PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2

[Chris Bakos]

Anybody have experience with this mixer as an interface / digital mixer that can be controlled via Qlab?

[ra byn taylor]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Chris Bakos <christop...@gmail.com> wrote:
Anybody have experience with this mixer as an interface / digital mixer that can be controlled via Qlab?

If that is their smallest offering, I did an install with one end of last year. I was completely unimpressed by the board. The faders don't move themselves. You do. The aux sends had no processing option (no eq at all). The only EQ was a stereo graphic on the L/R buss. For the money, maybe that's what you get but I'd take a new Yamaha O/1V96i which can act as an audio I/O, has way more expansion possibilities, flying faders, etc...

Maybe Presonus has fixed the lack of eq on an aux but we know the faders still don't move. Maybe fine as an audio I/O for Qlab though.

I'll be testing Qlab using a brand new Yamaha 0/1V96i in the next week as an audio I/O if anyone is interested in my experience.

ra byn

[Robert Kaplowitz]

One was installed in a venue where I was the first designer on the new install. This was about 18 months ago.

At that time, it was not viable as a playback interface. Over the course of 5 days, it "dropped" all communication with the mac 4 times, iften at the top of a cue. The only way to get it back was to unplug and replug the firewire cable, which meant (of course) an "all mute", quitting QLab, replugging, relaunching QLab, then unmuting. Needless to say, it went back to the vendor on day 6, after it screwed our invited dress rehearsal.

We borrowed an UltraLight for the run, then the venue purchased an Echo; they've had zero problems since, using the same cable and iMac..

And, of course, the faders don't actually move. The mic pre's sound pretty good, so there's that...

Now, I have no idea if we had a bad unit, or if the whole thing is farblanget, but I certainly won't put one on another show of mine.

[Chris Bakos]

Well 2 bad reviews and a personal friend of mine basically trashed the unit the moment I posted. I am staying away from this. We are considering an O1v96i. It seems to have more of what we want and need and the price difference is not as big as we remember. Once we looked closer at the pricing, it was clear that the Yamaha was going to win even if it mean a few hundred extra dollars. Thanks for all the fast replies. 

On a side note, I think we also discovered that the Presonus board has no MIDI capabilities. 

[Thomas Vecchione]

Well to toss another one on, had one console with firmware corrupted in such a way that it somewhat worked, but the volunteers that ran it had no idea it wasn't working right until Ig ot there and found their solo bus didn't work at all for example.

I am very wary of these.  I hear a lot they sound great, but their interface I am not a big fan of, the lack of flying faders, and the overall reports of 'quirks' that are capable of taking down a show and my personal experience with presonus interfaces mean I don't really touch them much.  I did pick up an O1V96i and while I haven't used it much I ahve been fairly happy with it, much happier than I was running on a Presonus.

     Thomas

On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 1:01 AM, Chris Bakos <christop...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well 2 bad reviews and a personal friend of mine basically trashed the unit the moment I posted. I am staying away from this. We are considering an O1v96i. It seems to have more of what we want and need and the price difference is not as big as we remember. Once we looked closer at the pricing, it was clear that the Yamaha was going to win even if it mean a few hundred extra dollars. Thanks for all the fast replies. 

On a side note, I think we also discovered that the Presonus board has no MIDI capabilities. 

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[Andy Dolph]

Not that I would buy one after these posts, but I'm fascinated by the comment below - a couple of friends of mine who are engineers (one with ears I really trust) said he thought the processing in them sounded terrible.  I don't remember the specific complaints, but I know there were several.

Andy 

[Thomas Vecchione]

Yea I can't tell you much more than that.  I have had time on one, but not in a context I could provide good critical listening, and more frustration based at the time due to some of the previously mentioned problems than anything.

         Thomas

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[Jeremy Lee]

Really? A digital console that won't accept MIDI? 

Jeremy Lee

- A thumb is a terrible speller. Please forgive my trespasses.

On Mar 19, 2013, at 3:54 AM, Winston Chow <wkc-o...@pobox.com> wrote:

This sound board is for those needing a digital sound board, but for a non-digital sound board price.  I'll fill you in on my experiences.

