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R/E/P => R/E/P Archives => The Acid Test => Topic started by: Berolzheimer on November 23, 2009, 06:30:22 PM

Title: Presonus Studiolive
Post by: Berolzheimer on November 23, 2009, 06:30:22 PM
I used this guy for a live gig this weekend, and I quite liked it- it's a lot of board for the money.  Easy & fast to get around once you get used to the basic concepts, and pretty well thought out all in all.  For  instance I loved that there's eq & dynamics built into all the aux sends, I as the drummer was monitoring on headphones instead of a sidefill to protect my hearing & help keep stage levels down, & was VERY GLAD that there was a compressor & limiter on my feed, and a high pass as there were plenty of lows getting through the cans acoustically.  The various metering modes are nice too- for instance theres a GR mode which lets you watch the amount of compression happening on all the channels at once.
And of course being able to record each channel plus the 2bus to a laptop is great.  The Capture software that came with the board is a little rough yet, I'm sure there will be lots of refinements to come, but it worked fine all day & never hiccuped.
I'll be mixing the tracks later this week, I'll report back then on how they sound.
Title: Re: Presonus Studiolive
Post by: Berolzheimer on November 26, 2009, 03:25:08 AM
Well I got the tracks today, and while the sound quality in general is pretty decent, one big omission from the board made itself felt- there are no dedicated input clip lights.  To check input level there's an input meter mode which allows you to see the internal signal level in all the channels at once, but those same meters are used for other things in other modes.  With an experienced mixer I think that's fine, you set up your input levels conservatively & check on them periodically or when things are heating up.  The guy running the board for us is not experienced, wasn't on top of it, and as a result the drums are clipped much of the time, as well as some vocal & keyboard tracks from time to time.  He really should have noticed since he also had the laptop next to him recording, & I'm sure it showed that it was clipping, not to mention that he should have heard it.  Nonetheless I wish the board had dedicated input OL leds.

Title: Re: Presonus Studiolive
Post by: Berolzheimer on February 01, 2010, 03:22:18 PM
I did another gig with this on Saturday, it went great.   I was mistaken, there ARE clip lights on the channels.  They're on top of the multipurpose meters & I had mistaken them for part of those meters. I also discovered that there are many more outputs availabe to record than I had thought, the Capture software that came with it can only do 18, but with Studio One, which also came with it, you can record, in addition to the 16 mic inputs and the stereo bus, the 2 stereo aux ins, the stereo tape inputs, the 4 submasters, the solo bus,  the talkback mic, the FX returns, even the send outputs.  Any combination up to 32 tracks.  I used an 8 channel outboard mic pre feeding the aux inputs to get a few more mics into the system, worked great.  You could also connect a second Studiolive through firewire & record the 32 normal channels. This is a very flexible device indeed.
Title: Re: Presonus Studiolive
Post by: trock on February 02, 2010, 10:38:32 AM
I was checking out the new 24:4:2 i think it is

especially since Studio One is so nice

have you seen this board yet? is there anything in this larger format that would make you want to switch up?

Title: Re: Presonus Studiolive
Post by: Berolzheimer on February 02, 2010, 04:04:42 PM
As far as I can tell it's essentially the same board, with 24 main channels instead of 16.  That in itself would have me interested, 16 seems to always end up being almost, but not quite, enough.