SUBSCRIBE to New Media Gear Podcasts and HD Vidcasts!

The Presonus Monitor Station

My Presonus FirePods are among the oldest (Podcast specific) gear in Studio1A. They just work. I’m tempted to try the new FireStudio series, but the FirePods are just so good and work transparently with my gear.

I got in touch with Presonus about the Monitor Station, which really intrigued me. I had no idea if it would work in the slightly unconventional way I envisioned.

The idea behind the Monitor Station is to, well …monitor. For me, being able to monitor my audio in real-time isn’t an option, it’s a requirement. The Monitor Station allows audio routing in different ways while providing a central monitoring post with 4 (volume adjustable) headphone jacks.

Plug in 2 or 3 sets of professional powered speakers, including a sub-woofer if you like. Switch using latch (one speaker on turns the other off) or open (multiple speakers on at once) - the choice is yours in the setup config.

The Monitor Station also has a consumer level aux/phono input (using consumer connectors). A built-in electret mic with momentary-on switch is included, but you can also use your own talkback mic as an option.

To sum it up, the Monitor Station has 2 pro (stereo or A/B) inputs using TRS connectors, an aux/phono input and 3 outputs with multiple routing options. You can also route inputs to a separate Cue Source and even use the talkback system as an intercom that won’t be recorded.

Back to the 4 headphone connection amplifier (with discrete levels). They can each be switched to monitor the main or cue buss.

I must admit that after having 3 different reference monitors that it was overkill. I only needed 1 and decided to keep my Yamahas. A cool idea is to ‘test’ your mix using Mix Cubes. The Cubes and their ideology will be for another show.

I had a completely different idea for using the Monitor Station. Listen in and hear how it turned out!

Best,
MarkJensen

Filed under: PodCasts