I took one on tour with me to Taiwan for two weeks.  For live sound, it worked like a champ.  No problems at all during our live performances.  We run a musical theater show, so we have lots of sound cues that I run on an iPod playlist.  I really wanted to use QLab for the sound cues for tracks and effects, but I didn't have time.  So when I got back I did some research. Can the faders and scene recalls be controlled by QLab? Nope. No MIDI control whatsoever.  BUT, can you at least feed the audio into the board over the Firewire?  Yes. I routed the audio outputs from QLab to the inputs of the 16.4.2 using Soundflower.  Now I can have cool things like a looping cellphone ring sound effect that I can kill when I see the actor press her prop cellphone button, or a devamp cue without hacking up the sound effect files.

On Friday, August 24, 2012 4:02:05 PM UTC-7, Chris Bakos wrote:

Anybody have experience with this mixer as an interface / digital mixer that can be controlled via Qlab?

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[Rabyn]

And faders that you have to manually place. I was told originally the console audibly glitched when you changed scenes too. Not sure if that issue was fixed or not.

ra byn (robin)

[Jeremy Lee]

No motorized faders?? So you recall a scene, and the faders have no relationship to the mix? This sounds like a fine console for a coffee shop, or a show that doesn't have any live needs, but otherwise, no thanks. I guess if you want a Mackie 1604 with firewire, it'll do that...

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Jeremy Lee
Sound Designer, NYC - USA 829
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[CHNL]

Not a Presonus fan to begin with, however this sounds like a discussion based on incomplete information regarding (in this case) Presonus equipment.

The times I worked with Presonus board (24.4.2) I was perfectly happy with it.

• All (new) boards have Firmware issues. That's not limited to Presonus I would say.
  
• The newest boards from Presonus (16.0.2) have MIDI on board.
• Indeed no motorized faders, however fader levels are recalled when changing scenes.
• As far as I know, board glitches when changing scenes have been solved
• Multiple assignable graphic equalizers
• Eq on aux
• etc
• etc

Op dinsdag 19 maart 2013 15:47:28 UTC+1 schreef Jeremy Lee het volgende:

[Paul Gotch]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 08:08:23AM -0700, CHNL wrote:
> The times I worked with Presonus board (24.4.2) I was perfectly happy with
> it.

There was a massive thread on the blue room about this board the
conlusion being is more expensive than a Behringer X32 and less useful.

-p
--
Paul Gotch
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[Andy Dolph]

I know a friend of mine has one, and the way he described it is that it mutes all audio when you change scenes - I don't know if he's on the latest firmware etc... but I don't think he's had the desk for more then a year....

in terms of the non motorized faders, I'm not a fan either, but as I understand it, there's a way to use indicator lights to put the faders at their recalled levels, so depending on how you're using the scenes, it might be ok (say if you sound check 4 bands, and then just need to get back to where you need to be for the beginning of each set...)

That said, I'm not going to buy one any time soon.  I was a big Presonus fan, and I've had too many consecutive bad experiences with them, and as they push further into digital, I still feel like they don't get how to make the technical backend robust enough - particularly when it comes to interfacing with computers...

Andy

[Winston Chow]

Interesting takes on this board and brand so far. My experiences haven't been bad. It's interesting since I came from a Mackie analog board so I don't know what it's like to have motorized faders. I guess I never had a need. 

As for glitches during the scene changes, I haven't noticed any. Maybe it's because I do them with the computer app and not very often. I'll have to investigate.

As for bang for your buck, I feel this is the board to get if you're on a very tight budget. When I first got the board, the firmware didn't have 31 band EQ for any outputs. Right before I went on tour they had an update and all the outputs and auxes had 31 band EQ. I couldn't have been more happy leaving one more piece of equipment behind to save weight. When I returned from tour, they had another update that put Smaart RTA support in. I was floored. Just this past month I found their latest firmware added yet more Smaart tools: pink noise generation, speaker calibration, and even delay speaker calibration. Now I learn their latest board has a full ARM processor in it. It seems only a matter of time before they add even more compelling features like MSC. Presonus seems to be positioning themselves to be the VHS to the BetaMax of the other brands like Yamaha and Soundcraft and even Avid. Their feature to price ratio is getting to the point where people can't ignore them anymore. 

