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Digital Mixing: the next generation

With its incredible signal-processing power on every channel, easy store and recall of every setting, and the ability to record it all with just two mouse clicks, a StudioLive mixer will spoil you fast! Easier to use, better sounding, and flawlessly integrated with state-of-the-art software, it delivers the most creative environment possible for both live performance and studio music production.

The 32-channel, 14-aux PreSonus® StudioLive™ 32.4.2AI starts with all the strengths of previous StudioLive models—and then pushes the technology to the next level.

StudioLive 32.4.2AI is built with next-generation Active Integration technology that adds unprecedented power for mixing consoles anywhere near this price class. So while the 32.4.2AI looks and feels much like its non-AI counterparts it has with far more computing power, which makes possible some very useful new features.

For starters, you get twice as many internal effects buses and 31-band graphic EQs. We’ve added six mute groups and user-assignable Quick Scene buttons. You’ll love the ability to create two complete sets of EQ and dynamics settings for a channel or bus and then make quick A/B comparisons at the touch of a button.

A built-in 48x34 FireWire S800 interface is standard equipment but Thunderbolt and Ethernet (Dante) cards are expected by the end of 2013. A dedicated USB 2 port and included Wi-Fi LAN adapter lets you control the mixer wirelessly—even without a Mac® or Windows® PC.

Of course, you get the latest version of our tightly integrated software bundle, including updated Capture™ 2.0 recording software, Studio One Artist® DAW, and Virtual StudioLive-AI editor/librarian/control software with Smaart Measurement Technology™. StudioLive Remote-AI for iPad® and QMix™-AI for iPhone®/iPod® touch will both be available free from the Apple App Store.

The deeper you dig into the StudioLive 32.4.2AI’s capabilities, the more you will realize that the future of digital mixing starts here and now!

The future is Active Integration

Products that sense each other, interact and work together via wireless and wired communication, feature 32-bit floating-point DSP and seamlessly integrated software, and run on CPUs far more powerful than competitors’ current audio products—PreSonus has realized this dream with its new Active Integration technology.

Thanks to Active Integration, the StudioLive 32.4.2AI mixer has 64 times the processing power and an incredible 10,000 times more RAM than the StudioLive 24.4.2. This makes possible the aforementioned extended feature set.

PreSonus Active Integration products employ cutting-edge OMAP™ 5 multi-core ARM 2GHz Cortex-A processors — a whole computer on a chip. These 32-bit, 96 kHz multi-stream CPUs include an operating system, wireless and 100 Mb Ethernet communications, USB 2.0 and 1.1, and lavish amounts of 532 MHz LPDDR2 SD RAM.

StudioLive 32.4.2AI is the first mixer to employ Active Integration but the technology also is at the heart of the new StudioLive AI-series PA speakers and will be an essential technology in an entire ecosystem of PreSonus products in the future.

It’s a StudioLive—only more so

A quick look at the StudioLive 32.4.2AI reveals a now-familiar, user-friendly mixing surface. It sports 100 mm faders for the 32 channels, 4 subgroups, and main bus. As with all StudioLive mixers, convenient knobs and buttons abound, and all core mixing features are immediately accessible from the mixing surface, without using the LCD, providing an intuitive, analog-like user experience.

The unique Fat Channel section delivers a compressor, limiter, gate/expander, and four-band fully parametric EQ on every channel, bus, and subgroup, plus a high-pass filter and polarity invert for each channel—not to mention routing, panning, and Scene and setting store and recall.

Select buttons assign the channels, buses, and subgroups to the Fat Channel for processing and routing. There’s a Talkback section, Cue section, and extensive metering.

And of course you get aux buses—14 of them—and 32-bit floating-point stereo reverb and delay on dedicated buses—two of each.

View the rear, and you’ll see a familiar StudioLive jackfield, with XLR mic and ¼” inputs and TRS insert points on every channel, along with a wealth of other inputs and outputs. A pair of FireWire ports—FireWire S800, rather than the FireWire 400 ports found on the StudioLive 24.4.2, 16.4.2, and 16.0.2—provides wired networking to a Mac or PC, with options for Thunderbolt and Ethernet (Dante). Stereo S/PDIF digital outputs—check! Analog direct channel outputs on DB25 connectors—check! Obviously, flexible connectivity is no problem.

