PreSonus Mixer Conquers Worship Band’s Tour Challenges!

The PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 mixer on tour with Branch

Steven Patterson of the worship band Branch is seriously impressed with the StudioLive 16.4.2. It has really changed the way they do in-ear mixing, recording and even front of house mixing. They were able to get rid of a bunch of separate components to get this one versatile mixer that does it all.

Check out what Steven had to say:
“We used to have an analog mixer, compressors and EQ’s on the road with us to handle our in-ear mix and occasional front of house. We also brought a Firestudio and a couple of Digimax preamps to record with, but we were able to sell all that stuff, replace it with a StudioLive, and have some money left over.”

He goes on to say, “This board has done everything we needed it to do. From running front of house and our in-ear mixes, it’s all savable and programmable as well as being a multi-channel recorder that can record up to 32 channels if you have two mixers. We record live while we mix our in-ears and front of house.”

Missing Musician? No Problem

Branch was at a show recently where there was no front of house sound person. Steven was able to playback his guitar and vocals from a recording made through the StudioLive at a previous show via firewire and have it come out in the main speakers. The rest of the band played live with the tracks of his guitar and vocals while Steven went out front to set up the main mix. Talk about being in two places at one time! Steven said this feature was absolutely priceless!

They normally use a split snake to send their inputs to both the front of house and to the StudioLive so they can mix monitors and record their performances. They use the two-way firewire connection from the StudioLive to a laptop running Ableton Live. Channels 1-14 get recorded directly to the computer while channels 15 and 16 have their loops and the Click tracks playing back from the computer. (Try pulling all that off with a standard mixer!)

Sometimes they need to play without the other guitar player, so they will use a channel to play his track back live – just like he was there. Because each channel has a firewire in and out they are then able to feed the missing guitar player to the front of house engineer for the main mix too.

Easy Live Recording

Another huge benefit of the StudioLive 16.4.2 is that when Branch plays at a worship retreat or event they can record the various sessions throughout the week, mix the best cuts in an evening, and sell the CDs on the last day of the event to the attendees. This helps them raise more money for their next studio CD.

Easy EQ & Processing

Steven also loves the fact that you can use the Fat Channel (StudioLive’s easy way to select and add EQ and processing to any channel with a push of a button) on not only the 16 mix channels but on the subgroups and the mains. They assign all the drums to group 1 and use EQ and compression to smooth and fatten the drum sound. They also use a limiter on the main outs when using it for front of house.

In-Ear Monitor Friendly

Since Branch uses the 6 aux busses for their in-ears, it makes sense to use the talkback mic input for an audience ambient mic to help give them that real live sound in their IEM mix. The talkback input has its own routing to all the aux busses so they can route the crowd noise to the in-ears. That still leaves them two effects busses, A and B.

Steven had this to say about StudioLive’s ability to digitally capture console settings: “The StudioLive allows you to save all your settings, so we know that no matter where we are, we’re going to get the perfect in-ear monitor mix – and that helps us perform our best”.

Overall, Steven and the Band love the StudioLive for its flexibility and sound quality. It allows them to do so much more with one piece of gear.

Learn More

See more details on the PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 here.
See a complete Studiolive 16.4.2 overview video, a video on the amazingly easy-to-use capture software and a video of Branch describing how they used the StudioLive 16.4.2 on thier tour here.

See more about Branch here. We think they’re Fantastic!

Try It Free!

Get your hands on the StudioLive 16.4.2 to try for yourself. Only CCI Solutions lets you try this amazing console before you buy! Call today to reserve your demo today 800-562-6006.