November 14th, 2011 
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I’ve been very interested in the Presonus StudioLive series since the release of the 16.4.2 a few years ago. I got a chance to work with the newer 24.4.2 on a recent live recording for a Christmas music program.
The setup was simple, my trusty Mac Mini (2.26GHz Intel Core2 Duo, 8GB of Ram) with my G-Tech 2TB Firewire 800 connected direct, and the StudioLive console plugged into the drive. I was worried about sharing the firewire bus, but ran into no problems. The DAW was Pro Tools 9.0.2.
The Setup:
I picked the 24.4.2 and a split snake up at 9am and dropped the gear off before heading to run a few errands and pick up lunch. Returning to the gig around 1pm I was greeted with a board and snake that was already hooked up thanks to the live engineer.
At this point I went ahead and booted up my computer and drive and hooked the 24.4.2 into my G-Tech drive. I had a few issues getting the 24.4.2 to talk to Pro Tools, and after a few moments messing around I grabbed the latest driver from the PreSonus site and we were in business!
I was recording 18 channels and didn’t have much time to get to know the board, so I went ahead and set my Pro Tools I/O to send my stereo out to 23 – 24 and monitored off of those channels. Which proved to be simple and sounded great through my Audio-Technica headphones.
The Sound:
The real question, how does the board sound? In the simplest terms, fantastic! The mic pres sounded great on a variety of instruments. Drums sound big and punchy, guitars cut through the mix and bass sounded nice and full. Even an annoyingly bright Taylor acoustic was tamed enough to be usable. Vocals sound nice, but we’ll be overdubbing new vocals in the next week since we want a perfect sounding production.
As far as the onboard EQ and dynamics, I decided to not use any knowing that I like to mix with clean untouched tracks in a situation like this. But, as we were sound checking I went ahead and turned on the onboard EQ and compressor on my kick and snare and they sounded great! I would have no problem mixing a live show on one of these boards with just the onboard effects.
Conclusion:
All in all, I was very impressed with this board. It was easy to setup and sounded great, and I don’t need anything more than that. In fact, I’m looking to sell my 24 channel Soundcraft Ghost and pick one up!
Price: $3,299.00
Buy Here: PreSonus StudioLive 24.4.2
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