The audio quality, as always with PreSonus, is first rate. Like all StudioLive models, StudioLive 32.4.2 offers PreSonus’ widely lauded Class A XMAX™ mic preamps and top-notch converters with 118 dB of dynamic range. Reviewers have raved about the high quality of StudioLive mixers’ dynamics processing, EQ, high-pass filters, and effects. The only difference with the StudioLive 32.4.2 is that we’ve given you even more of them.

Yes, the 32.4.2AI is a StudioLive alright. But it’s a major step beyond previous StudioLive mixers.

The big picture

Easier to use, better sounding, and flawlessly integrated with state-of-the-art software and extensive remote-control features, StudioLive 32.4.2AI delivers the most creative environment possible for both live performance and studio music production.

But StudioLive is not simply a mixer, it's a rapidly growing family of state-of-the-art, integrated hardware-software mixing and recording systems that deliver the features you need for live sound, live recording, and studio recording.

The StudioLive 32.4.2AI is a fine choice for those who want to mix medium-sized and large shows and worship services, and it's a great choice for club systems, corporate applications, and educational institutions. And it's the perfect hardware core for a sophisticated project studio.

Here, in one device, are high-headroom XMAX™ microphone preamplifiers, a built-in 48x34 FireWire S800 recording and playback interface, more than 300 signal processors, a big library of DSP effects, 14 aux buses, 4 subgroups, extensive LED metering, mixer save and recall, channel-strip save/recall/copy/paste, talkback, and more.

Build live mixes that glisten with clarity and detail—then record and enhance the performance with the power of StudioLive 32.4.2AI. Get creative in the studio. Build mixes, loops, sound effects, and more, then bring them out to your show and mix them live. Process channels using your favorite plug-ins and completely automate your entire performance.

That’s just the start. Control the StudioLive 32.4.2AI from your Mac, PC, or iPad®. Manage monitor mixes from an iPhone® or iPod touch®. Tune your system to the room and fix feedback problems with VSL-AI’s integrated Smaart Measurement Technology™.

StudioLive 32.4.2AI revolutionizes music production, opening endless creative possibilities.

Control your sound your way!

With a PreSonus StudioLive-series digital mixer, you not only get high-end sound and tremendous processing, mixing, and recording power, you can control all of this sonic might from virtually anywhere. Want to touch your mix with the physical feedback of real faders and rotary knobs and an intuitive, analog-like user interface? The StudioLive delivers big time; sound people who have only mixed with analog boards quickly become comfortable working with a StudioLive.

See it. Touch it. Change it. The ease of analog meets the power of digital.

Among the employees of PreSonus, there are more band members than you can shake a mic stand at. All of us have lived with conventional mixers for years. And many of us have struggled with the less-than-intuitive interfaces of earlier digital mixers — bank switching, layers, nested menus, etc.

So when we designed StudioLive, one of our primary goals was to provide a familiar interface that would keep all critical controls visible and accessible —not buried inside multiple menus.

Sit down at a StudioLive 32.4.2AI, and you see easily accessed, color-coded function buttons for Mute and Solo; rotary trim controls; and clearly labeled, individual knobs for EQ and dynamics processing. Aux sends have their own physical controls. Every channel has a big, bright meter display. The master section comes complete with Talkback, Monitor, Cue, and a choice of control-room sources. It looks just like the master section on an analog board but with far more power and flexibility.

Bottom line: If you’ve ever used an analog mixer, you’ll be right at home with a StudioLive 32.4.2AI. And even if you’ve never used a mixer before, you’ll quickly be able to create professional mixes and recordings.

Like all StudioLive-series mixers, the StudioLive 32.4.2AI offers convenient, backlit Mute and Solo buttons for every channel, subgroup, and aux bus. But the 32.4.2AI adds another feature that makes the mutes even more useful: six mute groups with All On and All Off buttons.

