Presonus StudioLive Series III 16R Reviews

Fantastic for saving on space

Perfect for your first full level mixer setup. This is the definitive way to mix down 16 inputs and outputs / sub mixes for in ear monitors. At 1u of rack space total?. What’s not to love. Could use an external power switch, but other than that.. pretty darned awesome.

Great and convinient.

I have lots of pre sonus stuff and this one delivers too. Nothing fancy or out of the ordinary, but works as should. I have other stuff in the presonus world so the integration with them and studio one is a bonus and convenience.

I use it mainly as a stage box in the studio, does the job.

Tiny but powerful package for touring band

PROS:

The 1U rack mixer packs 16 XLR inputs and 6 separate output so I can have maximum 6 mixes for IEMs! That's a very decent package for a live band who use IEMs. Now I can just carry a Behringer Ultralink MS800 for vocals to split the signal for the FOH and the IEMs, the PreSonus 16Rs will act as the mixer/recorder and the two Sennheiser EW300 transmitters all fit in a 3U case and you are good to go with a portable stage mixer!

We are a beginner thrash metal band and we are currently not affordable to have a touring engineer with us. So this device is decent enough to cover up all the trouble on the stage. Haven't tried the recording function but I bet it will be hard to use (at least the recording feature is straightforward from the demo video).

CONS:

I have updated the interface to the latest firmware but I always receive a random disconnect from the interface (grey color) on the UC-control. I will need to unplug the ethernet cable and replug it back then the interface will return to operation.

I also try the Qmix UC IOS app and the control is a mess. The dial for each mix doesn't work as expected; I try to adjust the dial of the specified track but once i touch the dial it will max the gain of the track.

Recording use

Bought this to be mainly to use as an audio interface for recording drums at a home studio. Set up was easy enough. Register online with mypresonus. Download/install the digital mixer software Universal Control. Install drivers/firmware and you're pretty much good to go.

I have to say there is a stupid bug in the Universal Control application with the resolution which made it difficult to toggle between channels on the mixer or see that there was a digital return channel on it(for sending audio from the pc through the interface). I was in contact with presonus support as a result. They were very helpful and quick response. Was a stupid issue as I was using a laptop which the resolution was 1366 x 768. I had to disable the locked taskbar at the bottom of the screen on Windows 10 and then it was visible.

After all that was sorted seems to be working quite nicely. A decent amount of FX in the mixer(EQ, Compression, limiter, Gate). You also get a daw Studio One Artist for free as well as a few plugins and a quck capture recording software.

So far I'm pretty happy with the purchase!