PreSonus Blog

In one of the best PreSonus LIVE episodes ever, Justin Spence and Wesley Smith take user questions about the latest firmware update for the StudioLive AI Mixers, which added the cascading feature.

Cascade any StudioLive AI Mixer to any other StudioLive AI Mixer and boost your mixing power!

Get the firmware update by logging into your account at my.presonus.com.

For more on the StudioLive AI Mixers, click here.

We’re proud to be sponsoring the Cold Waves Music Festival in Chicago September 26 and 27! Come on out and get your ears cleaned by some of the true legends of industrial.

We’re donating some great gear to a silent auction, and will be recording the show on a StudioLive RM32AI. Shortly after the show, some tracks will be made available on Nimbit, with proceeds going to Hope for the Day, a non-profit movement committed to utilizing music and the arts as a defense mechanism to suicide. Great bands for a great cause—what more could you ask for?

Here’s a list of the PreSonus gear that’s up for auction:

• 2 AudioBox Studios
• 2 pairs of Eris 4.5 Monitors
• 1 pair of Sceptre S6
• 3 Temblor T10 subwoofers
• 4 copies of Studio One Professional

Get tickets at the following links:

Sept. 26 show
Sept. 27 show
Two-day pass

A firmware update for the StudioLive 32.4.2AI, 24.4.2AI and 16.4.2AI mixers has been released to the web! You’ll need to log in to my.presonus.com to get it.  

In this release is a New Feature!

As of firmware version 1.0.5436, the StudioLive AI mixer line will have the ability to cascade two mixers together to create one large mixer. Start with a 16.4.2AI, 24.4.2AI, or 32.4.2AI, then cascade a second StudioLive AI mixer of any frame size to create custom-sized mixing consoles with the hardware and software advantages of StudioLive Active Integration™ systems.

For full details on this update, please click here to download the PDF.

For troubleshooting your cascaded mixer setup, click here.

Check out this great video from session drummer and recordist Luis Hernandez on using the ADL 700 and Studio One to record a jingle for HBO Latino. If you’re looking for some workhorse secrets from a guy who’s working in music full-time, don’t miss it! Luis shares some of the secrets of his signal chain, and some of his favorite EQ settings for using the ADL 700 on kick and snare—particularly as it pertains to filtering high-hat sounds from his snare mic.

Be sure to give Luis a subscription on YouTube by clicking here.

Drum Corp International:

Well, this is a refreshing a change of pace from the typical Artist-of-the-Week. Up this time around is Drum Corp International, AKA DCI to those in-the-know, which now includes you.

Were this the usual singer/songwriter or rock band, this is the part where I would talk about where they are from, or their musical influences, or key band members. But how do I write about an organization made up of multiple bands, comprised of talented folks from all over the world?

I can’t, except to say that contemporary drum corp is the torchbearer for a richly storied tradition with origins in American and Canadian military history that goes back to the first world war, with competitive circuits really coming into their own by the 1960s.

Drum Corps International formed in 1972, and is the non-profit governing body for junior (under-21) drum and bugle corps in the US and Canada.

Over at the DCI Nimbit store, once can download a metric tonne of live competition performances from prestigious venues like the Alamodome and University of Akron’s InfoCision Stadium. Recordings contain championship performances from some of DCIs brightest and boldest. You can also grab a DCI hoodie or a DCI SNOWFLAKE CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT, just in time for… September?

Last but not least, you can get DVD and Blu-ray recordings of the 2013 and 2012 world championships, as well as the cutting-edge DCI Essentials collection, which includes top performances from DCI performances of yesteryear; up-converted to HD with a 5.1 audio mix. DVD is a great way to go, as drum corp is a highly visual medium.

Incidentally, PreSonus is a proud sponsor of DCI wunderkind The Blue Devils, who recently took first place at the DCI annual championship. Not only did they win, but they got the highest score ever in the history of DCI competition—a 99.65. They’ve been using PreSonus StudioLive AI Mixers and Loudspeakers in their performances for a little under a year, now, and we’re proud to have been a part of their prestigious victory. Check out a detailed overview of their set up at: musiced.presonus.com/fieldaudio

Click here to visit DCI’s Nimbit profile and get some epic recordings!

Ellis Paul:

In the film “Lemmy,” a wonderful biopic of Motörhead’s iconic frontman, Slash (of Guns’n’Roses fame) paints an abrupt picture of reverence when describing the film’s namesake. It goes something like this: “I’ve known a lot of ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ personalities, and the ones that I admire, and the ones that I’m drawn towards, are the guys that are… f***in’… the real deal. People who live, sleep, and breathe rock ‘n’ roll.” Compare that to this quote from a guy who’s not in Motörhead or Guns’n’Roses, and doesn’t play rock ‘n’ roll so much as folk: Ellis Paul. “I’ve got a car with over 4​75​,000 miles on it, and it’s my third road vehicle,​” Paul declares. “I’ve been doing 200 shows a year for over twenty years. There isn’t a town in the country where I won’t find a friend. I’m a nomad. And I’m gonna write and play until I’m gone.” Real-deal? Well, if that doesn’t sound like the real-deal lifestyle of someone who puts the “true” in “troubadour,” than I don’t know what to tell you. While Ellis claims to live in Charlottesville, VA., it seems pretty clear to me that he lives on the road. Ellis was rather inadvertently introduced to the guitar when a sports injury knocked him out of commission and he needed something else to do. He took to songwriting almost immediately, and was soon playing Boston-area gigs, and turning Boston-area heads. Over time his songwriting matured through a healthy twin-obsession with both Woody Guthrie and musical narrative, garnering a couple of local songwriting contest wins, releasing his first record, Say Something, in 1993. And somehow, when not on the road (and when is that again?) Paul finds the time to record, and at the time of this writing has released EIGHTEEN more albums—including two volumes of his childrens’ album series, The Hero in You—and culminating in his latest, Chasing Beauty. He’s also landed placements in some A-list Hollywood films, including some Farrelly brothers hits. If you appreciate the earnestness of Cash and like your guitar served up with a side order of great story, you owe it to yourself to listen to Ellis Paul. Closely. Click here to visit Ellis Paul’s Nimbit profile and get his latest, NINETEENTH album, Chasing Beauty.