A mute group allows you to mute and unmute multiple channels and buses with the press of a single button. With the six mute groups on the StudioLive 32.4.2AI, you could, for example, assign the drum mics to Mute Group 1, the other instruments to Mute Group 2, the background vocalists to Mute Group 3, all the aux buses to Mute Group 4, all four FX buses to Mute Group 5, and every channel on the mixer to Mute Group 6.

So during an acoustic jam, you can mute all the drum mics with one button. When the lead singer introduces the band and says “Hello, New Orleans!” you can mute all of the effects assigned to his vocal. When the band goes on break, you can mute all of the channels at once. And when its time to break down the stage and start unplugging things, you can just lower the main fader and mute all the stage monitors with one button.

Creating a mute group is quick and easy: Just mute the desired channels and buses and press and hold a Mute Group button. The button will flash for one second to indicate it is storing the group, and then will remain illuminated.

Want to mute all channels and buses? Hit the All On button. An All Off button lets you instantly unmute all muted channels and buses.

Virtual StudioLive-AI: The magic of computer control.

Despite its analog-like mixing surface, this is very much a digital console, and it offers features no analog mixer—and very few digital boards—can match. For example, the ability to control the StudioLive mixer from a laptop adds tremendous flexibility and convenience—and with the bundled Virtual StudioLive-AI bidirectional control/editor/librarian software, you get it all for free.

Written exclusively for StudioLive mixers, Virtual StudioLive (VSL) provides a complete visual representation of the mixer, allowing you to control the features with a mouse, trackpad, or trackball on a networked Mac® or Windows® PC. Add third-party VPN software, and you can even control StudioLive mixers over the Internet—ideal for contractors. To get a competing mixer with computer control even close to this complete, you'd have to pay several times as much.

Learn more about Virtual StudioLive.

Even better: wireless control!

You’re mixing a live show, and you need to check the sound underneath the balcony—or in the balcony, for that matter. Or you’re sound-checking and want to hear the stage monitors for yourself. If you can’t leave the mixing station, you have to rely on someone else’s ears. If you don’t have a reliable crew, you don’t have a chance.

You can say goodbye to that problem if you use a StudioLive 32.4.2AI and an Apple iPad®!

The StudioLive 32.4.2AI sports an Ethernet port that allows you to connect to a wireless router for wired Ethernet and wireless Wi-Fi networking. In addition, the mixer has a USB 2.0 port that hosts the included USB Wi-Fi LAN adapter, providing wireless networking without a router for situations where a less powerful, ad hoc Wi-Fi connection is sufficient.

In this way, the mixer can be controlled from a laptop using VSL and from an iPad® using StudioLive Remote-AI, which is available free from the Apple App Store. SL Remote-AI is easy to use, provides control of almost every feature of the StudioLive—including Scene changes and Smaart®. And it looks and feels like an iPad app should.

Learn more about StudioLive Remote.

Yet even better: control of monitor mixes from iPhones and iPod touches!

We've given you a lot of sonic control with the StudioLive 32.4.2AI, Virtual StudioLive-AI, and StudioLive Remote-AI. It's only fair that we help you give the band control of their sound, too. With PreSonus' free QMix™-AI, each band member can control their own StudioLive 32.4.2AI aux (monitor) mix from an iPhone® or iPod® touch. QMix lets you adjust a single aux mix per iPhone. Select inputs and levels for your custom monitor mix, and then use the Wheel of Me to get, well… “more me”… quickly during performances.

You can even set permissions to ensure that the bass player, always the practical joker, can't mess with the hot-tempered lead singer's monitor mix. Otherwise, that bass player is going to get in trouble someday. We're just sayin'….

Learn more about QMix.

The level of control you get with PreSonus StudioLive-series mixers is beyond cool—it's absolutely ice! Now you can control your sound from anywhere you choose—no limits! Only with PreSonus StudioLive.

A gigantic console in a small package thanks to the Fat Channel.

