Is PreSonus’ StudioLive Series III SE 24 the most flexible digital mixer on the market?£2,649, presonus.com
PreSonus’ StudioLive Series III family of digital mixers wraps the elements of a contemporary digital recording system into a device that rekindles hands-on mixing, reminiscent of working on the classic analogue desks of old.

READ MORE: Tascam Model 2400 review: A satisfying throwback with modern flair

As someone who cut their teeth in analogue studios, StudioLive’s potential intrigues me greatly, so I grab a newly released SE 24 model to put through its paces.
Image: Press
The ins and outs of the PreSonus SE 24
The StudioLive Series III SE 24 is the middle of three new additions to the PreSonus range, sitting between the smaller SE 16 and larger SE 32. Contrary to convention, the numeric portion of the naming isn’t a measure of the number of channels handled by each model, but rather a count of the number of faders they possess (although not including the master fader).
SE 24 contains far too many channels and busses to dedicate a fader to each, so its myriad mix elements are arranged into fader layers and, where necessary, pages within those layers.
For example, the first page of the Inputs layer arrays inputs 1-24 across the faders. Tapping the Next button opens the second page showing inputs 25-32, returns for the four onboard effects processors, the two auxiliary inputs, the anachronistically-named ‘tape’ input, plus the talkback mic input.
This would rapidly become confusing if it weren’t for the small, bright scribble strip displays, located above each fader, which show the name, number and pan position (when relevant) of the assigned channel or buss. A glance is all it takes to know exactly what’s assigned where.
All faders are motorised and have a 100 mm throw that allows detailed control. Although not the smoothest-feeling faders I’ve ever come across, they aren’t at all bad and, given SE 24’s price, I’d have been (pleasantly) surprised if they had been any smoother. However, I do notice that the faders don’t always return to quite the same position they were set at. Thankfully, this doesn’t affect the actual volume being output by a channel, and the inaccuracy is small enough that it shouldn’t cause any noticeable volume jumps when you next adjust the fader.
Faders are accompanied by a rudimentary three-stage level meter, mute and solo buttons, and a Select button that activates a channel for editing via the Fat Channel Control panel, and causes its settings to be shown in the mixer’s large touchscreen display.
Image: Press
What’s a Fat Channel?
Fat Channel is the name given to SE 24’s virtual channel strip. On input channels, it determines source selection, input gain, auxiliary and FX sends, panning, routing, and so on. It also provides a four-band parametric EQ, a gate/expander, a compressor with a choice of 11 vintage and modern models, and a limiter.
Output busses also have a Fat Channel, although this differs slightly from the Input version: no gain or gate, there’s an output delay of up to 170ms (useful in live mixing), six rather than four EQ bands, and a graphic EQ. Having this degree of control over sending busses is uncommon, but the ability to EQ and process cue mixes, effect returns and subgroups is undeniably useful.
On the upper portion of the mixer’s panel lies a cluster of buttons and knobs, the Fat Channel Control panel, that provides hands-on control over most aspects of the currently selected channel strip. Once you get used to the layout here, it really does start to feel like working on a classic console – just select a channel and start tweaking.
That said, not every Fat Channel parameter has a dedicated control; the gate/expander and compressor only have dedicated controls for their threshold levels, for example. Parameters without dedicated controls can only be edited with the help of the touchscreen, but this is still a largely hands-on affair: touch an on-screen parameter to select it, then turn the ‘Touch & Turn’ rotary, located just below the screen, to modify the value. A decent compromise, I’d say.
The stack of Mix Select buttons, located to the left of the desk, switches the faders from controlling channel volumes in the main left/right mix buss to controlling channel volumes within any of 16 ‘FlexMixes’. These are busses that connect to SE 24’s physical outputs, and the name reflects that they can be configured to operate as pre- or post-fader auxiliary sends, subgroups, or pre- or post-fader matrix mixes (a form of ad-hoc auxiliary buss used in live scenarios). Although functionally quite similar, the flexibility this allows is nonetheless impressive.
Image: Press
How well does the SE 24 work as a recording console?
Connecting SE 24 to a computer via its USB2 socket turns the mixer into an audio interface with a whopping 64 channels of inputs/outputs between mixer and host. USB send busses can be fed from any input channel, either pre or post the Fat Channel processors, or from any sending buss, by which I mean auxiliary sends, submixes, and such.
In standard operating mode, the USB returns are available as channel sources, making it possible to use SE 24 as a classic inline studio mixer: Configure the input channel, route it to a track in your DAW for recording, then flip the channel to USB input mode to mix, monitor and add effects to the track’s playback. Alternatively, if you prefer mixing entirely within your DAW, SE 24 can switch to a mode where USB returns are routed directly to the desk’s physical outputs.
SE 24’s etherCON-style RJ45 socket provides a further 64 channels of I/O via an AVB (Audio Video Bridging) network. These work similarly to the USB I/O but, as a technology that’s most commonly associated with live mixing in larger venues and installations, I won’t say more about this here.
The mixer’s second RJ45 port is a standard ethernet port for passing control signals to and from the mixer via a LAN. Not only does this allow the mixer to be remote controlled from external computers or devices, it also allows SE 24 to become a capable hardware controller for your DAW. This supports Studio One DAW Control (unsurprisingly), HUI and MCU protocols. Disappointingly, though, PreSonus has chosen to only provide an MCU profile for Logic and seemingly has no plans to develop profiles for other MCU-compatible DAWs.
Of course, not everyone likes working in a DAW, but SE 24 has this covered too. You see, as well as being used to store mixer projects, scenes and presets, SE 24’s SD card slot doubles as a 34-track recorder. This is only a basic capture and playback system, but as such it feels exactly like an old-school setup of a mixer and multitrack tape recorder. It’s also perfect for capturing live performances or for location recording, and if you then wish to develop and/or mix those recordings on a computer, you can open SE 24’s session files directly in PreSonus Studio One.

