Presonus StudioLive 24.4.2

The Presonus StudioLive 24.4.2

So much has happened here since my last post that I’m not sure where to begin. First, my setup has totally changed. When last we met, I was working through an Allen and Heath Zed 24 connected to two Behringer ADA8000′s and a Presonus Firestudio. Well, in the middle of a commercial project, the Firestudio up and died. Well, not exactly died. It refused to communicate with the computer, so I guess maybe it went on strike. A few emails back and forth to Presonus and the unit was on it’s way to meet it’s maker for repair. While I was happy that Presonus stood behind their gear, I still had a job to finish and no interface. Plus, I had no idea how long the repair would take.

Once again, I went back online to look for a solution. Dang, the choices have grown exponentially since I last did that. Because the Presonus Firestudio worked so well for me for so long, and since Presonus’ customer service was good to me, I figured I’d see what they had going on. I could always use a second interface for remotes. What to my wandering eyes should appear? The Presonus StudioLive! At first I thought it was just a digital board, not an interface, but I was attracted to it because it was just so cool looking. Then, as I began reading the description, it slowly dawned on me that this was (wait for it…) a digital mixer and a firewire interface rolled up in one sleek and sexy unit! Oh, the sweet temptation…

How much does it cost? Where can I get one? Are there any reviews? Ooooh, look, YouTube videos! Tape Op has a review! My ritalin-deficient brain spun in a total ADD euphoria. So many questions, so little time. Who needs sleep?

Wait-$3,200.00 for the 24 track version?! Well, that snapped me out of it. Talk about a buzzkill.

But over the next few days, during which I should have been turning out work, I began to see the StudioLive as an elegant, if expensive, solution to my problem. I mean, here I’ve cobbled together a bunch of disparate pieces of gear to do what this one unit can. I’d just learned the hard way that if one piece of this chain goes bad, I’m literally out of business. Even at it’s best, my current setup was such a tangle of snakes, insert cables, lightpipe cables and power strips that it was hard to keep track of which went where. Organization is not my strong suite. I decided to take the plunge- but I wanted to see one in person.

I began to call around. No one had one, except the Guitar Center all the way the hell down in lower Manhattan. Oh well, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. Now, I know that I totally slagged Guitar Center in my post about the Allen and Heath board, but I gotta tell you that Trevor, the sales rep I dealt with, was really on it. He knew what he was talking about and he respected me as a professional. We worked out a trade-in on a vintage Neumann U-87 and a Fender Super Reverb, which brought the price down to a much more manageable figure. I drove down to Guitar Center and left with the Presonus StudioLive.

The vintage U-87 I traded in for the StudioLive

While I wasn’t thrilled by having to part with the Neumann or the Fender (both of which I’d gotten from my Dad), I had to be honest with myself; these things were just sitting unused in a closet. I’m in business and sometimes you have to make tough decisions. I can only justify keeping gear that I use.

The StudioLive in the dark-"Ground control to Major Tom..."

When I got home, I cleared out my old setup and placed the StudioLive on my desktop. Visually, everything changed. No longer did my workspace look like a Rube Goldberg project assembled by drunks. I installed the drivers and control software and connected the Firewire cable. I turned it on and, well, let’s just say that all those lights and meters sure look pretty. Logic 9 saw the StudioLive right away. I sat down to work and something in my brain clicked. I’d read that each channel on the StudioLive has (in order of appearance) selectable phantom power, selectable firewire connection, a high-pass filter, an expander/gate, a compressor (with selectable soft and automatic settings as well as threshold, ratio, attack. release and makeup gain), a limiter, and a four band fully-parametric eq. But it’s one thing to read about it, it’s a totally different thing to use it. I mean, it really hadn’t registered with me that it had all that- on every channel.

I kept waiting to find the catch. Over the years I’ve worked with so many pieces of gear that say they have this or that, only to discover that while they do have this or that, it can only be used in a very limited fashion-if at all. But there’s no catch here. And there’s no tiny screen of multiple menus to wade through in order to, oh I don’t know, change the compression ratio. There’s no typing in of values, no trying to work virtual knobs with a rotary encoder. You grab a knob-an actual knob-and turn it until you hear what you want. Seriously, there’s no funny business here.

The only potential catch is this: you can only use the inserts in the analog realm. If you want to use them in the digital realm, you’re kinda out of luck. But I don’t really think of this as a “catch” so much as I think of it as me not really understanding how digital boards work until now. I did find a workaround, if you’re interested. The StudioLive 24.4.2 has no fewer than ten aux outs. To use a piece of outboard gear, it’s as simple as running an aux out to that gear and returning it to another track. Then you just assign the track you want processed to that aux and pull up the fader on the return track. Not only is this an effective workaround, it’s kinda cool that you can blend the processed and unprocessed tracks to taste.

But you know what? In the four months that I’ve had this thing, I’ve only done that once. The rest of the time I find myself using all of the onboard stuff. I’m not using plugins and I’m not using outboard gear. Everything goes through the board and whatever processing needs to be done, is done inside the console. It is quiet, clean and flexible and if you can’t work with that, you might need to re-think your process. Did I mention the internal effects? There’s a lot of ‘em but I find I use “natural ambience” and “church” most often. The amount of time I save routing things is pretty impressive.

Oh, one more thing: I told a legendary producer that my Dad used to work with about the StudioLive and how great I think it is. He said (and I’m quoting directly from his email-I cut and pasted his very words), “I am surprised that Presonus stuff sound(s) good. Every piece of their gear sounded bad. They are one company that does not have anybody with ears working there.”

I’m still puzzling over this, but I’m not wavering in my opinion about the board. I’ve got ears and I’m turning out much better work with this console than I was before.

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