If StudioLive 32.4.2AI were an analog console, it would have 4-foot-long channel strips packed with knobs and buttons or it would require a massive outboard rack of expensive signal processors! That's because each channel has its own studio-grade compressor, limiter, gate/expander, 4-band parametric equalizer, and high-pass filter. In all, we've packed 60 compressors, 60 limiters, 60 gate/expanders, 54 high-pass filters, and more, into one remarkable Fat Channel.

Meet the Fat Channel.

Engaged by pressing any Select button, the Fat Channel features extensive equalization and dynamics processing for every input channel, every aux output, the FX outputs, and the main outputs. The high-pass filter and EQ algorithms deliver extremely musical results. Also included in the Fat Channel are limiters, plus compressors and a switchable downward expander/gate, providing extensive dynamics control.

To let you get the most from all of this processing power without descending into menu purgatory, we designed the Fat Channel with clearly labeled, physical knobs; an ingenious, multifunction, 16-ladder LED display; an in-your-face Selected Channel display; and even a separate horizontal pan display. It’s easy to instantly access any function and get clear, visible feedback.

Because the StudioLive 32.4.2AI has so much more processing power and blazing-fast RAM than previous StudioLive models, you can create two complete sets of EQ and dynamics-processor settings for every channel and bus and then make quick A/B comparisons at the touch of the Alt EQ & Dyn button. In this way, you can experiment with a new sound without having to struggle to re-create your previous settings, and you can edit a setting and then quickly verify that the new version is, in fact, better.

Not just effects. Effects you'd expect from a $600 stand-alone processor. Or two.

You get four programmable, 32-bit, stereo DSP effects engines—two of them loaded with reverbs and two armed with delay effects that you can really use. The reverbs are so rich and detailed that you feel like you're there. Delays are precise. Slap echo sounds like old-school tape effects.

All 50 preset effects have easy-to-use parameter adjustments, tap tempo, store, recall, and Scene selection for ultimate creative flexibility.

The StudioLive 32.4.2AI’s 50 practical 32-bit digital effects

Some of our competitors include a lot more than 50 digital effects. But frankly, many of their “effects” are so weird that they aren’t good for much more than a hearty chuckle or the most drunken karaoke party in history.

Instead, we armed StudioLive with an essential library of serious, down-to-earth reverbs and delays, created by seasoned sound professionals. Each is useful, practical, and very rich, thanks to 32-bit floating-point processing and exquisite algorithms. None of them sound like a dog gargling—unless you want them to, since each has multiple adjustable parameters.

AMBIENCE

·       Natural

·       Lively


SMALL ROOM

·       Closet

·       Studio A

·       Studio B

·       Bedroom


BRIGHT ROOM

·       Kitchen

·       Tile Floors

·       Tile Bathroom

·       Concrete Floors


SMALL HALL

·       Radio Booth

·       Small Club

·       Big Club


BRIGHT HALL

·       Brick House

·       Linoleum Room

·       Tile Room


WARM HALL

·       Log Cabin

·       Wood Floors

·       Brick Club

·       High Ceilings


GATED HALL

·       GateVerb Short

·       GateVerb Med

·       GateVerb Long

·       GateVerb Extreme


LARGE HALL

·       Church

·       Cathedral

·       Gymnasium

·       Arena


PLATE

·       Shimmer

·       Thick

·       Drums

·       Vox


MONO DELAY

·       M: Short Slap

·       M: Long Slap

·       M: Triplet

·       M: Triplet


FILTER DELAY

·       Analog Slap

·       Analog Trip

·       Analog 8th


STEREO DELAY

·       Slap Quick

·       Long Slap

·       Spacey

·       Long Tail

·       ST: Triplet


PING PONG DELAY

·       Quick

·       Slap

·       Spacey

·       Trip

·       Purple Rain 

The reverbs are so rich and detailed that you feel like you’re there. Delays are precise. Slap echo sounds like old-skool tape effects. All 50 effects have easy-to-use parameter adjustment, tap tempo, and store and recall selection for the ultimate in creative flexibility.

The StudioLive 32.4.2AI's 16 31-band graphic equalizers are pre-inserted on each aux mix and on the Main bus so you can fix feedback problems and adjust the frequency balance of your main mix.

