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I hate the presonus sl16.4.2


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There I said. Had to soundcheck a jazz group with 6 inputs, no monitors. What pain in the ass. Took me far to long to get comfortable with routing, eq, simple gain. Oh and the line inputs directly BELOW the xlr input. That was 2 minutes right there. Honestly I hate the physical interface, it's laid out that way only because there's no main screen really and no flying faders. With that much stuff going on I need a central location where I can see what's going on, not 800 LEDs across the board that might be one thing, might be another. Had to go to the freaking website to look stuff up. I consider myself well versed as an sound tech, I do this for a living. Rant over...

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Interesting considering that many tout the ease of use of the StudioLive series as a strength compared to other more flexible digital mixers.

 

I guess my experience with the board was more "run the sound" vs. "setup the band". Regardless of the mixer, it is always more difficult to route and setup a band/venue than it is to "run the sound" on a board already setup I think.

 

I found it much easier to get some verb and delay on a channel with the StudioLive than my X32 Rack. On the other hand, it took me all of 30 seconds to setup a matrix mix on my X32 this summer when I was running more than one set of speakers outdoors, and then to apply separate eq for each set along with separate volume controls. I don't know if it is even possible to do such a thing with the studiolive, but if it is, I suspect it is cumbersome without an LCD display.

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I actually rather liked mine when I owned it and found it incredibly intuitive. On two occasions I had a "sound guy friend" mix us because they wanted to check out the board. I gave them a 3 minute overview and they had no problems.

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I was sound checking a small band and the rig was setup before I got there. Nice gear, looked brand new actually. With more time on one without band members looking over my shoulder would be better. I'm not saying it's a bad board, I'm saying it wasn't the right mixer for me. I'd have preferred a small analog board, I've got a spirit folio that would have been much more user friendly.

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I'll trade you for a Roland M4800 (it's really not mine, I'm just stuck with it :-). I've been working this board several times a week for months and I'm still amazed at how difficult and anti-intuitive it is. It's fairly flexible if you can figure out how to get it to bend. This becomes a problem if it's last minute or in the heat of the moment.

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I'll trade you for a Roland M4800 (it's really not mine' date=' I'm just stuck with it :-). I've been working this board several times a week for months and I'm still amazed at how difficult and anti-intuitive it is. It's fairly flexible if you can figure out how to get it to bend. This becomes a problem if it's last minute or in the heat of the moment.[/quote']

 

Imagine running into one of those on the road after getting up to speed on other digital boards. Thrown for a spin eh?

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I had a similar experience this evening with a StudioLive that belonged to the house.

 

We were trying to find the aux sends for the individual channels and when it got really close to the time the talent was to arrive, I abandoned the board and brought in an A&H Zed-24 that the FOH guy was familiar with.

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The new presonus rack mixer looks really great, laid out well, all the right features. But I want something I can use that has a physical mixer counterpart. That would be the sl32.4AI. The behringer x32 rack can be used in conjunction with the x32. The mackie has no equivalent. Long story short is I don't want to be stuck using the sl32 or any in that line if I need a control surface.

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Knowing full well, and understanding, that we're in the innovative stage of the game with digital mixers, I still abhor their interfaces. Worse is that they are all so different from each other that you can't walk in to a venue, unpack a random digital mixer and set it up for a show in anywhere near the time it would take on a random analog desk of nearly any make/model.

 

And before all the villagers gather for the lynching, this isn't saying it won't get better, or that I don't appreciate the advantages of digital mixers...there are many. What I'm saying is that people need to stop being all gaga about the new and shiny, and face the reality that the interfaces on these mixers suck. The ones with knobs take too long to understand, the ones with tablets cram way too much into a TINY space...32 channels on a 5x7 screen? Really? You've got to deal with layers, and if you don't have layers, you're scrolling like a madman. And forget about any tactile feedback. That's a given, but should it be?

 

The personal worst for me was ironically the digital I like best, the Expre$$ion Si. The Fader Gl0w feature is cool, but who can memorize THAT many different color/function combinations? There's absolutely NO way you can walk in and sit down at that desk and start working without assistance. There's nothing at all intuitive about color/function combinations.

 

I honestly believe that many of us are intimidated by this technology to one degree or another, and that there's also a certain amount of peer pressure to accept and embrace it before we're actually comfortable using it. Post something negative and *someone* is invariably going to disagree because their experience is completely different, or they're defending *their* purchase decision. After all, who wants to admit they spent $2,500 on a small mixer that they can't use properly because they don't really understand how it works, or worse, it doesn't work for them?

 

That's my rant, and I'm sticking to it.;-)

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I honestly believe that many of us are intimidated by this technology to one degree or another...

 

What I noticed about my situation was how experienced and competent sound techs, who were capable of doing the job they were hired to do, were stopped in their tracks by the house mixer.

