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10.09
Studiolive 16.4.2
borrowed from the company's FireStudio and
DigiMax products, are clean, fast and detailed,
with plenty of headroom. The line inputs have
enough gain to generate a clean, healthy lev-
el—even from instrument DI outputs. The
onboard reverb and delay effects are perfectly
adequate for the job, especially in a live sound
context. If you are looking for a vintage vibe
or a bigger-than-life sound, you won't find it
here. What you will find is clean, accurate and
transparent sound reproduction. That latency
is so low you can use your computer DAW
effects in real time for live sound gigs, so you
can do all processing on a computer and fly in
pre-produced tracks.
Jacob Rosenberg, a live sound mixer, took
the StudioLive out as the front-of-house mixer
for a weekly jazz gig. He was very impressed
with the sound quality and ease of use, particu-
larly appreciating how the Fat Channel saved
him from carting his racks of analog gear.
All that glitters is not gold, and StudioLive
is not without its drawbacks. While I love the
buttons, I'm not a fan of the knobs and fad-
ers. The faders feel cheap, lacking the smooth
movement of higher-end consoles. The knobs
are a bit small and stiff for my taste. Because
the faders and knobs are not motorized, scene
recall is not a completely automatic process.
The faders need to be manually reset by match-
ing their position to the LED meter display
above them, and mic preamp gain levels are
not stored at all.
But overall, PreSonus has created a flex-
ible, feature-rich, well-designed, good-sound-
ing mixing desk in a manageable size and at an
affordable price. While I have a few quibbles,
they are relatively small potatoes in the context
of the overall package. There is no doubt that
PreSonus has a big winner on its hands with
StudioLive. If you're involved in smaller-scale
live sound or have a project studio in search of
a friendly, out-of-the-box front end, StudioLive
is definitely worth your attention.
Nick Peck is a composer/Hammond organist/
audio engineer living in the San Francisco Bay
Area. He is the audio director of a videogame
company, and a proud papa of two little ones.
Visit him at www.underthebigtree.com. Peck
would like to thank Jacob Rosenberg for his help
in researching this article.
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