Furthermore, with Smaart Measurement Technology™, you'll be able to really put StudioLive's 4-band, fully parametric EQs to work improving the sound of your P.A. Precisely identify nasty feedback frequencies. Get your loudspeakers to play nicer with the room they're in. Set the correct subgroup output-delay time for remote speakers. All without having a degree in acoustical engineering.

What was then is now: complete store and recall—instantly.

Two factors work against getting that Perfect Mix with an analog mixer. First, the Perfect Mix can be hard to reproduce a week, day, or hour after you perfect it. And second, a good mix should be dynamic: levels, effects, and EQ should be tailored to each song or segment of the show, service, or presentation. This adds up to a lot of settings to remember and reset at every performance.

That's where the power of digital comes in: StudioLive lets you save all of your digital settings for quick setup and recall. Save Scenes that include every setting on the mixer or save just the Fat Channel settings. Copy-and-paste settings across multiple channels. Save individual DSP effects for ultimate ease, speed, and control.

The StudioLive 32.4.2AI makes saving and recalling Scenes faster and more convenient than ever thanks to the Fat Channel’s six user-assignable Quick Scene buttons. These buttons allow you to create a Scene without storing it to permanent memory and giving it a name. This is especially useful when mixing multiple bands that you might not ever mix again. You can also use this to have important stored Scenes at your fingertips.

This means that for fixed applications like clubs, churches, and auditoriums, you can always count on the same sound and can fine-tune Scenes for different songs and call them up instantly. And it lets rank amateur volunteers successfully operate the StudioLive 32.4.2AI.

Powerful store and recall made easy.

StudioLive solves the problem getting of a Perfect Mix by letting you save all of your digital settings for quick setup and recall. Save Scenes that include every setting on the mixer. Save just the Fat Channel settings. Copy-and-paste settings across multiple channels and buses. Save individual DSP effects for ultimate ease, speed, and control.

This means that for fixed applications like clubs, churches, and auditoriums, you can always count on the same sound. It means that you can fine-tune Scenes for different songs and call them up instantly. And it lets rank-amateur volunteers run the StudioLive and achieve pro-quality sound.

We’ve included a whole library of individual channel settings as starting points for optimizing the sound of instruments, vocals, and spoken word. And an Automatic AutoStore feature regularly saves your current settings in case the power fails.

And of course you can store an unlimited number of settings and scenes on your laptop with Virtual StudioLive-AI.

“WOW! How did you get that snare to sound so good?”

Don’t tell them it was one of the 50 StudioLive Fat Channel channel presets.

StudioLive’s Fat Channel lets you apply the equivalent of a six-foot rack of signal processors to every input. If you’re an experienced sound person, you’ll love all the options. But if you’re new to pro audio, gating, compression, limiting, semi-parametric equalization, and so on, can seem pretty complicated—which is why we’ve built in 50 excellent preset starting points.

Before we released the StudioLive, we sent some out to professional sound mixers and engineers, let them tweak to their heart’s content under actual live and studio conditions, and then stored the results in factory presets. You get the benefit of their years of experience at making drums, percussion, guitars, keyboards, horns, vocals, and spoken word sound their best.

And of course you can alter, rename, and generally customize each preset and save it in any of 50 empty storage locations. Here’s a sample:

DRUMS

·       Kick, Funk, Jazz,

·       Fat Snare and Snare Crackalak

·       Toms Low and Hi Overhead

·       Rock

·       and 9 more


BASS

·       Electric 1, 2

·       Slap

·       Upright


GUITAR

·       Rock 1, 2

·       Funk

·       Metal

·       Acoustic

·       and 3 more


KEYBOARDS

·       Bright Piano

·       Warm Piano

·       Jazz Piano

·       and 3 more


HORNS

·       Trumpet

·       Trombone

·       Sax

·       Solo Sax


PERCUSSION

·       Congas

·       Bongos

·       and more


VOICE

·       3 male presets

·       2 female presets

·       2 spoken-word presets

​Recording made easy with Capture™

If you have a computer with FireWire S800 connection, you have a 34-track digital recorder instantly ready to capture your gig, church service, or presentation. That’s because StudioLive 32.4.2AI features a tightly integrated FireWire 800 interface that delivers up to 48 channels of recording and up to 34 channels of simultaneous playback. Each analog channel on your StudioLive can be set to record either pre- or post-Fat Channel signal processing, delivering total flexibility and power.

