PreSonus StudioLive 16.0.2 Digital Mixer Reviews

• Computer issues.

  Using the board hands on is pretty simple and I like the quality of sound from the on board sound effects. My issues is PreSonus the company that makes the board is not very customer friendly. They will send you emails on how to try and fix the problems, even have you load programs on your computer to evaluated your situation.But they will not call or talk to you. I have called several times. But with all that said I received 6 emails from them. After I emailed them twice and then a Sweetwater tech had to call them for me it had already been 72 hours before I called the sweetwater tech. Who was very helpful and took remote control of my computer to help. As Sweetwater goes they are a five star, Tech support line, but as far as PreSonus. I give them a 2 star. But I have never and still to this date 10/13/2016 received a call from presonus.
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  Customer

  from Albany, NYFebruary 24, 2015Music Background:
  Producer, musician, songwriter, video director

  Great board but beware of software bug

  Had this board for a few months now, obviously it has a lot of great things going for it. But I contacted Presonus Tech Support regarding some issues when backing up, and they confirmed that one of the issues is a software bug. After backing up all of your scenes and settings thru their VSL software, when you restore those scenes back onto the board, all of your Aux system settings are lost... they all revert back to "Post". Since I have them all set to "Pre2" (pre fader yet retains all EQ and Fat Channels), this means when restoring you have to go back through each scene and reset it. If you use all 80 scenes, that takes an hour or so. Not a deal breaker, since hopefully you only need to restore your backups if there's a catastrophic board failure, and in that case an hour or 2 is worth it. But if you're in the middle of a show and you rely on your saved scenes, that's a problem. They didn't give me a timetable on the bug fix, but the board has been out there a while and you'd think it would have been fixed by now if they plan on really doing it. And I also had a problem when restoring backed up scenes where i was only getting sound out of the L side, until I went into Locate mode and re-saved the scene on the board itself. But the cause of that is still TBD, and Tech Support said my scenes were fine, so it could be an issue with my OS or drivers, according to them. Given the bug, I haven't bothered to track that down since it's irrelevant until the bug is fixed. Still, it's a nice board, but if I'd known about these issues I would have gone with another company.
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  Walter Guy

  from Perrysburg, OHDecember 14, 2014Music Background:
  Pro musician, recording engineer, live sound engineer

  troubled mixer

  I purchased this board in 2012. It seemed to have most of the features I needed for live gigs with the exception of a simple effects foot switch port for the 2 effects channels. A midi pedal was a royal pain in the neck to configure for a simple on off reverb switch [which never worked]. But I worked around that by eventually using outboard effects that had foot switch capabilities. So everything went well until 4 weeks before the warranty ran out. At a gig, I went to fire my rack up and the board just gave me a blinking light show on the display and no signal. We were able to grab another mixer and started the gig 2 hours late. The warranty covered the repair; no problem there. Thank goodness for warranties.
  My next complaint is more annoying. A handful of times when turning the board on at a gig, I'll get a massive feedback loop with all faders down. Anyone that has gigged out a lot knows that will tick off a club owner faster than anything. We haven't lost any work yet, but I am wary about using this board anymore; or purchasing another Presonus product.
  
  Having registered a rather negative review on Presonus, Sweetwater has been stellar about addressing my issues over the years; even stretching the boundaries a bit here and there.
  Sweetwater will continue to be my first source for gear. But I will think twice about buying the Presonus brand again. In Presonus's defense, I realize I may have gotten a lemon.
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  George Presley

  from TXMay 5, 2017

  Poor quality

  Biggest piece of Crap I owned. After 18 months the firewire quit working. Presonus wants $200.00 + to fix it. Over 1/4 of the price I paid originally. Lousy quality from them thieves is what I'm sayin'. KMA Presonus!
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  Tm

  fromJanuary 25, 2017

  Eehhhh

  I'm on my second board within the year the firewire was messed up on the other board so they went ahead and replaced it which was cool but this board is a little bit noisy. The preamps are ehhh and what can I say about all of their other products I have the e66 monitors one of them came DOA so they replace that right away and the second one blew three days later they replaced that then the third one went. That's when I called it quits and bought a pair of JBLs. I also bought a refurbished PreSonus Channel strip right from the factory and that came DOA as well. I got my money back and I will never deal with this company again. I'm going with an avid controller and Antelope interface pretty soon
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  Customer

  fromFebruary 15, 2016

  Buyer Beware

  I liked my 16.0.2, I really did. But after 2.5 years in service, in a smoke free, clean, air conditioned studio, my 16.0.2 failed. Internal inspection showed the +5V power supply rail lost regulation, and went high. This burned up areas on the power supply board, and exploded capacitors (contaminating large areas inside) and damaged logic components on all three peripheral circuit boards. One capacitor that blew was rated 65V, so that give you an idea how high the +5V rail went. The mixer is a total loss, all apparently because a fan was not included in the design, leading to degradation and eventual thermal runaway in the power supply.
  
  A digital mixer is a computer, with audio interfaces. Any computer power supply of this size requires active cooling. The 16.0.2 not only lacks a fan, but the vents are very small and located on the sides where they cannot do much good for passive cooling. Very poor design. Restoring this one would be throwing good money after bad.
  
  
  

  Problems with Presonus Firebox in Windows - Cycling '74