So, what’s Music Gateway all about? Well, partnering Music Gateway with Nimbit was something of a no-brainer, and here’s why: Like Nimbit, Music Gateway cares about getting musicians paid. 

In short, Music Gateway allows musicians to find work specific to their skill sets. Set up a profile, including your role—you can choose from a long list that includes musicians, producers, songwriters, labels, artist management, and more. Furthermore, Music Gateway makes it easy for employers to find music workers (that’s you) specific to the needs of their project. Click here to get the word on how it works straight from MG themselves.

Interested in getting a yearlong subscription to both Music Gateway and Nimbit for FREE? Of course you are. And you have a chance to do exactly that with what appears to be the easiest-to-enter contest in the history of contests.

Here’s how to enter:

• Set up and complete your profile at Music Gateway.
• Make your pitch at £0.
• You’re in!

Pitches will be reviewed by the fine folks at Music Gateway, and a number of users will be accepted into the workspace area for the next round of judging. You will be asked to upload a couple of tracks at this stage for review. 10 winners will be selected from these entries. Submission deadline is Sept. 8.

What are the prizes?

• 10x yearly Nimbit accounts, worth $2400 in total
• 10x Annual Pro Level Unlimited Music Gateway Accounts, worth $195 each!

Head on over to Music Gateway and get started!

How many people do you think play guitar? Probably too many. So I understand if you don’t get excited when I write “here’s another guitar player.” But hold up.

Fact is, not many of them play guitar like Neil Zaza, a man compelled to broaden the range of the instrument’s expressive power and bring it to the masses. Whenever I find myself starting to get board with the ocean of guitar available in popular music, I throw one of Neil’s tracks on, and I hear a mission statement. He’s like a six-string missionary. Call it Telecastervangelism.

The mission statement, as I hear it through his music, goes something like, “Hey buddy, you thought guitars were boring? Think again, because I just figured out THIS.” And then my mind blows, and I fall in love with the guitar all over again, and then I press “repeat.” The heavy focus on melody and advanced technique, found here, may be enough for the average shredder. Neil’s secret weapon, however, is his genre melting-pot, which brews up such disparaging amalgams as classical and funk.

Makes sense, as the man has educated himself in all of the above. He studied classical guitar at the U of Akron before moving on to teaching, and in 1987 formed the eponymous band Zaza. Zaza’s Zaza toured until 1992, and Neil has been on a steady solo gig ever since, releasing five solo records amidst international touring. He’s also landed signature guitar deals with both Cort and Carvin. With his monster chops and ever-growing list of credentials, we were confident that Neil was the right man for the job when we tasked him with recording the guitar samples that are included in Notion and Progression.

It turns out his solo records are available on his Nimbit store, and if you take a close look at his store, there’s some unorthodox cool stuff going on over there. For one, you can get Zaza T-shirts in every color the rainbow forgot. Furthermore, Neil still teaches, and makes several of his coursework’s backing tracks available, as well as his Live DVD, “Live on Crooked River Groove.”

Not too shabby for a kid from Akron. Keep up with Neil Zaza on Nimbit, and ride his guitar into the future.

Interested in Nimbit? Sign up for free here.

The clock is ticking! This incredible offer ends August 31, 2014. Here’s the long and short of it: buy Studio One Professional – including upgrades and crossgrades – and get both Goldbaby Essentials and The Ampire XT Metal Pack for FREE! That’s a $60 value.

Click here for the full details on this offer. Short version: Goldbaby Essentials is an add-on for Impact that features 500 tape-saturated, professionally-recorded samples of vintage drum machines, arranges into 32 Impact drum kit presets and 124 musicloops. The Ampire XT Metal Pack is an add-on for Ampire XT that gives you six new heavy-duty, high-gain amp models, six cabinet models, and a set of some really in-your-face drum sounds for Impact.

Here’s EDM hotshot KATFYR demoing how he made his #1 hit “Lose Control” in Studio One, from Musikmesse 2014, with the help of the Goldbaby Essentials add-on:

Here’s what the Metal Pack sounds like when helmed by TOOMS:

Click here to get Studio One Professional and take advantage of this offer while you still can!  

It’s rare to find a truly outstanding solid-state channel strip that can deliver a vintage vibe reminiscent of classic high-end products, yet employs a thoroughly modern design. To find one that you can buy without heavily depleting your bank account is even more rare. But there is one channel strip that delivers the goods without the big tab: the PreSonus RC 500.

Every instrument in this video was recorded through the PreSonus RC 500 – even the voice over!

For more on the RC 500, click here.