Should I buy the new PreSonus StudioLive?
My biggest reservation about SE 24 is that it only operates at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz sample rates. The latter is adequate for most uses, and supporting higher sample rates would doubtless have the knock-on effect of reducing SE 24’s dizzyingly generous channel, buss and input/output count. But nevertheless, it’s a long time since I’ve come across a new digital audio device that can’t run at at least 96 kHz.
But there’s much more that impresses me, primarily how startlingly flexible SE 24 is. Received wisdom says that different applications require different types of mixing desks, but PreSonus has utterly ignored this and shown that, in the modern digital era, there are no such constraints; one mixing desk can fulfil any and all use cases so long as it’s designed to do so.
I’m also impressed by the price. Yes, at approaching £3,000 SE 24 isn’t an impulse buy, but replicating its I/O count and functionality with audio interfaces, DAW controllers and software would cost at least as much, if not more, and wouldn’t offer anything like the same degree of streamlined integration.
So, if you work with bands, have a complex setup involving many different synths, effects and other sources, or just have a desire to rekindle the hands-on workflows of old, then you need to take a serious look at SE 24 – it could be everything you’ve been wishing for.
Key features

16 XLR mic inputs
16 combo mic/line inputs via Talkback mic input
2 stereo TRS jack aux. inputs
Stereo RCA unbalanced ‘Tape’ input
Main left/right analogue XLR output with level trim
Mono sum output 2 XLRs with level trim
Stereo TRS jack monitor output
Headphone output
AES/EBU digital output
12 balanced XLR line outputs
4 balanced TRS jack line outputs
4 balanced subgroup TRS jack outputs
Stereo RCA unbalanced ‘Tape’ output
USB2 host connector
RJ45 network socket for control interface
etherCON style RJ45 for AVB (Audio Video Bridging) networking
64 USB I/O channels
64 AVB I/O channels
44.1 kHz or 48 kHz sample rate
24-bit converters, 32-bit floating point internal processing

The post Is PreSonus’ StudioLive Series III SE 24 the most flexible digital mixer on the market? appeared first on MusicTech.