 

The best decision we made last night was to bring in an analog board so we could go back to using our ears to do the gig. The guy doing the mixes was looking into the eyes of the talent rather than the interface on the digital board.

 

 

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Glad I'm not the only one! I see the bottle neck being the all the output routing options: tons of busses, direct outs, main/aux outs, and they all have eq/dynamics/delay and insertable effects. Getting to those isn't easy, it's not first page/tab stuff. Rant over.

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My project for today is to download and read the manual for the StudioLive mixer that humbled us last night. It's not about standing in the way of progress but embracing it in a way that skills we have developed can be put to use in conjunction with and not be stymied by the new technology.

 

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Onelife, I think once you read the manual you will get the hang of it and you will find it pretty easy to use. I came from 20 years on analog Allen and Heath boards and I will never go back! It's all relative. I remember the first time I saw a Yamaha PM4000! I thought it was like trying to learn to fly the space shuttle! The Studiolive is no harder to use than my old GL 2200 once you have a basic understanding of it. Embrace the future and enjoy. This is all supposed to be fun!

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Wow! I have a Studiolive AND an Expression and love them both! I must really be a sucker for peer pressure!

 

I'll tell you what - I don't miss hauling around 500 pounds of analog board and racks of processing equipment one bit!

 

Yep! That is where I live too.

 

Just to put things into perspective here on the old "Analog is so much easier" discussion ......

 

Setting up the "routing" on an analog mixer wasn't that easy either. You had to make sure you had the right cables, know where the various kinds of "goes in" and "goes out" were, take a long look at the schematic diagram to see how the thing was internally routed, know how each of the devices you hooked up to it worked, setup the gain structure ..... etc, etc.

 

I had a full rack of gear with my MixWiz and it was still difficult for me to get the gates and compressors set on the drum kit, vocals, and bass. Tiny little knobs on the ACP88 were just a pain in a poorly lit bar, and squatting down working on it was a PITA.

 

As Sibyrnes points out ...... it was darned heavy as well! My knees don't miss that rack at all.

 

Craig,

I think that those that are more effective on an analog console have no reason to change unless the venues and bands they work for are asking for features that only digital consoles can give. No need for a lynch mob today ;)

 

I was personally looking for a smaller, lighter, easier to setup and take down rig as my primary reason for upgrading. All the additional features were simply a surprise and delight.

 

I wouldn't personally purchase a StudioLive, but not because I wouldn't be able to understand it. I simply don't care for the lack of features as compared to other digital mixers in its class.

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Me too (about tech advances), and right now I want to see someone come up with an incredible interface that blows everything else out of the water. Give us a console that you DON'T have to sit down and read the owner's manual to use. How many of you had to read the owner's manual for your Android or iPhone, iPad, etc.? None of you, right? Sure, you found a few cool things along the way, but you powered up and started calling, texting, and running apps right away.

 

These devices are the functional equivalent of the difference between analog and digital mixers. 30 years ago your phone didn't have a camera, a way to send text based messages (with attached pictures), a gaming console, a calculator, a worldwide directory, and hundreds of other functions...it just made voice calls. I've watched old people who've never held a smartphone start using them much faster than I expected, and the intuitiveness of design is really challenged there. I'd like to see this level of intuitive design implemented in a digital mixer.

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Me too (about tech advances), and right now I want to see someone come up with an incredible interface that blows everything else out of the water. Give us a console that you DON'T have to sit down and read the owner's manual to use. How many of you had to read the owner's manual for your Android or iPhone, iPad, etc.? None of you, right? Sure, you found a few cool things along the way, but you powered up and started calling, texting, and running apps right away.

 

These devices are the functional equivalent of the difference between analog and digital mixers. 30 years ago your phone didn't have a camera, a way to send text based messages (with attached pictures), a gaming console, a calculator, a worldwide directory, and hundreds of other functions...it just made voice calls. I've watched old people who've never held a smartphone start using them much faster than I expected, and the intuitiveness of design is really challenged there. I'd like to see this level of intuitive design implemented in a digital mixer.

 

I don't know, Craig. Mixing a live band takes a little more knowledge, talent, and education than talking on a phone. If it was easy, everybody could do it.

 

I understand your point - I just don't agree with your analogy.

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I'm (again) drawn to the analogy of digital synths. In the old days of analog, the basic architecture of different brands of synthesizers were largely the same. Someone experienced with getting sounds on a Mini-Moog could pretty easily walk up and start programming a Pro-One. But after the introduction of digital workstations, individual brands started becoming more specific to their own way of doing things and have remained so. Someone who has only ever played Roland stuff would have a hard time walking into a gig where he had to start creating patches on a Korg on the fly.

