PreSonus NSB32.16 Stage Box

The NSB32.16 is PreSonus's full-size answer to the analog snake: thirty-two recallable mic preamps on stage, sixteen analog returns for wedges or fills, and a single EtherCon run carrying up to 48 channels of AVB audio back to wherever your StudioLive Series III console or R-series rack mixer lives. It is the piece that lets you pull every XLR off the floor, replace the copper snake with a Cat6 run, and still hand the monitor engineer a full complement of outputs without adding a second box. For AVB-based rigs, this is the snake head.

At forty watts typical draw from a standard IEC inlet, it is not a heavy power burden, but the fifty-five-watt ceiling means you should account for the headroom in a conditioned strip rather than guess. The 3U steel chassis weighs in at four kilograms and sits at 250mm deep — shallow enough to fit a road-standard rack without fighting the back panel. In practice, the single network port is both the strength and the constraint: one cable for 48 channels is clean and fast at load-in, but AVB means you are committed to AVB-capable switches and PreSonus AVB infrastructure. Recallable preamp gains mean your line check can start from a known-good file rather than from zero every night, which matters on a fast changeover.

This box belongs in a touring or install rig that is already built around StudioLive Series III or is being built around it from the ground up. If your console is a Series III and your stage needs more than sixteen inputs, the NSB32.16 is the natural next step before you start daisy-chaining smaller boxes. Who should look elsewhere: anyone running a different console ecosystem — the AVB implementation here is designed to play inside the PreSonus world, and coaxing it into a non-PreSonus AVB network is more engineering project than production tool. If your input count is under sixteen, the NSB16.8 is a lighter lift.