Just two mouse clicks engages Capture™ recording software. When you install it on your laptop, it automatically “maps” to the outputs of the 32.4.2AI to automatically record all 32 input channels plus the stereo main mix.

Recording with Capture

Because StudioLive 32.4.2AI can so easily return FireWire playback channels from your computer, you can pull off nifty tricks. You can “virtually” soundcheck your band and fine-tune the P.A. and monitors in a new venue, even when the band’s not there yet. (The drummer got stuck in traffic again.) Or create backing tracks at your studio and seamlessly blend them with live performances.

Here’s a particularly cool feature: Capture lets you insert markers during a live recording — between songs or parts of a worship service or presentation—with a single mouse-click. Later, when you are ready to edit the performance, you can export each region you have marked as a separate file, using a single command. This saves hours and hours of work!

And Capture can run simultaneously with Virtual StudioLive-AI and SL Remote-AI, so you can personally soundcheck every part of the stage and house.

Learn more about Capture.

Studio One® Artist — A serious digital audio workstation.

Once you’re recorded studio tracks or a live multi-track performance, it’s time to finish it with effects and a good mix (not to mention editing out that huge burst of feedback during the third song).

Studio One is a groundbreaking music-creation and -production application for Mac OS X and Windows® that makes audio recording and MIDI sequencing ridiculously simple right out of the box.

Studio One changes the rules of the game with fresh code, innovative drag-and-drop features, advanced MIDI mapping, auto-configuration with your StudioLive 32.4.2AI, insanely good audio quality, unlimited tracks and plug-ins per track, and a powerful, inventive Start page. Studio One Artist also comes with a Native Effects™ 32-bit effects library, complete with dynamics processors, reverbs, modulation effects, amp simulators, and more. And with Studio One's free Nimbit® extension, you can immediately start selling your music.

Learn more about Studio One.

Inside, it's pure PreSonus.

Ease of use and powerful features only count if the sound quality is equally impressive. After all, it really comes down to how good those microphone preamps are, how clean the signal path is, and how well the algorithms perform.

That's why you should choose a digital mixer made by PreSonus, a company already famous for its analog mic preamps, pristine digital interfaces, and well-regarded signal processors.

XMAX™ Class A preamplifiers deliver more headroom, deeper lows, smoother highs, and a richer overall sound than the preamps found in competing mixers. Ultra-high-headroom, 32-bit floating-point processing is used for all digital mixing. All analog inputs and outputs use the highest quality digital converters available.

The XMAX difference

At PreSonus, we know that the mic preamplifier is a key component in the sonic quality of a recording. The StudioLive includes custom-designed, high-voltage, discrete, XMAX Class A microphone preamplifiers that are suitable for use with all types of microphones.

The job of a microphone preamplifier in a digital mixer is to boost a microphone-level signal to line level before conversion to the digital domain.

A good preamp boosts the level to almost 400 times that of the original signal, making the preamp one of the most important stages in an interface. A cheap, off-the-shelf, op-amp-type mic preamp delivers thin, noisy, harsh results.

But with XMAX preamps, the sonic quality is limited only by what microphone you plug into it.

XMAX preamplifiers are built with three key elements:

  • High Voltage. The XMAX preamplifier runs on power rails of 30V. Most off-the-shelf, op-amp-based designs run on power rails of 10V to 18V. Higher-voltage power rails deliver more headroom, deeper lows, smoother highs, and a richer overall sound.

  • Discrete components—not op-amps. We only use genuine transistors, resistors, and capacitors. Op-amps add noise, coloration, and harshness to a signal. Our discrete design delivers ultra-low noise and transparency.

  • Class A. Class A circuits have no crossover distortion and deliver purer, clearer, and more musical results than the Class AB designs that are found in many preamps.