 

Fortunately, keyboard players are rarely asked to do that. But it stands to reason that won't be the same for sound engineers. Venues and bands have their own gear. An engineer who is most familiar with Yamaha gear might be scratching his head trying to figure how to do the same stuff on a PreSonus.

 

I wonder if this will open the way for 3rd party apps that will make different brands easier to use for different people. Instead of just having that one X32 app, there could be different versions where it is laid out similar to another manufacturers style of architecture?

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I'm not a keyboard player but I work a bunch. On the pro side there are acceptable boards and then there's ones you just don't see pros using at all. And the pro keyboardists only use their boards, if they fly in then it's a board that's high end, common and presets can be loaded. The backline company has to get the exact board, exact version, no exceptions. In the live sound area this isn't always possible. And with a keyboard there is ALWAYS a physical interface somewhere, even if it's just a midi controller. There is no midi controller equivalent for a mixer.

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I'm not a keyboard player but I work a bunch. On the pro side there are acceptable boards and then there's ones you just don't see pros using at all. And the pro keyboardists only use their boards' date=' if they fly in then it's a board that's high end, common and presets can be loaded. The backline company has to get the exact board, exact version, no exceptions. In the live sound area this isn't always possible. [/quote']

 

This may well be the future for similar applications of live sound. Band X flies into town and, in addition to saying they need a Yamaha Motif XF keyboard, that they also need a Behringer X32 mixer and they load in their own scenes and go from there. As with the keyboards, the sound rental company will need to have access to all the major makes and models of digital mixers.

 

Or, as small and affordable as so many of them can be in the rack versions, the bands will just carry their own mixers more often.

 

The days of the venue with the "house board", or the sound company that uses the same mixer for every big show that comes to town, might be soon gone.

 

And with a keyboard there is ALWAYS a physical interface somewhere, even if it's just a midi controller. There is no midi controller equivalent for a mixer.

 

As I was asking earlier, why couldn't this be the mobile device? Isn't it at least conceivably possible for someone to come up with a controller app for the PreSonus that works similarly enough to the Behringer that one familiar with the latter could be comfortable on the former?

 

If the market demands it....

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The best decision we made last night was to bring in an analog board so we could go back to using our ears to do the gig. The guy doing the mixes was looking into the eyes of the talent rather than the interface on the digital board.

 

 

I don't get this? Analog or digital has nothing to do with using your ears. A mixer and rack full of gear is the same set of tools as a digital board with all that stuff baked in. Don't blame the hardware. It doesn't have ears.

 

Frankly, digital is far more ear friendly. With everything on the horizontal plane and the same level, your ears are in the same location as they are when moving a slider. You can now adjust things that you'd otherwise have to squat down and possibly move left or right, to change. Now you can no longer hear the high end, nor glance up to see the band.

 

With digital the temptation to constantly adjust things simply because it's conveniently located at your fingertips is what separates the newb from the experienced engineer. That convenience is also one of the benefits of digital mixers. Especially if navigation isn't a time suck.

 

The subject of the thread is actually a good example. One button push and the entire middle of the board now has the controls for that channel all laid out in front of you. No screens, no menus, no layers*. It's a unique layout for sure, but, IMO, it's by far the easiest to learn.

 

*yes, I know there are actually some layered things and there is a screen with efx and master eq, but they aren't the things you'll likely be fiddling with during the show). My QU-16, which I find pretty simple, has layers for every setting of every channel so there's an additional button push needed to access anything.

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With digital boards there's a tendency to over use dynamics and eq on everything, and the ability to react to feedback is reduced along with the now reduced GBF. And the importance of knowing what page you're on before making an adjustment.

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With digital boards there's a tendency to over use dynamics and eq on everything' date=' and the ability to react to feedback is reduced along with the now reduced GBF. And the importance of knowing what page you're on before making an adjustment.[/quote']

There is some truth to this; however, I would say that most inexperienced sound engineers tend to over use dynamics and eq regardless if they are on an analog rig or a digital rig.

 

The difference is that it is easier to setup dynamics on a digital than on an analog. In my analog rig, I didn't have 32 channels of compressors, I had 8 (Presonus ACP88).... and that included any gates I wanted to use as well. I had them lined up to a specific set of channels on the inserts. Changing this around was a pain, so I rarely ever used these channels for anything other than drums, and lead vocals (gates on drums, compression on vocals).

 

On my X32 Rack, I only have light compression on vocals. My drummer has vDrums, so I no longer need gates. The big difference is that it was WAY easier to setup. Using multi-channel playback, it was also easier for me to solo the channel, or hear the vocals in the mix easily as I adjusted the settings.

 

Having the tendency to put too much processing on each channel is not just on digital consoles IME. Having the ability to do it may invite inexperienced operators to do it more, but it isn't the cause.

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