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PreSonus Central Station Monitoring System |
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The Presonus Central Station is a digital studio monitoring system made to use with your computer based digital audio editor. It can be used for professional and home studios as well as video post production. It's more than just a 3in X 3out Matrix. It has a talkback mic and a two channel cue mix for headphones. This works really well for smaller studios. NOTE: The Presonus CS doesn't have AD converters, EQ, or compression. It's only for monitoring. It allows you to connect up to 3 analog stereo inputs (2 TRS and 1 RCA) and two (switchable) digital stereo inputs and select which stereo input you want to listen to. You can connect up to 3 different outputs. So it's a 3 X 3 input/output matrix. If you look at the above picture to the left of the large Meters you'll see 4 push buttons and a knob. These four buttons are the INPUT SELECT. Pushing one of the buttons selects the input. The 4th input is digital and if you look to the right of the four buttons you'll see two more buttons. These are Digital Input Select buttons. You can use either TOSLINK (optical) or S/PDIF. Both of the digital inputs when selected as the monitoring output are routed to Digital-to-Analog converters that operate at up to 192kHz sample rate and 24-bit depth. I'm not sure of the manufacturer of the DAC sorry. The Knob controls the level of the AUX input which is a stereo RCA -10dB consumer level input. This is for CD players, tape recorders and other consumer gear. The (2) TRS (Tip Ring Sleeve) inputs also accept 1/4" mono instrument cable levels (-10dB) via a servo balanced opamp. Along with the 3 stereo analog outputs that are usually connected your studio monitors (large, nearfield, boombox), there are MAIN and CUE analog stereo outputs that are located on the back panel (see picture). You can route the MAIN output to a DAT or CD Recorder, or input on a computer. This is an analog output. The CUE output is meant to be used for sending to a headphone monitoring amp such as the Presonus HP4 headphone amplifier. You can select which input (3 analog and 1 digital) input you want to send out the CUE outputs. You can do the same for the MAIN outputs as well. There are also two headphone outputs on the front panel and a volume control. This allows you to plug your headphones right in to the front of the unit which is great for testing the CUE send to the headphones. The Talkback system is really great. If you have a mixer that doesn't have a talkback system then this will solve a lot of problems. If you look to the very Left hand side of the above picture you'll see a WHITE PUSH BUTTON and a Mic level knob. The mic is mounted right into the front panel so you don't have to deal with plugging a mic in or dealing with where to put it. You just press the button and talk and it sends the signal out the CUE analog stereo outputs as well as the headphone outputs. This will allow you to talk to people in the studio portion while you are in the control room. Or if you are recording in your home then the musician can be in one bedroom while the engineer is in another. Talkback what a great idea. It also has a 30 segment LED meter that with peak and hold points that are pretty accurate. It has both dBu and dBFS (dB Full Scale) metering with a meter alignment switch and peak clear buttons. Really large and easy to see and use. Why is the Presonus Central Station so great? It doesn't use any active electronics. It is a passive system design that doesn't use any op amps or other active electronics. This is because PreSonus wanted the highest quality sound without coloration or timbre change that can occur when using active electronics. They instead use 34 mechanical relays that are sealed. This has less interaction with the sound and keeps it open and transparent. All the components are military grade resistors and potentiometers. Features
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