Presonus StudioLive 16 Channel Firewire Digital Mixer

Like its name suggests, the StudioLive is a full-featured digital mixer that’s at home in both the recording studio as well as the live performance arena. It’s a complete production powerhouse encompassing a Mixer, Firewire recording and playback interface, and over 90 built-in signal processers. Let’s take it for a mix.

Presonus outfitted the StudioLive 16 with 16 class A XMAX microphone preamps. These are quiet, stellar sounding preamps with gobs of gain, ready and able to host your finest microphones with class and ease. Just below are 16 line-in jacks, capable of handling both balanced and unbalanced cables as well as 16 inserts for your outboard gear. All jacks are ¼”. 100 mm quality feeling, precision faders give you hands on control of your tracks. They have a good, sturdy, smooth feel and are responsive to your touch.

Each channel on the Presonus StudioLive 16 has useful, extensive signal processing with dedicated knobs and buttons accessing all the functions. 2 internal digital effects processors each offer 50 customizable reverb and delay presets. You can adjust parameters, hit the tap tempo to set your delays, store, and use scene selection to instantly recall all your settings. Presonus’ exclusive “Fat Channel” features extensive equalization and dynamics available to every input channel, every aux output, every subgroup output, and main output. There is a High pass filter, and four-band semi-parametric equalization algorithms along with 22 compressors, 22 limiters, 22 gates, 22 high pass filters, 2 graphic equalizers, 2 master stereo limiters and more. All StudioLive digital effects are created and processed with 32-bit floating-point precision ensuring maximum sonic performance.

The Presonus StudioLive 16 includes award-winning FireWire technology with JetPLLTM synchronization. It delivers 22 channels of recording and 18 channels of simultaneous playback. Each FireWire recording channel can be set to record either pre or post Fat Channel signal processing giving total flexibility and power. StudioLive can also return 18 FireWire playback channels from your recording and production software for remixing and live performance with pre-recorded tracks, as well as studio mixing using the mixer’s internal signal processing and summing algorithms. Now for something really cool; you can chain up to four (4) StudioLive mixers together via firewire giving you a total of 64 simultaneous tracks to work with (also check out big brother StudioLive 24.4.2 for even more channels).

Included with the StudioLive 16 is Studio One Artist Digital Audio Workstation software, Capture 1.1 Recording software, and Virtual Studio Live software, all for Mac and PC.

Studio One Artist comes with over 4 GB of content including plug-ins, loops, samples, and all the tools you’ll need to create outstanding music production. There’s a virtual sample player, drum machine, analog-modeled synthesizer and more. Processing and effects include amp modeling, delay, distortion, channel strip, modulation, reverbs, and much more! It has an unlimited track count enabling your creative dreams to become reality…just bring your ingenuity and this amazing, well-thought out and executed DAW, along with the StudioLive 16 will provide the rest. It’s both Mac and PC compatible so everyone can jump in and start creating masterpieces.

Capture™ is a digital audio multi-tracking application that makes live recording quick and easy. It uses the same high-quality audio engine as the Studio One™ DAW. Capture was designed exclusively for StudioLive-series mixers, allowing instant setup and recording directly from the mixer with no configuration. You just launch Capture, click Arm All Tracks, and click Record. At the end of the show, click Stop, save the file, and you’re done! Wowee zowie, how’s that for convenience and power?!

Presonus Virtual StudioLive software for Mac and Windows gives you bidirectional control of the StudioLive 16.4.2 and StudioLive 24.4.2 digital mixers. Now you can see and control the most-used mixer parameters on your computer screen, including channel, subgroup, aux send, and main levels, as well as Fat Channel, effects, and graphic EQ settings.

Control the mixer with a mouse or watch VSL update when you adjust the hardware. Drag Fat Channel presets onto all 16 channels in seconds. Mute or solo every channel with a sweep of the mouse. Apply a new Scene to the whole mixer just by dragging it on VSL from a list you see at all times. Collect and trade Scenes with other StudioLive users.

To top it off, you can use low-cost third-party software to control VSL—and therefore, your StudioLive mixer—from an iPhone, iPad, laptop, or any other device that supports VNC remote control of your computer. Now you can walk around the venue and tweak the mix, in real time, from any location, fixing monitor mixes from the stage and eliminating sonic problems on the spot.

There’s so much more to the Presonus StudioLive that makes it a no-brainer, end-all solution in a digital mixer for studio or live recording. Talk to a Sam Ash associate and delve even further into all it offers. Could the Presonus StudioLive be the last analog or digital mixer you’ll ever need? Yes indeed, it very well could!

All XMAX preamplifiers are built with the same three elements:

The net result of the XMAX preamp design is high headroom, low noise, wide dynamic range and wide frequency range, and most importantly, musicality and transparency - smooth highs, solid deep lows, and everything in between.