Presonus Central Station

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Review of the Presonus Central Station


excerpt

Many of us have gone mixerless in the past few years. As soon as you do, you can't help but miss some of the convienience features of the mixer. We were used to having a knob to set the volume ofn the control room outs, and if you owned a bigger mixer you had studio outs and a talkback facilty that could pipe your voice into the studio room where the performers wait for your cue. The smaller audio interfaces become even more difficult. The volume control may be buried in a menu or worse, only accessible by a control panel on the computer.

And finally, the audio interface has to be at a low volume when running powered speakers. The d\a converters, which transform the digital numbers in the computer back to an analog signal, may be further muddied by the output electronics that are needed to attenuate the signal. The cheaper the audio interface, the more likely you will hear some distortion, or perhaps more accurately, won't hear, the transparency of your audio.

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http://www.tweakheadz.com/reviews/review_presonus_central_station.htm

[Blue Bear Sound]

Cool article, Tweak....

I use the CS myself - here are some additional thoughts on it:

I really like this unit - it does what it's supposed to do and it does it cleanly and quietly. The D/A converters on it are really very good - because I was considering using them as additional input sources, I decided to do an A/B of the onboard D/A to my Lucid 9624 (an outstanding converter, BTW!)

I expected the Lucid to seriously outperform it... while I can't say that there wasn't a difference between the two, I have to admit it was quite subtle - far more subtle than the difference between the Lucid and the D/A onbaord my Alesis Masterlink. So you can certinaly use the D/A with confidence.

The second thing I love about this unit is the easy and effective Talkback system that's built-in. I find I end up using it more often than the TB built-in to my console. The only thing I wished they'd done is make the TB switch a latching type, so that you don't have to always hold it down.... (a minor inconvenience sometimes).

The other thing is you definitely need the remote to use it effectively if you constantly switch sources and monitors for comparisons.... one less reach out of the listening position always makes life behind the console easier.

About the only real negative to this unit is the build quality - while the volume knob feels solid, the rest of the buttons and knobs do not. In some cases giving the impression they could fall off into your hand if not handled softly enough, and I know this is common with these units in general because I've been thru several of them (they had some technical problems with some of the earlier units, so I've had a chance to play with about a half-dozen or so until they sorted the issues out.) All were identical in that respect.

This is however, an excellent unit - as I said, it does what's it's supposed to, and it does it quietly and well; far better than pretty much all it's competition at that price point -- and certainly solves an important routing/monitoring task in just about any studio rig. I would strongly recommend it.

[Tweak]

Thanks Bruce. I've read comments about build quality before here on the forums. I don't see that here, at least not yet. Perhaps this is a newer build I have, or maybe just cause its new, everything is nice and tight on the small knobs. I notice there is a "TB" on the talkback switch that is not on the pics in the ads. Time will tell. I see the unit is made in China.

I should have the remote here soon.

[MASSIVE Mastering]

Former CS user... Darn fine unit.

But I would absolutely *love* to see if the output potentiometer could be swapped for a Grayhill switch or something...

[aww-de-oh]

Thanks for pointing me to this unit Tweak. This is exactly what i need/have been missing!

[SupremeWise]

Yeah this a great unit, the features far exceed the price you pay for it. This unit makes it so easy to A/B a signal on different monitors. IMO this is Presonus's best product, it's one of the best choices i've made and one of the cheapest too. The build can better but i've seen worse so I can definitely live with it, couldn't ask for more for the price.