The net result of the XMAX preamp design is high headroom, low noise, wide dynamic range, extended frequency response, and—most important—musicality and transparency, with smooth highs, solid deep lows, and everything in between.

Synchronization to your computer is stable and robust, thanks to JetPLL™ synchronization technology, resulting in great stereo separation and clear, transparent audio.

Superb sound from the interface experts.

Ease of use and powerful features only count if the sound quality is equally impressive. After all, it really comes down to how clean the signal path is and how well the mixing algorithms perform.

That’s why you should choose a digital mixer made by PreSonus, a company already famous for its analog mic preamps, pristine digital interfaces, and well-regarded signal processors.

Ultra-high-headroom, 32-bit floating-point processing is used for all digital mixing. All analog inputs and outputs use the highest-quality digital converters available, with +118 dB dynamic range, for spectacular sonic results and unmatched musicality.

padding-top:0px; padding-left:0px; padding-bottom:0px;Synchronization to your computer is stable and robust, thanks to JetPLL™ synchronization technology. JetPLL™ incorporates noise shaping to virtually remove all audio-band jitter, ensuring near-perfect clock performance and optimal converter performance when networking two or more digital-audio devices.

JetPLL quickly locks to any digital format through a wide range of frequencies and is extremely robust and tolerant of wide variations in clock frequencies.

As a result, you’ll experience better stereo separation and clearer, more transparent audio.

A Smaart addition to your system.

Building a great mix is almost impossible unless you tune your system to account for the acoustic properties of the room—and every room is different. If the room overemphasizes the lows, sucks out the highs, or emphasizes frequencies that tend to cause feedback, you could have a long night ahead of you.

With other mixing systems, you use your eyes, ears, and EQs; wade in; and do the best you can. If you’re a top pro, you know how to read a difficult room and compensate, but the rest of us usually just muddle through—with uncertain results.

Fortunately, it’s a lot easier with StudioLive mixers because the included VSL control/editor/librarian software incorporates Rational Acoustics’ Smaart Measurement Technology™. Smaart is a collection of visual audio-measurement tools and techniques for sound-system analysis and optimization that makes tuning the system, squelching feedback, and setting delay times for remote speakers much easier and more precise—and you don’t need an engineering degree to use it.

Learn more about Smaart.

Which StudioLive is best for you?

Why choose the StudioLive 32.4.2AI rather than the StudioLive 24.4.2, StudioLive 16.4.2, or StudioLive 16.0.2?

The StudioLive 32.4.2AI is the new top-of-the-line. In addition to providing more channels and aux buses than the other models, it has much more computing power and offers additional features, such as Quick Scenes, and the ability to store and A/B two complete Fat Channel settings for each channel and bus. It also provides direct wireless connectivity via an included USB LAN adapter and has an I/O-card slot that accepts optional Thunderbolt and Ethernet-AVB cards, so if you want the latest in connectivity, the StudioLive 32.4.2AI is the way to go.

Of course, the StudioLive 24.4.2 and StudioLive 16.4.2 are smaller but they offer most of the same core features as the 32.4.2AI and deliver the same audio quality. They’re integrated with essentially the same software packages, including the Smaart features. So if you don’t need 32 channels and direct Wi-Fi remote control and would like to have a smaller footprint (for example, the StudioLive 16.4.2 is rack-mountable and comes with rack ears)—not to mention spend a bit less money—they’re great choices.

A more specific comparison of these two models is provided on their Web pages.

If your needs and budget are more modest, you might want to consider the StudioLive 16.0.2. The StudioLive 16.0.2 provides fewer channels, mic preamps, aux buses, FireWire streams, graphic EQs, and meters than the StudioLive 32.4.2AI, and it does not have subgroups, digital outs and analog direct outs. Its faders are 60 mm instead of 100 mm, and of course, the StudioLive 16.0.2's Fat Channel is less elaborate than the 32.4.2AI Fat Channel.

However, the StudioLive 16.0.2 is much lighter and more compact than the 32.4.2AI, it's considerably less expensive, and it has a very cool feature that the larger StudioLives don't offer: MIDI control over main output level, effects levels and routing, and Scene change.