality. EXCHANGE is free in the latest update, check it out below!

Cheggitout! All the QMix vids in one convenient post!

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

PreSonus Artist Dr. Scardo just wrapped the video for their new single, “END OF THE WORLD!” This track was recorded, mixed, and mastered  entirely in Studio One. We hope it’s not really The End of The World, despite Mayan prophecy, because we’d like to see and hear more Studio One productions. And also because apocalypses are a total bummer.

I think I got up this morning at something like 3.45 am. That’s 3.45 am. Otherwise known as “Holy ****, it’s what time in the morning?” Ah, the wonder of jet-lag…

Got to the booth reasonably early, but Jonathan and a few of the others still beat me to it, since I’d been spending some time working on stuff for Exchange. Yep, if you’ve already updated to Studio One 2.0.4 you already have this, and damn it is mighty fine. We originally wanted this in the 2.0 release but it’s a pretty complex ecosystem, so in the end we held it back until it was ready. Am very happy it’s finally here, because I’ve been dying to tell you guys all about it. I think this thing is going to be a monster, it means the software now has basically unlimited content available.

If you’ve looked in Exchange already you’ll see a couple of things I put together in my studio a while back and that I’ve been dying to release. Hopefully you guys will like them – if so, please do rate & review them on the Exchange web page, that’s going to become really important when there are thousands of things up there.

Not sure if I’ll manage to do a Freebie Friday this week, considering I will be on stage something like five times a day every day for the rest of this week. That’s rock & role… But if not, at least you guys will have your entire S1 browser full of free new soundsets and presets, and that should keep you going for a while. 🙂