Behringer Wing & PreSonus StudioLive 64s - YOUR Questions on User Experience

all right we're right into it this time with the questions you wanted to see answered about the Presonus 64's and the behringer wing now both consoles have been initialized and we'll start with connecting the stage boxes and patching some inputs to see how that process compares using shielded network cable from sound tools is the way to go on any system like these don't mess around with cheap cable if you can afford to avoid it this stuff really makes your life easier on the wing you'll see the status of the three AES 50 ports in this little window that you will really want to push for more info after you plug in a stage box but it won't give you any you'll need to go to the clock settings and toggle the clock source to sink to the AES 50 port that you just plugged your stage box in and then you're essentially ready to go patch for any input or output you first need to just select where you want to send or receive from and then complete the patch remembering to hit done using the 64's with only one stage boxes also as simple as plugging it in and making a few quick selections from the main screen select routing then stage box setup and select again where do you want to send and receive from and you're ready to go patch now we have a phantom powered microphone patch to both desks through their stage boxes and that was pretty quick the wing now has a unique way of handling inputs where you name sources and associate those with physical inputs which can then be patched anywhere on the surface as needed characteristics like phantom power whether it's a mono or stereo channel color naming icons and more can be associated with a source before it ever gets patched to a channel on the desk it's pretty cool stuff and it will absolutely save time if you can work at a workflow to take advantage of that you combine that with the alternate input assignments for each channel that are available and you've got a lot of flexibility and some redundancy built right in the avb ecosystem that Presonus has created offers a huge array of different components that can be put together to make the system that fits your needs and with ABB that's done using pretty familiar but special network hardware you can't just buy that stuff right off the shelf as you can with Dante check out my previous videos on the other avb gear from them if you want more information on that specifically it's worth mentioning here that the StudioLive is the only system I know of in this price range that offers gain compensation and it's a clever implementation local gain compensation in the network stage boxes allows one primary console to control the analog Mike pre level before conversion to digital allowing connected consoles to choose to either monitor or listen to that direct avb stream or a gain compensated stream that's handled by the DSP in the stage box one question that comes up really often about stage boxes especially these two is whether or not you can use them standalone as something like an interface to your computer to record with and the answer for both of these is no now as far as expandability goes the wing is listed as completely compatible with all x32 consoles and stage boxes but I have yet to see anyone showing that done in practice they also promised expansion cards but the latest news I can find is that the Dante card which is the first one to be coming out should be ready any day but that news was from back in February and I wouldn't expect the Madi or sound grid cards to be coming out any faster so if audio networking is critical to you right now I would say that the Presonus is gonna be your better bet while the wing may have expansion cards soon but right now not available some of the other coming soon features I've seen folks dealing with them that I've found as well on the wing is so far there is no implementation for MIDI whatsoever channel delay can be increased to turn it on but it can't be toggled on or off so the only way to turn it back off is to turn it all the way down which is a little bit frustrating I've seen a number of reports now from users recording to the USB stick which ends in the console either rebooting randomly black screens with audio loss and things like that but also I've seen other users that have dual 512 gigabyte microSD cards installed in the dual card slot for recordings and they're having great luck with that even though there's no official support beyond 32 gigabytes for those cards so your mileage will definitely vary depending on your skill level how much you're willing to play around and figure things out with these consoles as well as it seems to be just luck I've seen a good number of people now mentioning ghost selections on the screen and I will say with the behringer touchscreen while that glossy big screen does look great you barely have to touch it you better be sure that your hand is over the right thing or you can select something and it can often times be mission-critical in the wing because there's so much packed onto that screen now the Presonus has a similar control issue that I would love them to have avoided and that is in the input section where you select for each channel whether it's analog network USB our SD card now if you happen to accidentally bump one of those you turn your input off and that's never good so I'm gonna do it right now so I'm on channel 2 of this board and if I go to new you just lost me I'd love that to not be right there it's like kind of in between your hands on the faders and all the knobs you're constantly going back and forth to and that could be a real problem so let's talk about the user experience for a minute the specs are all in the paperwork so what do they actually feel like what would I use each cons for in my opinion the StudioLive system would really excel in situations where it might be installed and accessed by many different people with different needs so churches schools other facilities right now doing streaming especially I think would be really well served looking at these systems to add flexibility across their entire audiovisual Department it's well supported and familiar enough to deal with for anyone who's operating a mixing console to walk up and to have a good