PRESONUS STUDIOLIVE 328I

Following up on the popularity of its StudioLive™ 328AI Active Integration™ Loudspeakers, PreSonus^® announced two new cabinet versions and companion accessories designed specifically for installation. Available in white and black, StudioLive 328i cabinets are built for flown installations without handles and pole mounts. Internal grille cloth masks the drivers so that they blend seamlessly into their environments. A companion yoke mount is also available, as is an update to PreSonus’ SL Room Control speaker-management software that allows the user to turn off the front-panel blue power-status LED.

In all other respects the new StudioLive 328i-W (white) and 328i-B (black) are identical to the StudioLive 328AI. The compact, powered, 3-way loudspeakers rely on a custom-designed, 8-inch coaxial speaker with a 1.75-inch titanium compression driver to reproduce the mid and high frequencies and dual 8-inch ferrite speakers for low-frequency reproduction. Triamplified, Class D power amplifiers deliver a combined 2,000 watts of power.

Each speaker includes a USB Wi-Fi LAN adapter as well as the SL-Control-SPK option card to connect to SL Room Control software over a wireless network. SL Room Control is an impressive system-configuration application for Mac OS X^®, Windows^®, and iPad that provides both individual and grouped speaker control and includes graphic and parametric EQ, 8 notch filters, muting, soloing, and level control, in addition to performance monitoring (real-time temperature, click detection, and excursions). All parameters are automatically stored in the User layer onboard the loudspeaker. A network-setup wizard is included to quickly connect each speaker to a wireless network. An included SL-Control-SPK option installed in each speaker can be replaced with the SL-Dante-SPK Dante option card (available October 2014) or an AVB option card (expected Q2 of 2015).

Each StudioLive 328i speaker has a combo XLR/TRS line input and an XLR microphone input with an XMAX™ Class A mic preamplifier and 12V phantom power, as well as an XLR audio throughput. All enclosures are of lightweight plywood construction and include M10 fly points.