5 Minutes With…Rick Naqvi, Vice President of Sales, PreSonus

In Uncategorizedby tfwm

5 Minutes With…Rick Naqvi, Vice President of Sales, PreSonus

TFWM: Tell us a bit about the history of PreSonus.

Rick Naqvi: In 1995, musician, producer, and LSU graduate in electrical engineering Jim Odom founded PreSonus™ with the goal of building professional and affordable music-production tools for musicians and audio engineers. PreSonus’ first product, the DCP8 digitally controlled, 8-channel compressor/limiter/gate, resulted in a patent for digital (MIDI) control over analog circuitry. The company continued to develop analog compressor/limiters during its earliest years.

TFWM: Why do you think products like your FireStudio, DigiMax and StudioLive products have worked well in the HoW market?

RN: I play guitar every week on a worship team in Baton Rouge and often do sound for church events, and so do several other PreSonus employees. So when we design these products, we have a pretty good idea of how they will be used in houses of worship and what the needs are, and we plan accordingly.

TFWM: Would you say that the HoW market has had anything to do with driving innovation for any of your products?

RN: Yes, especially when we designed the StudioLive mixers and Capture live-recording software. Ease of use is vitally important for worship teams because volunteers often operate the sound system, and one person might have to run the whole thing, including recording. So when we designed StudioLive and Capture, we considered how to make them powerful enough for professional use, yet accessible for church volunteers.

After playing for years on a worship team, I noticed that we never got to do an in-depth soundcheck. The sound guy had to fix stuff on the fly. Now, using the StudioLive and Capture you can do a “virtual soundcheck” by pulling up last week’s music in Capture and playing it back through the StudioLive. The sound person can show up a few minutes early and set up a mix without the band! How cool is that?

TFWM: There are many of your products in use for live and studio configurations- would you say that StudioLive is going to bring PreSonus to the front of house position for more HoWs?

RN: Yes, I think that is already happening on a significant scale and for good reasons. I believe that is happening because PreSonus’ StudioLive 16.4.2 and StudioLive 24.4.2 digital mixers are really easy to use. You route signals with buttons, adjust the EQ and dynamics processing with knobs, and set levels with faders-just like an analog mixer. Plus there are no banks, so Channel 16 will never accidentally be thought of as Channel 32. People who are coming from the analog world will feel at home.

And since many churches use backing tracks and loops, our software and tight integration with StudioLive make it possible to not only record but to make the computer a member of the band. It’s easy to route a click to the drummer’s in-ear monitor while mixing in backing tracks and loops, using the StudioLive’s FireWire returns. It’s exciting for us to see how churches are using this technology.

TFWM: What’s next on the horizon- any secrets to unveil before Winter NAMM 2011?

RN: Let’s just say that we’re going to show something innovative at NAMM that will provide even more-versatile control over our StudioLive mixers-and it will be free. The best is yet to come. Want to know more? We’ll see you at NAMM!

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