The iPad app was indispensable. While my FOH guy was dialing in the levels for each channel, I was able to dial in the levels for the aux for our IEMs. For $1800, I couldn't ask for more features. 

However, for now I wish there was MSC support so I can use QLab to control it. The only hack I can think of is using AppleScript cues to possibly control Virtual Studio Live (the application that connects to the board over FireWire and acts as conduit to the iPad). If there's no AppleScript support for Virtual Studio Live, the idea is then moot. 

-Winston

(from smartphone)

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[Thomas Vecchione]

> All (new) boards have Firmware issues. That's not limited to Presonus I would say.

No these firmware issues have nothing to do with being a new console, it is that the console apparently corrupted the existing firmware on an intermittent basis, and I am not the only one that has seen this.  The only solution is to reflash it, and that is simply not acceptable to me as it means that if something happens mid show not only do I have to wait for it to come back, but I may have to reflash the firmware as well, and I certainly can't expect clients of mine to know how to reflash the firmware (Houses of Worship, or other clients).

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Winston Chow <winst...@pobox.com> wrote:

As for glitches during the scene changes, I haven't noticed any. Maybe it's because I do them with the computer app and not very often. I'll have to investigate.

This is in fact exactly why.  Scene changes through the computer app apparently do not suffer this, but the reason why there is audio dropout is because Presonus decided it was easier to reset all settings on the console, and then write the new settings when doing scene recalls on the console.  As mentioned however apparently scene recalls from the computer do not suffer from this, but in my opinion if I have to have their software up just to run scene changes something is wrong.

Here is the simple truth.  This is not a digital console.  It is an analog console on steroid, and has to be treated as such.  You can't use it as a digital console or you will be severely dissapointed, but if you use it as an analog console that has a large amount of processing built in you will be happier.  Personally I am really not a fan of it's interface at all, and don't use the console if I can help it, and like others would rather get other options like the O1v96i or similar, but can see how it might be useful on occasion, for instance the 16.0.2 on stage as an effects processor, etc.  But that is about the limit of it to me.

        Thomas Vecchione

[Rabyn]

The glitch I was told about with the Studio live console had to do with muting audio during a scene change.

My fake on the studio live is that they started adding basic features any digital console would have long after the initial condoles were out. I sent then a scathing email about the lack of EQ pn the aux sends of the 16:0:2. I'm sure I wasn't the only one. After the fact, It's like advertising you've added seat belts to your car when they've been stock in all other cars for 20 years. The iPhone App that let's each musician control their own mix was a good move. I think they were first to that finish line but as I recall you have to have a Mac or PC involved so again a bit of false advertising in my view. Yamaha had native Ethernet IP support long before that.

IMO, X32 has it beat by 10 miles.

ra byn (robin)

[Winston Chow]

Here is the simple truth.  This is not a digital console.  It is an analog console on steroid, and has to be treated as such.

Excellent description. I completely agree. 

If you need the full complements of a "digital" sound board, you'll have to look at Yamaha or Soundcraft. You'll also need at least $5k. 

-Winston

(from smartphone)

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[Winston Chow]

Hmm... Time to check out the X32. I've been eying the Soundcraft Compact SI series, specifically the SI 16. The series has MIDI support and looks like QLab can control it.

-Winston
(from smartphone)

[Rabyn]

X32 has more useful features than any Sub $10,000 Yamaha and a street price is $2400. 3 year warranty. $69 a month if you want to look at a 3 year investment.

ra byn (robin)

[Rabyn]

The X32 acts like a driverless 32 channel Qlab audio interface with midi in both directions. 24 UDK to control midi functions in Qlab. I just tested it all. 32 outputs via USB / FW to record natively.

SI series is updated. Still expensive if you want real feature set.

ra byn (robin)