Manhattan’s Replay Music Studios – one of New York’s most advanced rehearsal spaces – has added PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 consoles to its gear offering.

The three rehearsal rooms at Replay feature high-end digital A/V systems, enabling bands and artists to create quality audio and video recordings of their songs and performances instantly. The recordings can then be used to review arrangements and performances, offer them to fans, and even upload them to the web.

The PreSonus consoles can now be found at the heart of the high-tech space – one in each room.

Replay’s founder, John Rubin, chose StudioLive for its flexibility and ease-of-use: “Originally, we were going to equip the rooms with analogue consoles,” he said, “but then a friend who does a lot of live sound recording suggested we check out the StudioLive.”

Offering a 32-in/18-out FireWire digital interface – which delivers a wide range of routing capabilities – the StudioLive 16.4.2s allow Rubin and his team to fine-tune the signal path in each room.

“Incorporating different combinations of signal paths within the StudioLive enabled us to optimise the vocals, bass, and other aspects of the mix to create a better-sounding live mix to the studio computer,” he added.

The clarity of the recordings was far beyond what most of the clients were accustomed to from a rehearsal facility, according to Rubin.

“We ended up with recordings that were very clean and well defined, with the vocals up front in the mix,” he stated. “Then people started asking us to refine the mix even more, asking for some reverb on the vocals, compression on the bass, things like that. Since the StudioLive allows you to route its 32-bit effects through the aux buses, it was easy to give them all the effects and processing they wanted within the two-track mix.”

Users are also able to bring their own laptop to a rehearsal, hook it up to the StudioLive via FireWire, and create a multitrack recording of their session using PreSonus Capture software. Capture’s inputs and outputs are preconfigured to the console’s channel inputs and FireWire returns, meaning artists can start recording a multi-channel recording session with a single mouse click.

Rubin remarked: “People can leave with their multitrack mix and continue overdubbing and mixing their project wherever they choose.”

Keep up to date with the latest developments from the world of pro audio by registering for our free daily newsletter.