Post Tagged with: "presonus studiolive 24"

So, now with an iPad, I can walk around and be, basically, wherever Front of House is. Just going over StudioLive Remote, basically, this is the iPad App. Again, just like Virtual StudioLive, it basically is a visual representation of what’s happening on my mixer. Of course I can grab any channel. I can EQ any channel. I can access the compressor, the noise gate, just like this. I can also adjust Auxes for anybody. So aux 10, as you can see on the mixer I’m controlling the mixer. Just like this. And, it’s bi-directional so if I grab this and mess with it, I’ll see everything reflected on the iPad that I’m seeing on the mixer as well. So, it’s a total remote control. It’s a StudioLive Remote. That’s what it does.

One of the cool things I love about it is when you’re looking at this Overview page, if I want to look at and concentrate on just one channel, let’s say this acoustic channel right here, basically if I pop it open like this, and turn it to Portrait Mode, it pops open the settings of just that one channel really big. So now I can flip through and look at the different channels one by one. I can go from channel to channel and not only do I see the EQ, Compressor and Gate, for that channel, I also see the Auxes. So if I’m working with somebody’s monitor I can very easily just walk over to the wedge and say “Hey, do you need a little bit more of Channel 2 in your Aux?” I can give them a little bit more like that.

The other thing that you can do, and this is really invaluable, especially when you’re trying to ring out a monitor, this is a big problem for people…is being able to have to create some feedback and then be able to figure out where that feedback is. Now with the SMAART Spectra it’s a lot easier. But, I can access my actual graphic EQs right here and very easily just click on a graphic EQ, and be able to turn up the frequencies. You can see that these right here are linked. I can assign these to the Sub-Group. I can also go up to this EQ when I have the Draw Mode on and hold my finger down and drag it and draw in a curve. If I just want to take out the low end, I can do that, flatten it out, just very easily like that. You also now have Scene Recall. This is something that I think is very, very cool. That is, from anywhere in the house, where I might be, I might have a particular Scene for a particular part of the service. Maybe I want to have a scene where right when the band finishes, I load the Pastor’s Scene. It loads the right graphic EQ. It mutes all the channels, very usable stuff…Well, now you can do that from the iPad as well. You just pick the scene you want, hit “Load.” You’re done.

Then there’s the Settings Tab. This is where I can actually go through and change the name in VSL. So let’s say all of a sudden on a particular Sunday I forget that there’s going to be an extra guitar player. So here’s “Jerry – Guitar.” Now, if you look at Channel 11, down here, you’ll see…here it is “Jerry – Guitar.” It updated it on Virtual StudioLive. And, any other IOS devices on stage, it updated there as well. So on anybody’s iPhone or iPad on stage, all of these setting will apply.

So now let me show you the 2nd wireless app, and that is called “QMix.” This is for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The idea here is, when we first came out with the iPad app, people were really excited and of course sound guys were really excited. Some musicians who had iPads were stoked because of the ability to have sheet music on an iPad and give it a flip over and adjust your in-ear mix…That is so cool for a musician that has an iPad. But what about 10 people up on stage, 9-10 iPads can get kind of pricey, so we found an app called “QMix.” It’s for the iPod Touch or the iPhone. It allows you to adjust your in-ear or headphone mix using your phone or iPod Touch. Now you notice, I didn’t mention adjusting your monitor mix with an iPhone and that’s only because you can do it if you want it but we don’t recommend it because if you give a musician the control over his monitor, and if he’s not careful during a performance, if it’s a wedge it can actually cause a lot of feedback and most sound guys don’t want to give that much control to the musician. But, it’s a great thing, as some of the band members expressed in the video, of not having to flag the sound guy down when you need a little extra keyboard in your ears.

So if you look at QMix, the first thing that you see is the Start page. It shows what StudioLive mixers are connected on the network. I just hit “Connect” and now, here’s all of the channels on my StudioLive mixer. So there’s 24 channels as you can see. I’m actually adjusting things on the mixer, controlling it, wirelessly. Now the other cool thing about this is that if I flip the phone this way you get this really neat screen that allows you to be able to very easily increase or decrease the volume of your channel. We call this the “Wheel of Me Page.”

What is the “Wheel of Me?” Let’s say I am the acoustic guitar player in the band and I’m on Channel 21. Well, if I hit the “Me” button right here, it has all of my inputs that show up. I just select “Channel 21″ because that’s my channel and I go back to the page. Now, it basically gives me my channel, which is acoustic, on the left, versus the band, which is on the right. As you can see, with just one swipe I’m controlling what’s happening on the mixer and it leaves the band mix in tact. Now, you always have this problem with some musicians, that they just want more “Me,” more “Me,: more “Me,” the whole night, and finally, you get to a certain point where you have to explain to them, “I’ve given you all of ‘You’ that I can. Now what you need to do is turn down everybody else in your mix, so that you can hear yourself, and then, turn up the volume of your headphone amp.” Well, QMix kind of takes care of that for you. So if you have one of those musicians that just wants more “Me” watch what happens. When I keep going up and up and up, when it gets to the top, it starts turning the band down. So this is a really cool little trick. Notice this though, if you look at the mixer, it’s keeping the band mix in tact. So, even when it starts bringing the band down, it keeps the relative instruments in tact. So it’s makes a group of everybody else, except for the acoustic guitar, and you can go back and forth. So that’s QMix and that’s the second wireless application that we have.

