PreSonus StudioLive Digital Mixer Webinar Part 4 - CCI Solutions

♪♫♪♫........................[Music playing] Now, let me show you how to recall a scene from VSL. So let me pull up VSL real quick. And, I'll double-click on this icon and now here are my scenes right here. Now, I'm gonna tell you a story real quick. A..personal story about my wife. Uh, she's watching this webinar right now so ...Love you baby! [blows a kiss]... [laughing]...brownie points, you know? So, ah, my wife was the uh, worship leader's ah...at our church's assistant for a while and you know, was the secretary basically for the worship, uhm, uhm, ministry. And although we had a full-time sound man, that would come and mix on Sunday mornings, uhm...for any other kind of thing that happened in the church, like, who does sound for a wedding?... or a funderal? Guess who it was? My wife. Okay. [chuckles] And, uh, bless her heart. She uh, is not a musician. She's not technical. She'd much rather write you a letter than send you an email. Uh, hates computers. Uh, and she would walk up to this big board with all these knobs and faders and just be in total distress and, you know, it was a bummer. But this is true of a lot of churches. You wer..you will have people that have to operate this equipment that are not musicians, that are not technical. They don't know anything about this. Well that's where VSL really saves the day. Let's go back to the screen. Okay. So let's say, uh, I need to recall a scene for the funeral. Okay? Now, I showed you on the board. Let me show you how easy it is on VSL. I just go up to the "Funeral" preset. And I click, and I'm gonna drag it and drop it anywhere on the board. Boom. The board instantly changes. I mean look how easy it is. I just click this preset, drag it over here. Click this preset, drag it over here. The board is instantly changing to all of these different settings. It's cool, huh? Okay. So that will really allow you uh, espec...especially for your volunteers uh, that have to touch this equipment to be able to get around and, and switch scenes very easily. Okay, so let me tell you about the next thing we're gonna talk about... and that is...Mixing Wirelessly...and you know, this is something that PreSonus, uhm, I think we were probably the first digital console manufacturer at this price range to be able to offer a solution that will allow you to be able to mix wirelessly with an iPad. So this is, the iPad app StudioLive Remote. And this is the one that comes free uhm, on the Apple App Store. So here's all of my levels...you know, on faders. If I want to, you know, basically click on an individual channel and, you know, grab an EQ, like, let's say, you know here's uh acoustic my acoustic guitar...and I want to just grab the "Acoustic Guitar" right here... and hit the EQ...and start tweaking something wha...look at the board, as you can see I'm, I'm controlling the board from this iPad and I can walk around and you know, basically be in the exact position. I think at one time in the bylaws of, uh, church construction there was a law that you had to place the sound board in the worst possible place, up in some heinous balcony..where you can't hear anything. And, thank God, you know, that churches are starting to, to uh, you know be built with sound in..in mind. But, you know if you're one of these churches that, uhm, basically your front-of-house mix position isn't in a, an area of the room where it sounds completely different, from where, what the congregation hears, you will love this. Because, all of a sudden you can go down and actually influence the sound from wherever the people are. And it's a huge huge benefit. Uh, the other thing that you can do with the StudioLive Remote is, let's say if I just want to look at 1 channel really big, like this Acoustic Guitar channel... Just turn this portrait mode...Now it, it basically blows up just that one channel. So here's my Gate for that channel. Here's my Compressor for that channel. If I want to assign that Acoustic Guitar to Aux 2 here's my assignments to the Auxes right down here. Okay? If I want to go to the Kick Drum right here on the right-hand side I can just go up here to "Kick" and now I'm on the Kick Drum channel. You know? And I did this all wirelessly. And it's really cool. Uhm, so, I can tell you right now you know, our sound guy, uhm, has been using the iPad app now, and he will never, ever, ever, ever want to mix without it. Because it leterally changes your whole perspective uh, on mixing. Uhm, I once talked to another uh, uh worship uh, sound guy and he told me that "You mean I can sit next to my wife in the pew and, and mix the service?" "Yes you can!" So uh, thanks to uh the StudioLive Remote. Okay. So, the next thing that we're gonna talk about is one of the big things with the StudioLive. And that is its ability to record very easily. And like I told you before, uhm, you know, PreSonus has really been sort of in the business of creating recording solutions first. Uh, so we wanted to make sure that our, our..our board had the ability to record, but recording was not an afterthought. So I'm just gonna close this right quick. And I'm gonna open it up just like I would on a Sunday morning. And let's just say "We want to record." Now, here's the thing with recording, It's like you almost have to have a different brain...the old way...to record the worship service. Because your job as the front of house sound engineer is to make sure that people can hear, that the sound right..is right for the room. But, in order to record the service, traditionally you have to deal with a whole other system... a whole other recording system, with its own Gains. So, you could actually be mixing great in the, in the, in the room but then the levels going to the, um, or the volumes that are going to the recording, uh solution might be overloading. Well that's not ever gonna happen with the StudioLive. The reason is is that you have one Gain stage on the mixer. And so, basically, as soon as I adjust these Gains, to where they're not clip...clipping or overloading for the house, basically they're set for the recording. So now I go to "Capture," i hit "Create Session," I pick where I wanna put that session, and I hit 2 buttons: "Arm All Tracks," hit "Record," and we're recording. I didn't have to assign anything to anything. I didn't have to set up any menus, nothing. We're recording. And now I'm mixing. I'm basically not even thinking about recording. Right when the service is over, uh, you can do several different things. You can export these tracks out. You can not only record individual tracks, but, if you look down at the bottom, you also have the ability to record a stereo track. So you can ctually do the stereo output of the board, or a stereo Aux send, or two of your subgroups, and make a [snaps fingers] instand duplication version, you know, just a stereo recording as well as multi-tracking. You know, I think multi-tracking's really important for uh, churches, and I'll tell you why...is that you just never know what Sunday would be the Sunday that you wish you would have been able to record. And not just record, have the ability to go back and remix and re-edit. Uhm, I'm from Louisiana. Uhm, and our company's based out of Baton Rouge. And uhm, we uh, our church was set up as a shelter after Hurricane Katrina for the families of the fire-fighters in New Orleans. Uhm, they were, many of them were homeless. Uh, after the hurricane and they were living in our church. And our worship leader wrote, uh, an amazing amazing song, and we had a prayer time one night with all of the families there. And he sang this song and so many people wanted a copy of it and, at that time, we..it you know, it was years ago. It was 2005 way before the StudioLive, and we didn't have anything to, to give these people. And it just was one of those Sunday's that, man! If we just could have recorded it, and not just recorded it being able to really go back an remix and re-edit it's huge right? It, it's completely a part of the StudioLive solution. It's not an afterthought. Uhm, we designed it to be easy to multi-track. Let me tell you something else...is Hard-drive costs. I mean, you know, I can buy a...How much is a 2 terabyte hard drive these days? Anybody? [Audience member speaking] $150 [Rick] 150 bucks! 2 terabytes. I don't even know the math of how many Sunday mornings that would be. But, it's a bunch. And, it's a 2 terabyte hard drive. So You don't have any excuse to not multi-track...any more. It's really easy. And it's really inexpensive. Compared to where it used to be. Okay, so the next thing we're gonna talk about with regards to the Virtual, uh, sorry with, with Capture and how it works is another benefit. It's not just for recording. It's for something we call, we, we like to call "Virtual" Soundcheck. Now, let me ask you, uh, to my audience here, How many of you all that mix live sound did a sound check within the last month? Raise your hand.....Okay. You're lying. [Chuckling] And I'll tell you why. Because, I play in a church and I'll tell you what the typical Sunday morning is. And this is not a soundcheck... Okay? Uh, so it's a 9 AM service... You tell everybody to be there at 8 AM. Okay? The drummer's late... A couple of people are kinda straggling in... there's a buzz in the PA... there was a wedding on the Saturday before... you're going crazy... you're trying to get it together... Right? The worship leader's going crazy 'cause half the musicians are late, and he just says "Hey, c'mon let's run the songs." Everybody's playing at the same time. Okay? If you want to...play with the compression setting on your snare drum, can you get the, the drummer to stop, you know, basically say "Hey can you hit the snare drum for about 3 minutes and everybody else quite noodling?" Does that every happen? [Audience chuckling] Okay? That's because we, sound people, are on the battle field [laughing], uh, on Sunday mornings. And it's literally survival mode, and you're just trying to get it happening for Sunday morning. Okay. So that's the other big benefit of Capture. You know? What if I could actually have my band there, all together on time, and I could make them not play, and I could only listen to one thing at a time. Well now you can. So basically all I have to do... is, basically, [clicking buttons on the console] engage these Firewire return buttons you see. When these are not engaged, it's the analog signal that you plug in from the jacks on the back that are coming into the board. As soon as I engage these firewire return buttons I'm actually bringing in individual recorded tracks from let's say my last Sunday service into the board just as an analog signal. So now, I hit "Play" here... and I can kinda, start bringing up my whole band [sound of a band begins and gets louder] [Music playing through the mixer...♪♫♪♪] And I can kinda get a little mix happening... Not only that, let's say I want to wor, I want to work on the bass guitar sound. I can Solo the bass. [Bass playing through mixer] And now, drop it in a preset on it. Maybe I want to try a new sound on it. And go ahead and find a, oh! We've never tried this one...the bass slap preset. Recall, boom. Now we have a starting point. Oh this is working, but too much compression. I can go ahead, and you know, kind of adjust it here, save it to a new place. Now I can go to the uh, the lead vocalist...[vocals start playing through the mixer] and mess with their compression settings. Bascially, having your band there without them being there. And they're at your command for when you want them to play. Uh, this really allows you to be able to get the front of house mix I would say 95 percent dialed in. You know, in today's world, expecially in churches so many churches are moving to the "silent stage" kind of concept...using in-ear monitors... you know, electronic drums, or at least drum shields to kind of keep the stage volume down. When you hit "Play" with Capture and you start mixing your worship service like this, as just a way to, you know, play with different settings on the board... save new scenes, uh, you will get 95 percent of the way there. And it's real really cool. It's invaluable. Uhm, and it'll actually change the way that you completely mix. ♪♫♪♫.........[Music playing]