How Jim-E Stack turns the studio into a sandbox: “I’m not trying to push anyone through a certain mould”As 2025 comes to an end and the music world begins taking stock, it’s clear producer Jim-E Stack has had a transformative year.
The 33-year-old produced two of the year’s key records alongside their respective artists, amping up the beautiful catharsis of Lorde’s Virgin and lending his ear for pristine, unpredictable sounds to Bon Iver’s Sable, Fable. On both projects, the artists’ voices and vulnerable lyrics are front and center, underscoring what the producer does best: centering openness, collaboration and experimentation.
Jim-E Stack is on the MusicTech Cover. Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
They also mark Stack out as a prominent producer today. He’s helping bring left-field electronic sensibilities and experimentation into pop music, and it’s sounding better for it. The production and pop worlds have been abuzz about Stack, who has been featured by Universal Audio and the deep-diving Tape Notes podcast – as well as Billboard and GQ. A first-time Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical could be imminent.
“It’s such an amazing moment, and I’m so grateful for it – to have such a fulfilling year of catharsis with these albums coming out with two artists who I really believe in to their cores,” Stack says in a recent chat from his Los Angeles home. He sits on his couch – his favoured spot for solo jam sessions – flanked by two guitars, and is open and thoughtful in conversation.
“It has certainly set a standard for the kind of work I want to do and what I want to put in… That’s something I want to bring forward from it, really investing my time and creative energy with amazing people that inspire me as individuals.”
“The less tightly you’re grasping onto something, the more room something has to grow”
Born James Horton Stack in San Francisco, music has been core to his life from a young age, drumming in hard rock cover bands in middle school and moving onto jazz bands afterwards. He started to make beats as a teen after having his mind blown listening to the enigmatic British post-dubstep producer Burial. 2007’s Archangel inspired Stack to produce: “If I had never heard Burial and learned this guy was making heartbreaking music just out of samples on Sony Acid Pro, I don’t think I ever would have pursued it myself.”
Soon, he began touring as a DJ, releasing (bootleg) remixes on SoundCloud, and, in 2012, a groovy debut EP on London indie label Good Years. A few years in, though, he desperately missed the collaborative environment bands provided and began to pursue producing and songwriting with artists, bolstered by a move to Los Angeles.
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
“I really wanted an outlet where I could get my voice across. It taught me that you can make something alone and find your voice that way. Oddly, through doing that and having the room to do it alone, when I got back into making music collaboratively, songwriting and producing with people, I had more of a voice and a language to bring to other people,” he explains.
Now, he thrives in the balance of both working with artists (the list has included Kylie Minogue, Sia, Lola Young, Hayley Williams and Charli XCX) and working on beats and solo music, the latest being his 2020 sophomore album Ephemera. Drums and collaboration have remained essential to his artistry; Lorde says “there’s no better drum programmer than Jim-E.”
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
The artist’s way
Jim-E Stack has a distinguishable sound: layered, decidedly electronic music with jagged edges and lush (often live) instrumentation. His affinity for somewhat lo-fi tools, including his favourite synths, the Moog Rogue and Korg Polysix, adds a DIY flavour and keeps his productions from sounding overly polished. Most importantly, he preserves space for the artists’ sound and vision to shine through.
“I have a very open approach to making music these days. I’ve found the less tightly you’re grasping onto something, the more room something has to grow and the more room there is for magic to come in,” Stack says.
“A lot of us producers are perfectionists by nature. The more I push back on that, not necessarily in the details, but in the big picture of not trying to bend a song or production to my will and leave things a bit more natural, all the work just always feels weightier.”
“There’s just something very pure and raw to what comes out of an artist on an SM7”
Much of that comes down to having time to experiment and slowly uncover what sounds best, as well as to give each other ample space.
“You just have to try stuff and be willing to get things wrong,” Stack posits, pointing to the SABLE, fABLE track If Only I Could Wait, featuring Danielle Haim, as an example.
“I was really hearing this live drum thing and spent a whole fucking day recording all this shit. And it was just wrong. Justin [Vernon, Bon Iver] and I have this dynamic where I had the space to do my thing with it, and he had the space to say, ‘This isn’t right.’ That exchange is really important.”
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
Back to basics
Stack’s home studio in his converted garage reflects his desire for music-making to be open, experimental and collaborative. “For me, it’s about having an environment that isn’t too intimidating gear-wise to myself or artists, where it’s like, ‘Whoa, all this shit’, but something where we can make a pretty raw and pure idea without having too many things to jump over. [I want it to] feel good and informal and open, like you can approach any instrument,” he notes.
That said, there’s something specifically special about Stack’s deft drum patterns, which charge his music with a propulsive energy, often with a dose of melancholic chords to keep things interesting.
