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Hi Sacguy71,

Interesting post, I am about going the same path as you do, looking into a new studio setup with lots of things to consider... (lots of work and time)

For a board I am looking for a digital one, not much on the market though. I end up with either the PreSonus - StudioLive Series III or with the Allen & Heath - SQ series (the QU series is nice however not as flexible as the SQ series and just flat stiff compared to the very flexible PreSonus). Both are expensive however the Allen & Heath is topping that, not only with the mixers but with the Staging-boxes as well, kind of "forcing" me to end up most likely with a StudioLive board.

Pros and cons I see between those two, I focussed here on the main parameters however if I have overlooked an important one, anyone, please feel free to mention it:

• 48 channels on all models of Allen & Heath's SQ series, 32 channels on 32x StudioLive boards and 64 channels on 64S
• 24 DCAs for StudioLive and 8 DCAs (and 8 mute groups) for SQ
• 8 FX channels for SQ series, 4 FX channels for all StudioLive Series III models except 64S that has 8 too
• (Flexible) Mixes most StudioLive have 16, the 64S has 32, the SQ series have 12 mixes
• User definable keys, SQ has 16 of them and StudioLive has 8
• Allen & Heath SQ series SQ6 has 4 definable encoders and SQ7 has 8 definable encoders, the StudioLive mixers have none
• Allen & Heath stage boxes are quite expensive, PreSonus not only has cheaper stage boxes, rack mixers can be used as stage boxes as well
• Allen & Heath without extension card the board's USB can "only" handle 32x32 channels, PreSonus 64x64 standard
• Allen & Heath is very much oriented for right-handed persons (I am a left-handed person), PreSonus does that as well but less "heavy" as Allen & Heath
• Allen & Heath has the option to add a Dante optional card so one is ready for the (future) audio networking, PreSonus doesn't offer Dante at all (not onboard at least) and one has to use PreSonus' AVB networking. Just recently PreSonus came out with the AVB-D16 "Dante Bridge" as PreSonus calls it; in that way one can use StudioLive boards in a Dante audio network

Well there are tons of parameters more you can compare, I made quite a big spreadsheet for myself to compare the bigger models from SQ series and StudioLive and on some levels Allen & Heath seems to be better to me and on other levels the PreSonus seems to be better. What I feel interesting is that the PreSonus StudioLive Series III seems to be a lot more flexible then the SQ series from Allen & Heath. Allen & Heath SQ series managed to be much more flexible than the older QU series however to me it looks that it can't compete with the flexibility of the StudioLive series III. Flexibility seems to be important to me.

Well, that are my 2 cents ;-) Good luck and please keep us updated with what you end up with. Kind regards, Garfield.