We have encountered an unusual problem on our Presonus Studiolive 16.4.2 that we purchased 2nd hand. The mixer freezes after several minutes of use. The meters will freeze but controls are still functional. There is no sound output when the mixer freezes. I research for this problem and it turns out that I am not alone and this problem is a known issue to this model.
After some research I found some people that sharing how they fix the problem. 1 of them said that downgrading the firmware can solve the problem. I have tried this solution even though this means downgrading my MAC OS which is not an easy task and it will take some time to install older MAC OS on my laptop. Unfortunately this solution did not work for me. Other solution is to replace the DSP or Power supply board but this will cost much and shipping to Philippines isn’t cheap so I didn’t tried it.
Finally one shared that the freezing problem was fixed by simply adding fan. This seems an easy to do fix so I gave it a try. I have a small fan installed and tap the power to the external lamp power output of the mixer which is capable of delivering 12V 500mA which is more than enough to power a small fan. This works well and freezing problem was fix with a little issue…. There is an audible fan noise on the output. This is because I have connected the fan to the external Lamp supply of the mixer which is designed to power LEDs. So to fix this problem, I have used a separate power supply for the fan.
The fan with 100 ohms resistor and 1000uf capacitor for additional filter and to decrease the speed of the fan(because the fan is a bit noisy).
12V Power supply of the fan is a simple center tap transformer with 2 diodes and 1000uf capacitor.
Holes made a little bit bigger for the fan.
Now the mixer is working fine. 🙂
Update:
This seems to work for few months only. The problem does appear again after some time. 🙁