Hey guys,

Want to show you something. I saw Big Joe Daddy’s Big Multi-Pin Panel-Box Thingy post on the PreSonus blog. It looked very professional! I too use the StudioLive 24.4.2 on various occasions and locations.
We all want to get the best mixing position for our bands and the easiest place for the console. But having said this, we all know that having at least 30 cables to the mixer on the other end of the stage isn’t easy. It gets messy. So I wanted a flexible solution for my band(s).
One band is very different from the other. One is almost completely acoustic, with 3 vocals, acoustic/electric bass and guitar, accordion, and drums. We use two auxes for wedge mixes. The other band is completely electric, with 3 vocals, drums, electric piano, guitars, and basses. No amps on stage, and four stereo in-ear mixes for monitoring. My StudioLive is also used in churches and other events.

I wanted to make a flexible and very compact snake-system that I could use in both situations. I wanted to have the possibility to get all 24 channels from the stage to the Studiolive, and to get the main and subgroup-outputs plus all the aux outputs back to the stage. Ordinarily, this would require a single 40-channel snake. Everybody knows that these cables are heavy, and not easy to use at all. And every time, I would have to plug in 40 cables into my mixer.
Now my solution:
I had a 30-meter 16.4 snake for a couple of years, and I thought, ”Why not have two of these 16.4 cables, with multi-pins in the mixer case?” So, I bought another 16.4.2 multi-core cable to make a total of 40 channels.
I keep my StudioLive 24.4.2 in a Thon mixer case, from Germany. This case was made for the SL and it fits perfectly. Nice thing about this case is the “semi” doghouse configuration. This gave me room to mount the multi-pin connectors in the case. It took me a week or two to make all the connections and to change connectors of the second stage box. Stage box one has 16 inputs and four outputs (A, B, C, and D). Stagebox two has eight more inputs, all 10 aux outputs from the mixer (with Neutrik combo sockets) and two more outs, E and F. This all gives us 24 inputs on the StudioLive and 16 outputs from the mixer on stage.
With our acoustic band, I only need one snake, and with the other band I use both snakes. Now we can put the mixer anywhere we like, setup time is much quicker than before and we don’t have to carry very heavy cables.
See the attached photos for the result. Maybe this helps other StudioLive users to get ideas about their set-up.

Greeting from a very happy StudioLive user!

Jan-Arend Blok

Jan’s bands:

 ”Would it be possible to assemble a system that could record 16 inputs onto a multitrack for under $2000?”

The answer is… well, read for yourself. It’s a bit of a lengthy thread but well worth the time. SPOILER ALERT: His solution involves and iPad and the AudioBox 1818VSL.

Here’s a highlight:

"I ran a test last night. 16 tracks at 24/96. Recorded for a minute. Added another 16 in record for a minute while playing back the first 16. Then added 5 more stereo tracks. Hit record. Then added 6 more stereo tracks. Hit record. 

Several observations:

1) This is not real world because we don't record 1 minute songs.
2) CPU usage at its highest never exceeded 30%. There are CPU and Disk Space Usage meters right on the front of the mixer.
3) I got "Low Memory" messages at least four times, so I finally quit every other app BUT Auria. That seemed to eliminate the problem.
4) It only bailed on a recording one time, and that was when I had the buffer set to 128. I upped it to 256 and it seemed fine. By then I was playing back 42 tracks at 24/96 and recording 12 more.

I considered doing a stress test and recording for a long duration but file management using iTunes, at least to someone accustomed to using a computer, seems like a real headache. I'm going to wait to do that test until after I finish my actual music recording. I don't want to fill up the drive with huge empty files.

Like the guy at the Apple store told me, "the iPad is designed for GATHERING information." Fascinating. In the big picture, I think he's right. It's a content-vacuum. Videos, pictures, audio: it's designed to collect info. It's really easy to import stuff into an iPad. Exporting (apart from tossing it into iTunes), not so much. So far, it seems like the recording will be the easy part. At least to this seasoned pro who is accustomed to using multiple backup drives and backup utilities like SyncPro and drag and drop file management."

Read the entire thread over at 3D Audio! There’s some great mobile recording opportunities with this setup…