On November 19 (this coming Monday), PreSonus will release version 1.7 of its Universal Control, a free update to the company’s control-panel software that offers a significant expansion of the Rational Acoustics Smaart measurement technology that is integrated into the Virtual StudioLive section.
The update will be available for download at www.presonus.com/support/downloads.
In Universal Control 1.6, PreSonus added Smaart Measurement Technology’s Spectra module to its Virtual StudioLive control/editor/librarian software for all StudioLive mixers, which is part of Universal Control. This version also gave StudioLive owners access to an RTA and Spectrograph.
With Universal Control 1.7, StudioLive 24.4.2 and 16.4.2 users gain the abilities to easily view the frequency response of a venue, quickly calculate and set delay-system timing, and verify output connectivity. (Note that these additional capabilities are not available for the StudioLive 16.0.2 due to its different architecture.)
To accomplish this, PreSonus has added three Smaart system-check wizards to VSL. To use these tools, the user connects a measurement microphone to the StudioLive mixer’s Talkback input. A high-end mic is not required; most measurement mics can do the job.
Smaart Room Analysis Wizard
The Smaart Room Analysis (SRA) Wizard is an automated process that guides you through the steps of acquiring a frequency-response trace and then overlays the resulting trace on the VSL display for a StudioLive 24.4.2 or StudioLive 16.4.2 Fat Channel parametric EQ. (A frequency-response trace is the plotted result-frequency and amplitude-of the system measurement.) The user can then adjust the parametric EQ to get rid of unwanted anomalies in the room.
The SRA Wizard can do a basic analysis, which requires a single-point measurement, or an advanced analysis employing three separate mic position measurements and averaging them together.
Smaart System Delay Wizard
The Smaart System Delay (SSD) Wizard calculates and sets the correct amount of delay time between two full-range speaker systems, using the StudioLive’s subgroup-output delays. This helps synchronize the outputs of secondary (generally, side and rear) loudspeakers with the output of the main front loudspeakers in a front-of-house P.A. system. The user can synchronize multiple secondary systems using this tool and the StudioLive 24.4.2/16.4.2 mixer’s four subgroup outputs.
Smaart System Output Check Wizard
The Smaart Output Check (SOC) Wizard verifies that your system outputs are routed correctly and are passing signal. By momentarily taking over the routing and volume control of an output and patching pink noise to it, this tool lets you quickly discover which speaker is connected where and helps you quickly get to the root of a routing problem.
