New Music Gear Monday: PreSonus StudioLive 64S Digital Mixer And Interface

PreSonus has been making some great digital mixers for a long time now (I have one in a rehearsal studio), and they keep on finding ways to make the StudioLive series better – not just in small steps but in leaps and bounds. The company’s latest StudioLive 64S takes the product series to the next level, offering 64 channels with a huge amount of features at an almost unbeatable price.

The StudioLive® 64S brings the power of a large production console to small-format digital mixing, with a total 76 possible mixing channels, 43 buses, and 526 simultaneous effects built around an all new quad-core FLEX DSP engine.

Basically you have access to 32 mic/line inputs featuring the company’s highly regarded XMAX mic amps, with the other 32 channels coming from either AVB, USB or SD inputs. The other inputs include aux ins, FX ins, stereo tape ins, and talkback. The mic amps now also feature a gain stage in front of the mic amp so that you finally gain full recall on the mic amp as well as the rest of the console (something that was lacking on previous versions).

There’s also 32 of what ProSonus calls FlexMix buses that can be individually configured as Aux, Matrix, or Subgroup buses, plus 8 FX busses that access can access individual on-board effects processors.

The console also features a StudioLive mainstay – the Fat Channel, which displays the processing for each individual channel on the mixer. Among the processors that can be accessed include a high-pass filter, gate / expander, compressor with different software plugin models, 4-band/6-band parametric EQ with different software plugin models, a limiter, and a 31-band graphic EQ.

One of the desk’s new features is an independent main Mono/Center bus. Each channel has a dedicated level control and a Center Divergence control that allows you to control the pan placement in an LCR mix, or just use it as a mono sub channel output in a live situation without having to use up an aux buss.

The 64S also features an onboard 34-track SD recorder that provides flexible mobile and redundant recording options. There’s also seamless integration with Studio One® and Capture recording applications (included).

There’s lots more that the StudioLive 64S offers so it’s best to check out the dedicated online page to see it all. As stated above, the mixer also comes with a great price with the StudioLive 64S coming in at $3,999.95. Smaller versions are also available with the StudioLive 32S going for $2,999.95, StudioLive 32SX at $2,599.95, and StudioLive 32SC $1,999.95.