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#1 - Since I'm in need of a bigger mixer I'm wondering if there is a Studiolive Series IV on the horizon? I don't want to stack 2 24's together (if that is even possible). I want 48 thru 64 channels on one slab! Will Presonus be accommodating this in the future? This is a mixer size that is needed for studio installations for high track count & automation.
#2 - Will there be any consideration to add USB 3.1 + USB 3.1c (or USB anything newer than 2.0) into this mixer line so PC users can start to benefit without being punished for not being a MAC user?
#3 - I think that AVB needs to become a more universal connection rather than proprietary. I called Presonus & got 2 answers for this question. Will AVB work with MOTU products? One Presonus respondent said YES while the second one said NO!
One person claims their AVB is strictly for their line of Stage Box attachments while asked if this will work with another company such as MOTU the answer is both YES & NO which is very confusing. Which is it? YES, or NO?
#4 - Since only 10% of worldwide computer users use a MAC why have Presonus chose to focus on the MAC group & ignore the PC group? AVB is not available on any PC nor do any motherboard manufacturers know what AVB is or if an AVB is even being developed or considered for a PC.
#5 - Is there a more colorful channel scheme available to better identify the groups that a user might want to label? The current one seems very lame compared to the X32 Behringer or Midas M32.
#6 - And lastly when will Thunderbolt 3 & 2 be utilized on the Presonus products? This is long overdue? Presonus needs to get all their Ducks in a row & focus on what the users want in their future gear.
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by nickpaul on Thu Mar 15, 2018 2:13 pm
1#
I haven't heard anything and I would hope that they work on finishing III before they even start thinking about IV, but I do feel your pain about the channel count. For the moment I'm mixing some channels on an old AI board and feeding the outputs of that into my Series III mixer on the AUX 1/2 buses. I really miss just cascading two 32 channel boards together, it was so much cleaner and simpler, but for the moment this works.

2#
I'm not really sure I follow what you are getting at with this question. Yes the Series III boards have a USB 2 interface, which I feel is pretty universal at this point, at least it's much more universal than Firewire and so far I haven't had any problems with it. I'm a PC guy myself (only begrudgingly using Macs when I have no other choice) so I'm actually happy about this change to USB from Firewire, I can stop buying Add-In cards for my laptop (the firewire interface only working with particular chipsets was a disaster).

3#
I'm not surprised you got two different answers for your question #3. Here's the AVB situation on the Series III boards as I understand it:

They support AVB very well on the Series III boards, following the standard. MOTU also follows the standard. So both the Series III boards and the MOTU AVB gear can talk to each other because they both follow the same standard.

The confusion comes from the fact that you need AVB AVDECC controller software to configure AVB to tell it which channels on the MOTU to connect to which channels on the Mixer. Without this software telling them what to do the MOTU and the Mixer ignore each other.

Presonus has not release a utility to do this, but MOTU has. So you can use the MOTU utility to tell them how to connect but Presonus does not support or help with an advance configuration like that at this time.

Another reason Presonus might have said No is because not all companies have implemented the AVB standard correctly. Just look at the AI mixers from Presonus. They claim to use AVB but don't work with the Series III mixers because AVB chips in the AI mixers were never finished to support the completed AVB standard.

So yeah, AVB is a mess compared to something that's been around forever like Dante. I think it's getting better though.

4#
AVB is very different from Dante and normal Ethernet Traffic. AVB is not part of the normal Ethernet networking standard, which is why it needs special switches (like the MOTU AVB Switch or the Presonus SW5E). For whatever reason Apple decided to give the ethernet card they put in their computers this extra AVB feature beyond what a normal ethernet card will do. You can buy an ethernet card for PCs that supports AVB, but as far as I know there's just this one:https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ethernet-products/gigabit-server-adapters/ethernet-server-adapter-i210-brief.html and it would require custom software, whereas on an Apple computer the AVB support software is built into the OS.

So Presonus isn't ignoring the PC market and focusing on Mac, they are just taking advantage of a feature that is built into Macs but not PCs, it took them no effort as it was already there.

As an aside I've always been very impressed with how well Presonus keeps software like UC Surface and Capture looking and working the same on both Mac and PC.

5#
I actually haven't used Thunderbolt for anything yet. I don't even have any PCs with a Thunderbolt port on it. If I can answer a question with a question what feature is it that Thunderbolt would add that the mixers currently can't do? I primarily mix live sound in a church so I don't really have any experience with studio gear.

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