PreSonus is out to shake up the prosumer, nay, the professional recording industry with the announcement of their new, flexible and powerful digital recording mixer: the StudioLive 16.4.2.

The StudioLive 16.4.2 takes all the powerful routing, patching, preset recall and DSP effects you'd expect from a pro-grade digital mixing board and pairs it with 22x8 firewire recording interface for a killer board designed for studio use and sophisticated live multitracking.

Each of the board's sixteen channels features XLR, 1/4, inserts and balanced direct out. Each channel is modled after the PreSonus "Fat Channel" design, touting 4-band EQ's, compressors, limiters and gates. The preamps are high-headroom XMAX class "A" for th same clarity found on the FireStudio and FirePod interfaces.

The effects compliment is powered by dual-DSP engines, and features wide range of reverbs, delays, and time-based effects with easy to use parameter adjustment, tap tempo, store, recall, and scene selection. All parameters for every channel can be recorded and recalled for easy preset "scene" switching -- great for mixing radically different setups through the same board with no downtime between.

For those who like their flashy-flashy, the StudioLive has no dearth of LED metering. You have instant information on the inputs levels of each channel, as well as detailed metering of gain reduction, limiting and effects parameters on the selected channel.

All this you'd expect to find in a digital mixing board. PreSonus ups the ante by then including a 22x18 firewire interface, turning the Studioive into a sophisticated studio mixer. StudioLive ships with PreSonus's CAPTURE recording software for instant functionality out of the box.

And now, for your edification, the specs:

• 16 inputs, 6 auxiliary mixes, 4 subgroups
• 16 class A XMAX microphone preamplifiers
• Hi-Definition analog to digital converters (118dB dynamic range)
• Unlimited headroom 32-bit floating point digital mixing and effects processing
• 22x18 FireWire digital recording interface
• Compact 19" rack-mountable rugged steel chassis
• Fat Channel Select:
• High Pass Filter
• Compressor
• Limiter
• Gate
• 4-band semi parametric EQ
• Pan
• Load/Save/Copy/Paste
• 2 Master DSP Effects (reverbs, delays, time-based effect, with load/save)
• Load/Save Mixer "Scenes" - all settings
• 100mm long throw faders
• Military grade quick touch push buttons
• Fast-acting LED meters
• Talkback communication system
• StudioLive multi-track recording software