“I love programming drums so much,” he enthuses. “Anything I do always has a pretty distinct drum groove and language to it. [I can] see how my sound’s evolved from when I was making stuff on the computer mostly by myself, or collecting bits for making stuff with other people, to now, where I’m playing a lot more instruments and tracking a lot more live musicians. My stuff now has a more raw, unpolished feeling that is really reflective of who I am and the kind of creator I am, of not trying to push anyone through a certain mould.”
“I believe in taking an artist closer to themselves and their intuition”
A mutual love of Burial, Drake and percussion-centric production gave Lorde and Stack a shared musical language to converse with. The pair first worked together in 2022 while she was on her Solar Power Tour, during which Stack opened a few shows and also reworked some music for her 2023 festival trek. Afterwards, they reconnected in New York to craft new music.
“Our initial conversations were that Ella [Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde] really wanted space in the music for her vocal, not a lot of flourishes, not a lot of layers; to keep things pretty open in that sense. So, songs would start in a pretty raw place,” he recalls.
A happy accident while working on the single Man Of The Year marked a turning point for Virgin’s sound and demonstrates Stack’s flexibility as a producer.
“Man Of The Year was originally this bass loop I laid down. She wrote a bunch of melodies and we arranged them, did some lyrical work. There was a point where I was like, ‘OK, let’s flesh it out. I’m gonna put a smooth sub-bass under it.’ I went to the Minimoog, pressed the bass down and the filter was all the way up. It blew my head off. I went to turn it down, to make it smooth. And she was like, ‘No. That was sick, that felt awesome.’ It was not what I was imagining for the song at all. [After that, every] song had the synth filters all the way open,” Stack explains.
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
Stack has since taken Lorde’s pared-down production approach to heart, having learned “not to bring in a new sound just for the sake of it, to use your existing tools in the song you’re working on,” he says. “[It helps] you build a creative structure, and it presents you with a really distinct piece of work.”
To enhance the intimate feel of both the Lorde and Bon Iver albums, Stack wove demo vocals they recorded on a Shure SM7 mic into the final songs. “There’s just something very pure and raw to what comes out of an artist on an SM7, where you’re not trying too hard, you don’t feel like it’s a final performance, you’re just getting the idea down,” he explains.
Stack’s ability to capture and preserve those pure, off-the-cuff songwriting moments on both projects is testament to the close friendships and preexisting creative relationships in play. While not every one of his collaborators is a friend, many of them are, including Aminé and Dijon, whose most recent music he also worked on.
“When I really know the person I’m working with, I’m able to help them channel what they’re going through personally into their body of work, more than just being a sound maker,” he notes. “Friendship and personal connection are definitely an important factor in my work [that helps it] go a level deeper.”
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
Producer partnerships
Los Angeles has been a fruitful home base for Stack, who’s also found “fun camaraderie” working with fellow producers. The first one he ever worked with – back in 2015 in L.A. – was Dan Nigro, who was named Producer Of The Year at the 2025 Grammys off the strength of his work with Chappell Roan.
L.A. is also where he connected with one of his other favourite producers, Ariel Rechtshaid, who’s worked with Haim, Vampire Weekend, Arlo Parks, Carly Rae Jepsen, Adele and many others. Collaborating with Rechtshaid was pivotal in teaching Stack to ditch perfectionism and “not be scared of a mess [because] that’s where you find a lot of magic”.
“You’re both just trying to put your heads together to make this thing feel as good as possible,” Stack says of producer-to-producer collaboration. “You have to compromise in little ways; that’s a fun exercise. It’s about perspective and seeing where something should go, and we have different skills and ways of getting there.”
“Friendship and personal connection are definitely an important factor in my work”
For Stack, no matter whether he’s working with another producer or with an artist, one thing is clear: it’s about collaboration and freedom to explore – playing in a sandbox together, not toiling on an assembly line.
“I am a person by an artist’s side,” he says of his role as a producer. “They’re looking for something, and I’m there, not as a guide, but as someone to take out my machete and hack down some thick brush to get to wherever we need to go. And that might involve us taking some wrong turns together, some circling back. That’s where I do my best work.
“There is real partnership and trust together in whichever way we go. I believe in taking an artist closer to themselves and their intuition, and helping them get there.”
Words: Ana Yglesias
Photography: David Milan Kelly
The post How Jim-E Stack turns the studio into a sandbox: “I’m not trying to push anyone through a certain mould” appeared first on MusicTech.

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It may not be the most practical transmitter, but it’s certainly something we’ve not seen before. It’s part of our 2025 Component Abuse Challenge, for which you still have time to make an entry yourself if you have one.

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If you forward bias  a base-emitter junction, it will behave as a diode, which could be used as a roughly 0.7 volt reference. But this project is far more fun than that, because it runs the junctions in reverse biased breakdown mode. Using one of those cheap grab bags of transistor seconds, he finds that devices of the same type maintain the same voltage, which for the NPN devices he has works out at 9.5 volts and the PNP at 6.5. We’re told it damages their operation as transistors, but with a grab bag, that’s not quite the issue.
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