shot at getting sound out the other end now the wing is a completely different animal to get behind and will appeal to a very specific type of live user anyway more than most consoles I imagine a certain type of theater user will love the variety of surface controls the customization and the overall depth of the console that big glossy touchscreen is attractive for sure but control software with larger dedicated windows and a mouse for specific tasks is a pretty common feature that I've grown accustomed to especially on complex mixes my biggest complaint walking up to the wing and specifically to do with the screen is that the knobs and buttons surrounding the screen don't always line up with the parameter on the screen that you're expecting it to I imagine they'll continue to tweak this integration as they continue to release more firmware updates but right now it is a little bit of a pain to work with I've had lots of questions about the wings user manual and the patchwork nature of support for the x32 series before it and the wing unfortunately doesn't seem to be any different it has been beyond frustrating to evaluate such an extensive piece of gear with nothing more than a QuickStart guide and a Facebook user group for reference this approach would seriously prevent me from spending money on this console on a professional setting but that's just me my biggest complaint about the 64's is a personal one as well and that's as you get more comfortable with it and start moving around the surface faster it's not the easiest surface to feel fast on and what do I mean by that well my fat fingers have a bit of trouble with knobs that taper thinner at the top I genuinely just need a little bit more space between the knobs and something a little bigger to grasp onto especially if I'm not looking at the console and more so on that the rubbery soft buttons on this console don't offer the tactile click that I'm used to feeling from buttons when I'm pressing them without looking at them I find myself stopping often with both of these consoles honestly they both have the soft rubbery buttons similar to a Soundcraft expression and you have to kind of slow down and make sure you carefully hit them instead of that confidence you have with something like a Yamaha console where you can feel under your fingers while you're not even looking at the console a really really solid tactile click when you select something mixing in my peripheral vision is something that is extremely important on real-world jobs and having to stop to constantly look down and make sure that you're only pressing the button once and looking for just a little more feedback then the button is providing is kind of an issue now once you do get over the sheer amount of buttons and new terminology and things you're not used to seeing on the surface of a console the wings actually quite comfortable to work on the banking and various sections are really excellent and once you get quick on it you can fly around this console there's a ton of room things are separated so if you're the type of person that likes to manage one thing in your left hand while you have other layers or other things on the console happening underneath your right hand this console will really fit that style well you can get a lot going on on that top surface that is unrelated and they've added a lot of places for you to make it feel like your own which is really really cool in my opinion the behringer wings faders don't feel very robust they feel cheap they feel sluggish they look sluggish when they move around there's kind of this slow scraping noise when they get into position very slowly whereas the Presonus is much more snappier they feel better under your fingers but if you're mixing in a theater or some other super quiet situation both of these consoles are probably going to drive you a bit nuts with just how much noise they make flipping fader banks between scenes they are not the quietest faders the market so let's do one last test and it's a common question that comes up nowadays with any system digital or otherwise especially with stage boxes and that's whether or not if you lose power it's gonna pop or make a ton of noise so I'm gonna put my lab right there both consoles are connected directly up to this no mixer or anything just straight up to the two inputs on the speaker and you can hear they're on that's the way and then hey hey hey that's the Presonus so we'll start with the way okay I'm going just power off the stage boxes randomly see what happens there tl 16 hit with the power switch this time G - D - again so there you have it that wing really bangs in the next video we're gonna take a look at the software and doll mode exclusively I've already done a video on the StudioLive and how to set up doll mode and we'll take a brief look maybe at that again but the question that's come up a lot and since the behringer DAW isn't out yet it just doesn't exist I see questions a lot about how these consoles work with other does and specifically I'm gonna take a look at how they work with Reaper Reapers are pretty down the middle DAW it can emulate a lot of other stuff it's got a lot of similarities to other DAWs and it's super accessible to anybody to download and try so I figured I'd give it a shot with those will dive into software and things of that nature in the next video if there's anything you'd want to see on that let me know but keep in mind that there's you know Facebook user groups on both of these that have way more in-depth answers on the software side that I'll be able to provide in these videos so if you want to talk to people who are using these everyday in studio environments please check those Facebook user groups out because they're gonna have way more time behind the consoles in that context than I do thanks for watching be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next video in this series I'll see you next time

Channel: DcSoundOp

Views: 41,007

Keywords: dcsoundop, livesound, audio engineering, proaudio, audio pro, prosound, electronics, audio gear, tech review, behringer wing, behringer, wing, presonus, presonus 64s, studiolive, studiolive 64s, dawmode, daw, daw control, viewer question

Id: srIR38o1x7Y

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020