So now, what happens if you have multiple iPads and phones? We say with the StudioLive solution you can connect up to 10 different devices. How do you manage all of that? Because, one of the big problems is, there are some people you want to give a lot of control. Maybe you only have one iPad for the whole stage, and they’ve got to do everybody’s monitors, from stage? That’s where permissions come in and we’ve created a page where you can give permission to any particular musician to have control over exactly what you want. So, if you look at Virtual StudioLive, I’m on the Setup Page… and you can see, look at this, we’ve got a bunch of iPhones and iPads, all connected. So here’s Rick’s phone that we were just looking at right? And, as you can see, right now I have access to Aux 10. So you can see, there’s Aux 10. Well, let’s say Rick is that guy that I want to give him more control. So I go back to Virtual StudioLive, and I change it from Aux 10 to All Auxes. Now watch what happens. Now, go back to the phone and you can see now I’ve got control over everybody’s Auxes on stage.

But, let’s say Rick is one of those guys that doesn’t need too much control. In fact, I don’t even want to give him access to 24 Faders. Because all he’s going to do is sit there on his phone all day, the entire service, and futz with his levels. Well, here’s where you can really make this work for you. If you have that kind of musician that’s not really technical enough to mix 24 channels, what you can do is copy Mains to Queues. You know, copy the main Mix and give him a basic starting point. Give him a “me” channel. And then, I can go over here to Rick’s device and I can give him access only to one Aux and “Wheel Only.” Now when I hit the “Wheel Only” button, watch what happens to the phone. “Wheel Only”….Uh oh, Rick, sorry dude, you don’t have permission to modify the Auxes. “Rotate your device to use the ‘Wheel of Me.’” So now, he’s got the “More Me,” and that’s all he’s got, no matter what he does. That’s a really helpful thing for some people.

I’ve played in churches many times before when we had volunteer singers and a lot of them are not musicians. They’re just singers and if you hand them an Aviom system, and say “Good luck!”, you know, it’s overwhelming for them. So we wanted to create a solution that is comprehensive enough for high-tech musicians, but also easy enough to just give a singer or a low-tech musician the “More Me” very easily.

The next thing we are going to do is get set up to do a sound check. So I’m going to turn it over to Justin.

[Justin] “Hey…” [Justin is speaking but there is no sound coming through the microphone]

[Sound comes up on mic] “How you doing over there? Can you hear me over there?”

[Rick] More? [Justin] More [Justin] …More me…[mic volume increases]

You can take me out of the house a little bit if you’d like. Or I could do it myself because I have the power.

[Rick is laughing in the background]

[Justin] Alright. So, what we’re going to do is, all these guys all these, young, strapping young lads, are on wireless ears or wired ears and some headphones. But Phil, this lovely gentleman over hear on keys, is actually also using a wedge. So he’s got an ear in and an ear out and he’s using a wedge. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to make a little noise and we’re going to get a little stuff happening through the wedge. And I’m going to say, “Hey this is happening. Do you like that?” …and he’s going to say [Justin shakes his head "no"]…and I’m going to say, “How about this?”,,,and he’s going to go [Justing nods his head "yes"].

So, [to keyboard player] “You ready to try that?”

[Phil shakes his head "yes" then "no"] …[Justin breaks into laughter]

[Justin] Okay, so maybe I can get Brad to play a little bit of drums and I’ll throw in some kick and snare in the overheads and you let me know when you have what you like.

[drums begin to play softly in background]

[Justin] Give me that Master. Two. [Drums come up in volume]

[Justin] Oh yeah. [Phil nods his head "yes"] – [Justin] It’s cool?

[Justin signals drummer and drums stop] A little bass guitar maybe?… [bass guitar begins playing]

“Base”…is that how you pronounce that? Bass? “Base” or “Bass?”…Base, Bass

[Justin chuckles...bass guitar comes up through speakers] Maybe drums and bass? Can you hear him okay? Awesome [bass and drums sound together]

Does that work? More bass? Less bass? [Bass comes up a little more]

Cool. [Justin signals bass and drums to stop] That’s cool. How about a little acoustic guitar? ‘Cause I can do that for you. [Guitar sound comes up through speakers]

Beautomous…That’s enough That’s enough from you, Sean. Thank you.

And then we have some guitar over here from the “Coaster.” That’s your new nickname. Thank you. “Coatster.” [Electric guitar sound increases through the speakers]

And then, take us for a ride Brad. [3rd guitar sound check comes up through speakers]

Can you just play that through the rest of the deal. I’m just feeling it.

Alright. So we have drums, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, rhythm, lead guitar. More bass. He asked me to turn it up.

So if you all can just kind of play together and I’ll give an overall mix. Let me know when we’ve got it the way you want it. So just a “One, Two” and then whatever you want to play. [Drums tap 4 times to count off and the band begins playing all together]

Sounds pretty good right? [Phil nods 'Yes"] I guessed! That’s cool. [Band stops playing]