PreSonus Audio Electronics, Inc. (often known and styled as PreSonus) is an American manufacturer of

professional audio Professional audio, abbreviated as pro audio, refers to both an activity and a category of high quality, studio-grade audio equipment. Typically it encompasses sound recording, sound reinforcement system setup and audio mixing, and studio mus ...

equipment and

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, used to create, record, mix, and

master Master or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles * Ascended master, a term used in the Theosophical religious tradition to refer to spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans *Grandmaster (chess), National Master ...

music and other audio. This includes their line of

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

(DAW) software, Studio One. In November 2021, it was announced that the company is to be acquired by Fender.

History

PreSonus was founded in 1995, in

Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-sma ...

, Louisiana by

Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 nea ...

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

graduates Jim Odom (also a member of the rock band LeRoux) and Brian Smith, to solve technical issues with engineering music

CDs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

. It was initially based out of Odom's garage. The company's first product was the DCP-8, a multi-

channel Channel, channels, channeling, etc., may refer to: Geography * Channel (geography), in physical geography, a landform consisting of the outline (banks) of the path of a narrow body of water. Australia * Channel Country, region of outback Austral ...

digital processor (including

compression Compression may refer to: Physical science *Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces *Compression member, a structural element such as a column *Compressibility, susceptibility to compression * Gas compression *Compression ratio, of a ...

, gating and

mix automation In music recording, mix automation allows the mixing console to remember the audio engineer's adjustment of faders during the post-production editing process. A timecode is necessary for the synchronization of automation. Modern mixing console ...

) that could control

analog audio Analog recording is a technique used for the recording of analog signals which, among many possibilities, allows analog audio for later playback. Analog audio recording began with mechanical systems such as the phonautograph and phonograph. L ...

using

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

(resulting in a new

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

). Subsequent products include the DigiMax multi-channel

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...

preamplifier A preamplifier, also known as a preamp, is an electronic amplifier that converts a weak electrical signal into an output signal strong enough to be noise-tolerant and strong enough for further processing, or for sending to a power amplifier an ...

with ADAT output (2000), the Central Station monitor controller with

talkback Talkback or talk back may refer to: * ''Talkback'' (album), a 1983 album by the Canadian band the Spoons * ''Talk Back'' (Kembe X album), 2016 *Talkback, an alternate name for Marvel Comics superhero Chase Stein * Talkback (recording), an audio ...

(2004), and multi-channel

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

interfaces, including the FireStation (2002), FirePod (2004), and FireStudio series (2006). In 2006, KristalLabs Software Ltd., a start-up in

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founded by former

Steinberg Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH (trading as Steinberg) is a German musical software and hardware company based in Hamburg. It develops music writing, recording, arranging, and editing software, most notably Cubase, Nuendo, and Dorico. It als ...

developers Wolfgang Kundrus and Matthias Juwan, began working on the Studio One DAW and on the Capture live-recording software in cooperation with PreSonus. KristalLabs subsequently became part of PreSonus when the company acquired all of their assets in 2009 (leading to the creation of the new entity ''PreSonus Software Limited''). In 2008, PreSonus developed the AudioBox USB audio/MIDI interface, and in 2009, the company launched its StudioLive series of digital mixers, the first version of their Studio One DAW, and the first version of their Capture live-recording software. This was followed by their Virtual StudioLive (VSL) control software in 2010, and their QMix control app in 2012. In 2011 PreSonus jointly developed the

Audio Random Access Audio Random Access (commonly abbreviated to ARA) is an extension for audio plug-in interfaces, such as AU, VST and RTAS, allowing them to exchange a greater amount of audio information with digital audio workstation (DAW) software. It was dev ...

(ARA) plug-in extension with

Celemony Celemony Software GmbH is a German musical software company that specializes in digital audio pitch correction software. It produces Melodyne, a popular audio pitch modification tool similar to Auto-Tune, although the program itself is a manua ...

, to allow greater integration between

audio plug-in An audio plug-in, in computer software, is a plug-in that can add or enhance audio-related functionality in a computer program. Such functionality may include digital signal processing or sound synthesis. Audio plug-ins usually provide their o ...

s and

DAW Daw or DAW may refer to: People and language * Daw (given name) * Daw (surname) * Daw, an honorific used in Burmese name#Honorifics, Burmese names * Dâw people, an indigenous people of Brazil * Dâw language, a language of Brazil * Davaoeño lang ...

software. PreSonus expanded in 2012 by acquiring the

Nimbit Nimbit, Inc. was a Massachusetts-based company (owned by PreSonus) offering sales & marketing services for independent musicians, independent record labels and other organisations, using a web-based, direct-to-fan system. This includes a virtua ...

online direct-to-fan music service, again in 2013 when they acquired assets from Notion Music (including the

Notion Notion or Notions may refer to: Software * Notion (music software), a music composition and performance program * Notion (productivity software), a note-taking and project-management program from Notion Labs Inc. * Notion (window manager), the s ...

and Progression music-notation and composition software applications), and again in 2014 by acquiring the live sound hardware manufacturer WorxAudio (PreSonus continue to sell specific hardware, including loudspeakers, under this brand). Wolfgang Kundrus and Eike Jonas left PreSonus in 2014. Kundrus is now Software Architect and Senior Developer for EastWest Sounds. In November, 2018, PreSonus released their 16-pad ATOM portable

MIDI Controller A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They mos ...

, which included extended integration features with their Studio One software. In November, 2021, Fender announced it they had signed a definitive agreement of merger with PreSonus.

Core products

Hardware

Hardware manufactured by PreSonus includes the following: * Digital mixers, allowing multiple audio channels to be fed into a computer system via a single

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

Firewire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

connection, including the StudioLive brand. * Control surfaces, including the StudioLive and FaderPort brands. * Performance/MIDI controllers, such as the ATOM brand. *

Thunderbolt A thunderbolt or lightning bolt is a symbolic representation of lightning when accompanied by a loud thunderclap. In Indo-European mythology, the thunderbolt was identified with the 'Sky Father'; this association is also found in later Hell ...

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound * Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum * Digital audio, representation of sou ...

and

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

interfaces, including the AudioBox, Studio, Quantum, and (now discontinued) FireStudio brands. *

Studio monitor Studio monitors are loudspeakers in speaker enclosures specifically designed for professional audio production applications, such as recording studios, filmmaking, television studios, radio studios and project or home studios, where accurate ...

s, including the Eris, Ceres and Sceptre brands. *

Loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or " ...

s, including the WorxAudio brand. * Headphone amplifiers.

Software

PreSonus produce multiple software products related to music and other audio, including: * Studio One: A

(DAW). *

: Music composition and performance software. * Progression: Composition software for guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and vocals. * Capture: Live-recording software, designed for PreSonus' StudioLive brand digital mixers.

References

External links