ProSoundWeb Community
Church and H.O.W. – Forums for HOW Sound and AV - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Church and HOW Forums => Church Sound => Topic started by: Mike Fair on July 21, 2011, 02:06:52 PM
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Was wondering if anybody is using this board at their church. If what are your thoughts on it? Is it volunteer friendly, etc?
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Was wondering if anybody is using this board at their church. If what are your thoughts on it? Is it volunteer friendly, etc?
I use one in my business and consider that it is the most "analog" of any digital consoles. Very intuitive layout, easily navigable and would rate it as "volunteer friendly". But that all depends on the experience of your volunteers.
The only thing to watch out for is the metering. Input metering is "digital".....dBfs (full scale) meaning that 0 is the absolute maximum rather than "unity gain" as on an analog board. Output metering and sub-group metering is in good ol' dBvu. As soon as you learn to live with this you'll be fine. And it isn't hard to get used to, just easy to miss in the beginning.
One other thing to remember:
Although the console will store scenes, the audio will mute for 1.5 seconds in recall. Add to that the need to manually re-locate the faders to the new scene and you quickly realize that the scenes are useful for particular configurations, but not for the real-time, on the fly scene changes required for theater performance.
Other than that I like mine......
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I haven't gotten my hands on one, but when my church upgrades their board in the upcoming year or two (hopefully) we're looking at the 24.4.2. I would say that the Presonus interface is one of the easiest to use and learn out of the digital boards considering that most settings are still changed via knob instead of listed in a sub menu on the lcd screen.
After watching youtube training videos and browsing through the manual I feel pretty confident that this is an easy board to learn and teach others how to learn. With all digital boards, however, you just need to make sure you keep on top of your selections and what parameters you are actually changing.
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I With all digital boards, however, you just need to make sure you keep on top of your selections and what parameters you are actually changing.
Not a problem with the StudioLive. As you noted about not having to scroll through menus but simply deal with knobs, there is almost no chance of accidentally something unintended.
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Thanks for the feedback so far. I have yet to find anything negativ about this board.
To give you a little background we are a small church (~350 people) and I currently use a 13 y/o Mackie board. It has been giving us fits recently. Because I thought that digital boards were way out of my price range I was looking at another analog board. A friend told me about the Presonus. I was disappointed at first because I need at least 32 channels and the best they could do was a 24. Then I read about daisy chaining them. So now I can get a decent 32 channel digital board for ~$4,000.
We don't do a lot of productions where I need instant recall of scenes. Mostly I'd use them to take the board to 'default' settings at for each service so if somebody were to have totally messed with the board during the week we have a good starting point.
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Thanks for the feedback so far. I have yet to find anything negativ about this board.
To give you a little background we are a small church (~350 people) and I currently use a 13 y/o Mackie board. It has been giving us fits recently. Because I thought that digital boards were way out of my price range I was looking at another analog board. A friend told me about the Presonus. I was disappointed at first because I need at least 32 channels and the best they could do was a 24. Then I read about daisy chaining them. So now I can get a decent 32 channel digital board for ~$4,000.
We don't do a lot of productions where I need instant recall of scenes. Mostly I'd use them to take the board to 'default' settings at for each service so if somebody were to have totally messed with the board during the week we have a good starting point.
This rig....
http://cgi.ebay.com/Presonus-STUDIOLIVE-16-4-2-Mixer-Consoles-32-Channels-/130542366925?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e64ee70cd#ht_1971wt_1185
being sold by a Forum member from California.
Buy from a brother......
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I was disappointed at first because I need at least 32 channels and the best they could do was a 24. Then I read about daisy chaining them. So now I can get a decent 32 channel digital board for ~$4,000.
The way I look at it is that by linking two 16.4.2 consoles you can get a mixer with 32 inputs, but you do not really get a 32 channel mixer, a subtle distinction. While some aspects are shared between consoles when SL consoles are linked it is more a cascading than it is becoming a single mixer. For example effects and the associated buses stay independent for each physical console (e.g. you have two effects units and associated buses on each phsyical console rather than two or four that are common to both physical consoles). I believe that FAT channel controls remain dedicated to each physical console such that if you want to adjust any channel you have to use the FAT channel controls on the associated physical console. Scene save and recall are independent for each physical console, although if you setup a scene on one console the scene name should appear on all linked consoles. For many applications these distinctions may not matter at all but for some uses they may be a factor.
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This rig....
http://cgi.ebay.com/Presonus-STUDIOLIVE-16-4-2-Mixer-Consoles-32-Channels-/130542366925?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e64ee70cd#ht_1971wt_1185
being sold by a Forum member from California.
Buy from a brother......
Still need to get board approval which won't happen until the 8th of August. That being said if this is still available this is a great deal and will definitely keep my eye on it. Thanks!
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The way I look at it is that by linking two 16.4.2 consoles you can get a mixer with 32 inputs, but you do not really get a 32 channel mixer, a subtle distinction. While some aspects are shared between consoles when SL consoles are linked it is more a cascading than it is becoming a single mixer.
Brad thanks for the post. To be honest this is my biggest concern. We don't do anything out of the ordinary so I don't think this is going to be an issue. However I am researching this part more.
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Just to be clear, a pair of cascaded/linked SL 16.4.2 consoles is a cost effective way to get 32 inputs and many of the benefits of a digital console, there are just a few 'gotchas' that you should be aware of resulting from linking two consoles rather than having a single large console.
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Was wondering if anybody is using this board at their church. If what are your thoughts on it? Is it volunteer friendly, etc?
We have the 24 channel version at one of our churches and I just happened to get on another 24 channel one last night at another church that called me for help. It was fairly easy to figure out but, I am use to digital boards. The church that had the board really didn't know how (or were intimidated by it) to use it. The layout is really pretty simple and works pretty much the same way other digital boards work that I have used. I just hated having to turn a rotary knob to spell out a scene name lol (minor peve). I liked the eq. The compressors were very audible to me but, usable.I am glad I saw a post about that hidden level nob on the back of the mixer or I might have been pulling my hair out last night. I thought it was a pretty good board for the price. I didn't get to spend a lot of time with it. Maybe a couple hours max the rest of the time I spent trying to convince them the guitars didn't need to be so loud but, I digress...I was impressed with how well they laid it out and fit all those features on such a small board.