What’s Next for PreSonus?
AT meets with Tony Cariddi from PreSonus at The NAMM Show to find out what’s in store for the company in 2025.
By Preshan John
6 February 2025
Many wondered how the Fender buyout in 2021 would impact PreSonus’ DNA and direction. AT met with Tony Cariddi, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at PreSonus, on the show floor at NAMM 2025 to ask what’s on the company’s horizon, and what users can get excited about.
AT: How is it being back at NAMM this year?
It’s been an incredible show. The halls are really, really crowded, and we’re thrilled to see our booth is crowded as well. We have a very packed main stage. Currently, Jeff Ellis is speaking. Both got a bunch of great talent with DJ Jazzy Jeff here yesterday.
What we’re showing primarily is, of course, Studio One Pro 7. We’re looking at all the great stuff that came with that, including the launcher, AI stem separation, lots of amazing stuff. Also in the booth we’ve got the Eris Pro 8 speakers arranged for a Dolby Atmos setup. So we’re doing some Dolby Atmos demos here as well.
And there’s a lot of excitement about the Quantum ES and Quantum HD interfaces which we’re showing off. So, all in all, it’s really exciting. We’re talking with a lot of customers, getting a lot of great feedback, and it’s really a lot of fun to be back.
AT: How does the fact that PreSonus is now owned by the biggest guitar company in the world impact PreSonus’ strategic direction?
Fender acquired PreSonus a few years ago and we saw a great opportunity to really invigorate even more of this whole idea of the benefit of sound from studio to stage and back and forth. So one of the early results of that is if you look at the Quantum interfaces, for instance, the instrument inputs on the front are Fender-designed circuitry. So we’ve got Fender-designed guitar inputs on the front of those. You also have re-amping built right on the box. So for guitar players that want to track dry and be able to fiddle with guitar tones later on, it makes it super easy. So those are just a couple of the early benefits that we’re seeing.
In the future, we’re definitely going to lean more and more into developing workflows and products for guitar players, because it’s really a natural fit. Most of the DAW users out there today started playing guitar. We’ve done a lot of research looking at this and it’s a massive opportunity. So we think it’s a great idea to lean into that and develop more products and innovate more software and hardware tools for people that are guitar players and that are composing or just writing music.
AT: What can Studio One users – guitarists and non-guitarists alike – look forward to in Studio One this year?
I don’t have any product announcements to make preemptively, but I can tell you that we do have a really active roadmap for 2025. We are planning on three or four releases throughout the year. So we’re shooting for quarterly. That’s the plan looking forward. We want to deliver updates more frequently. Maybe one will be, like I said, for guitar players, maybe another one will be more for composing. But expect to see lots and lots of fun stuff this year.
AT: Dolby Atmos is a big talking point at The NAMM Show. How is PreSonus’ offerings helping people entering the world of Atmos realise their vision?
We implemented Dolby Atmos into Studio One Pro. Anyone that’s using Studio One Pro gets access to these tools, which is pretty awesome.
The way it’s implemented is very easy to use too – right within the mixer you can choose whether you want to have the full Dolby Atmos output if you have that kind of speaker array, but you can switch to a binaural mix so you can be mixing on headphones and, really mixing in Dolby Atmos. So I guess you could say it really democratises it or makes it available to everybody. So anyone buying any of our audio interfaces with Studio One is going to get access to this. It’s pretty exciting.
AT: As VP of Sales & Marketing, what is personally most exciting to you about your current role at PreSonus?
I’m relatively new here in my role as VP of Sales & Marketing at PreSonus. The most exciting thing is to be part of a company where the culture is just incredibly authentic and friendly and real. We’re all kind of bound together by this love of music. Pretty much everybody’s a musician in one form or another. It’s a great industry to be a part of. I have 100% confidence in the vision of the company and the vision of the leadership. And the team is just wonderful. Those are the things that excite me.
PreSonus: presonus.com
Australian Distributor: linkaudio.com.au
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